Introduction.

Men have the willingness to believe what they wish for is true. There are several factors, which helps men to nurture and grow their faiths on God- the desire to see again your loved ones who are already death; the fear of the unknown, which is death and the desire to escape death; the desire to have immortality; the desire for bliss and comforts in after life and the fear of eternal fire in hell.  All these ideas and speculations contributed to the establishment and growth of monotheistic religions in the past. Desire and fear can have tremendous impacts on one’s life.

Nothing is certain; these are all speculations, a product of cognitive mind in man but you do not want to risk your next life in chutzpah denouncing the belief system even though you have doubts somehow. In this crucial dilemma, religion enters to play a dominant role reinforcing your mind with its teachings of granting eternal life if you are ready to worship what they worship and believe what they believe. They then teaches you to despise and condemn those who disagrees with what you believe, calling them worshippers of false gods and idols and even demonize you because you reject their belief system. They fail to realize that God does not require organized religion, evangelists, priests, imams, missionaries, mullahs, pundits, monks, rabbi or any person to convey his purpose and plan to you. A true eternal God always speaks directly through a person’s mind personally. What makes you think it is impossible for an omnipotent God to directly communicate with you if not through some transmitter such as your priest or Holy Scripture? What makes you think the God who came down to earth and wrestled with Jacob physically would not involve Himself into such sport with mankind again? What makes you think the god who came down to Mount Sinai and dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses three thousand years ago would not reveal himself to humanity again when he is the same god? 

You are continually brainwashed and indoctrinated with religious teachings rigorously through religious services and preaching although nobody exactly understand the hidden truth in any religion. They even teach you to restrain yourself from questioning God's authority no matter how illogical and absurd the belief system may be. They repeatedly lied to you that if you question God's wisdom, you are offending Him because questioning his morality is sacrilege. They prohibited you to learn the truth other than what they believe is true.

All religions are supposed to bring peace, unity and comforts for the humanity but due to selfish nature of man to gain personal desire and glory, they teaches people to hate one another on the basis of religious differences. God never endorsed any prophet to start a new religion but some zealots started them in order to promote and spread their own ideas. There are some common characteristics among the believers of the three greatest monotheistic religions namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and to me they are rather amusing, absurd and illogical. Each of these religions asserts supremacy over other religion. They all believed to have legitimacy of God's authority. Each one proclaims they worship and serve the true God and all other gods are false/wrong. The Holy Scripture of each of these religions denounces the teachings of all other faiths and condemns them as heretics and worshippers of false gods. Each one thinks what they believe is the absolute truth and anything besides what they believe is wrong. Muslims and Christians promises salvation and eternal life after death and profess that followers of all other religions are going to hell. 

It is impossible for all these three religions to be right but there is every possibility that all these three can be wrong. In reality, no religion has the monopoly of God's authority but they all claim they are the legitimate followers of the Supreme Creator. None of these faith has the evidence of what they believe is true yet none has the courage to admit that what they believe can also be possibly wrong. The hardest thing for them is to honestly admit" I do not know" but to keep insisting that what they believe is right. The selfish gene comes into play. 

When some ignorant become absolutely confident of themselves without knowing the truth, disaster is imminent. The unwillingness to admit, "I do not know" creates problem among the believers of different faiths. Most of them are so sure of themselves that it is impossible for their god to be wrong and therefore they are ready to martyr their life defending their god if necessary, in the hope of receiving rewards in the afterlife. Is not this happening in today's world? This kind of belief system is sheer lunacy; it is utterly madness. A true God requires no human being to shed blood and sacrifice life in His name.

This book mainly deals with the analysis of the Old Testament stories in an attempt to rationalize and examine whether it was God, who revealed the words or the prophets who simply took God’s name in a wrong way. The Old Testament is smeared with wild stories of war, genocide, revenge, crimes and intolerance committed directly under the command of God. It contains numerous purported laws- injustice, inequality, inhuman treatment of conquered subjects promoting hatreds, violence and enmity among humanity makes me to wonder that Yahweh is mercilessly evil and cruel towards his own creations. Despite all these notoriety, who is akin to a worldly evil dictator ruling his subjects with heavy hand, the bible oddly says, "The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love"(psalms 103:8).

The cruelty of Yahweh’s character is depicted from the very beginning itself. The damnation of the entire future human race simply because their ancestors had eaten a tempting fruit stolen from the garden, which they were, warn not to eat. The killings of all mankind by sending global flood because of their disobedience, demanding blood sacrifices from worshippers for atonement of their sins; His punitive actions have no parallel in the history of mankind. It often prompts us to question why at all created them in the first place knowing that they will disappoint him and he would have to destroy them in such a cruel way. Nonetheless, he keeps reminding people of his immeasurable love and compassion for humanity. Could not there be a mistake by attributing all these writings to God? What if God is kind but the bible has wrongly depicted his nature? Are we to believe that each word in the bible truly comes from God and not a single error exist?  We shall see some miracles, which contradicts the laws of nature in particular in the following chapters.

Sometimes I am saddened by the sadistic nature of certain gods particularly the Christian god of the Old Testament. God seemed to take pleasures in inciting his people to commit genocidal acts against those who refused to acknowledge his authority. He has unpleasant character condoning murder, rape, infanticide, invasion, looting, slavery, misogyny and was equally cruel and barbaric towards his own creations. The God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart intended to inflict his people with consecutive plagues on the excuse of his stubbornness. He also murdered all the first-born sons of Egyptian who were innocent because of their hardened king and suggesting his people to loot the riches of their Egyptians' neighbor. This kind of stories makes me cynical about the authenticity of bible. The miraculous intervention of divine power such as parting of the Red Sea enabling his chosen people to cross and drowning the entire army of pharaoh who followed behind speaks inconceivable miraculous display of power working against the laws of nature. Similar miracle was mentioned during the time Joshua by blocking the Jordan River as his people walked across safely. Both Elijah and Elisha too crossed Jordan River by stopping the flow of water as they struck the river with their cloak on separate occasion. We are also amazed by the story of Joshua stopping the sun from going down, (in which case stopping the rotation of earth) to give more time to Joshua for slaughtering the enemy soldiers. Besides, he also moved the shadow ten steps backward (reversing earth s rotation) at the time of Isaiah, as a sign that king Hezakiah would be healed. In fact, twisting the natural laws must have been his favorite trick using supernatural power. He also brought down the wall of Jericho pulverized by the trumpets sound allowing Joshua and his soldiers to massacre and burnt down the whole city. It is amazing to notice that over 2 billion people actually subscribe to these stories as divine wisdom.

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I'm not really sure what plan he has for humanity but as far as I can see, he has not the least interest in solving any of our problems but rather silently watches them in idleness. The earth is just a nasty place ripped apart by diseases, hunger, injustice, poverty; millions dying every day because of these problems. The brutish lifestyle of people engaging themselves in severe conflicts of wars and killings, civil strife, victimization of innocent children, million lives destroyed on daily basis, and yet the merciful God look helpless and refused to lend his helping hand even to the most needy victims. He must be too busy doing other stuff like studying celestial objects and galaxies of the outer universe. Human beings are definitely the most patience creature on earth when it comes to worshipping God.

You are being brainwashed to believe that all humanity has inherited sins because their ancestors ate an irresistible ripen fruit in God's garden. You are being forced to believe that a Jewish fable book contains the true words of God and therefore the book is holy; its teachings are eternally sacred. You are being forced to believe and follow the Ten Commandments supposedly written down by the hand of Yahweh himself and handover to Moses, the murderous prophet, who held a command on one hand, which says, "Thou shall not kill" and yet ordered his people to slay all idolaters regardless of brotherhood or kinship.

The hypothesis of blasphemy, which is an offence to God and deserves divine punishment primarily originated on the presumption that God rules his people with heavy hand like a worldly dictatorial king. Under a dictatorial regime, any impertinence or insult to the king by his subjects would amount to disloyalty or betrayal of one's own nation inviting severe punishment or even execution. Basing on this idea, God is portrait as an omnipotent ruler who demands absolute allegiance and loyalty from all people and whoever refuses to acknowledge his authority and worship him shall be punished which in this case is hell in the afterlife. The Ten Commandments reflects the absolute nature of God who wants nothing less than absolute loyalty and obedience to his laws by his people. But how do you know that this is the real nature of God? How do you know that God will punish you if you do not bow down to him; believe in him; praise him or worship him? How do you know that God will be disappointed with you because you do not believe in him and deny his existence? How do you know that God approved your religion while all the rests have been dismissed? How do you know that God is an absolute monarch and not a benevolent democratic or liberal ruler?

Unless the Creator is a petty ruler with insecure power, he should not be concerned with tiny matter such as acknowledging his works with flattery words, exalting his name, praising him, worshipping him, servile submission to his authority, as though he is a worldly king with selfish desire. Our actions can neither diminish nor defend his authority. Just as in the same way, I cannot be offended even if you refused to believe a thing I said, God could not be offended in anyway even if you find difficulty believing in him. Moreover, you cannot be blamed for failing to understand and believe in God from lack of evidence because the burden to prove his existence lies not on you but him. If God finds himself unable to convince you regarding his nature of existence through sign or manifestation, it is not your fault that you disbelieve in him since you find no sufficient evidence. God should not be bothered at all even if you believe or disbelieve in him, worship him or worship something else, praises him or blasphemy him as long as you have a righteous life: he should be above that standard totally unaffected by whatever we say or do.

The prevalence of absolute monarchy in those days must have greatly influenced the prophets and biblical scholars to conceive a notion that God also rules the people like a worldly dictator king. This is the reason God was portrait as a stern monarch who demands absolute loyalty and allegiance from his subjects prohibiting them to worship any other god except Him. It is absurd to believe that he will punish those who deny his existence even though they are moral and righteous. It is even more ridiculous to believe that God will get jealous if you do not believe his words or refuse to worship him in servitude. A magnanimous God does not require the service of mankind to establish his authority.

Hegel believed that war is to national life what winds were to sea. It showed the omnipotence of state in its individuality. Therefore, war is not an absolute evil rather it is a virtuous activity. Hegel also believed that war helps in the discovery of world spirit because it decides which of the contesting states is its true embodiment. To him, victory demonstrates that the victorious state is truer representative of world spirit. I do not know what he meant by the 'world spirit' but from religiosity viewpoint if he meant that the world has a spirit, I do not agree with his assumption. I am sure most biblical scholars will agree with his philosophy of war since bible particularly the Old Testament condones war in many occasions.

Can we say that the struggle amongst the religions for supremacy and divine legitimacy is an essential feature, which is in accordance with divine purpose? According to the bible, war on religion is necessary, as we have seen on several occasions; God himself directly supervised his people to destroy the nations, which served another god. The God of the Old Testament is a controversial figure who constantly proclaims his love and mercy for his people yet at the same time, he ordered mass killings of people even for petty reasons. It is a debatable subject if a true God would actually command his people to take on another nation even though the purpose was to fight against the prevalence of evils in the society. In my opinion, the bible is a dangerous book if it is to be used as a moral guidance for humanity. It cannot be denied that it has played an important part in bringing about order and solidarity in the past, but the bible is also not without defect if we interpret in literal sense and attempt to put its teachings into practice. I cannot expect any rational person to derive any moral guidance from this book despite making tall claims by apologists. One can easily extract any verse from the bible context and use them as justification for war in pursuance of their own selfish motive.