Sunday Sermon: The Bible As A Source of [Im]Morality

Christians love to claim that the Bible is an infallible source of morality. In this post I intend to demonstrate that the Bible (and, by extension, the deity who supposedly wrote it) is contradictory and imperfect, and therefore cannot be used as an infallible source of morality. 

The Contradiction:

Consider the case of "the woman taken in adultery" vs the case of "the man who picked up sticks".
In the latter instance the Hebrews find a man gathering sticks on a Saturday (the Sabbath). They're unsure if gathering sticks constitutes a violation of the Sabbath or not, so they take him to Moses and ask Moses to get Yhwh to clarify the law for them. Yhwh instructs the Hebrews to stone the man to death for breaking the Sabbath.
In the former instance, the Pharisees bring Jesus a woman who was caught in adultery, and remind him that the "law of Moses" tells them that the woman must be stoned to death. The Pharisees then ask Jesus what he says her punishment should be, to which Jesus responds "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". Because Judeo-Christian morality holds that all have sinned, the woman is not stoned to death.


Let's review this again: An eternal, infallible, and unchanging deity commanded that the man should be stoned to death, and laid down a law stating that the woman should be stoned to death as well; yet Jesus (whom Christians believe to be Yhwh himself) commands that the woman should not be stoned to death. Clearly this is a moral inconsistency, as an unchanging deity cannot hold that a woman should and should not be stoned to death at the same time.

The Rebuttal:
Christians tend to defend the case of "the woman taken in adultery" by reminding us that the Bible also tells us that this entire episode was a trap set up by the Pharisees (which it clearly was according to the text). They will argue that Jewish law required [X number of] witnesses to convict someone, that the witnesses had to be there at the time for it to be a binding decision, and/or that there was some similar "procedural error" in the woman's trial. They will argue that these procedural errors were the nature of the Pharisees' trap.

These rebuttals are simply not true. Consider Jesus' command, again: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". It doesn't say "No, don't stone her." It doesn't say "No, you don't have enough witnesses to convict her according to the law". It says "Ok, go ahead and stone her… but whichever of you have never done anything wrong (which I know to be none of you) has to throw the first stone." This is an evasive answer (which is why the text says that it took so long for him to come up with the answer). It's an answer where Jesus says "Yes", but clearly means "No".

So why the evasive answer? Obviously a straightforward answer like "There aren't enough witnesses against her" wouldn't work in this instance. The Pharisees apparently weren't as stupid as biblical apologists make them out to be. No, the reason why Jesus needed an evasive answer is because the woman was clearly guilty as sin (pun intended) and had been properly convicted, but Jesus really didn't want to say "stone her to death" (presumably because it would've offended his moral code). However, he also knew that if he said "No, don't stone her to death" he would be going against the command of Yhwh, and would destroy his ministry in the process (and he would probably be stoned to death as a heretic).

So he can say "Yes" and go against his own morality, or say "No" and go against the word of Yhwh. So what does he say? "Yes you can stone her (Yhwh's will must be done)… but the person who has never done wrong in his life must throw the first stone at her (that way you don't actually kill her)."
Jesus needed an evasive answer because he knew that he was going against Yhwh, but was basing his ministry around the idea that he was Yhwh's messiah.

So not only does the contradiction stand, Jesus would have KNOWN that he was contradicting the command of Yhwh when he said it.

There remains one rebuttal to my entire argument that Christians could use to refute this point: The simple fact that the case of "the woman taken in adultery" does not appear in the earliest gospel manuscripts. It is actually a very late addition to the Jesus narrative, that doesn't show up in manuscripts before about 400 CE. Therefore there is no contradiction because Jesus never actually prevented a woman from being stoned to death!

I'll confess that that is a logically sound position. There can be no contradiction if one of the episodes of the Bible that is used to establish the contradiction blatantly never happened. However, if one is to make this case they must accept the other conclusions that follow from it. These conclusions are as follows:

1) The Bible contains episodes that are not true, and therefore it is not the infallible word of an infallible deity and should not be accepted as prima facie true.

2) If one does accept the Bible as infallible and/or prima facie true (Aside from this one instance), one must also hold that they are morally obligated to kill anyone and everyone who has ever worked on a Saturday, by throwing rocks at them until they are dead.

I feel safe in saying that either position would be unacceptable to the vast majority of modern-day Christians… But I suppose, if Christians aren't going to follow the commands of their god, they may as well just admit to being atheists and save themselves all of the trouble!

This has been your Sunday Sermon, go without god.