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Religion's Divinely-Inspired Scriptures  Mental Terrorism Are Bible scriptures divinely inspired?
Bible Scriptures are only divinely inspired as long as people believe so. Otherwise, they are nothing more than a record of people’s thoughts on how to arrange things in this temporal world—where one creature survives at the expense of another. They do indeed contain some valid history, and abound with many virtuous stories; but many of those are entangled with human and divine jealousies, deceptions, hate, perversion, theft, lies, slaughter, covetousness, and greed. 
Prehensile human beings, sometimes called clergy, who want to gain the most in this world and the next, create religions and base them on their own experience and expectations. Their hopes of securing heavenly dividends, attached to a few other motives that justify their avarice, are the predominant forces that assign divine inspiration to their Scriptures. God never said they were inspired! 
However, the masses demand answers, and when the clergy are too lazy to use science to find the truth, they make up for the deficit with artificial solutions—made up of hallucinations supported by cabalisms. But, when education flourishes, the populace allows science to unbind the truth, and manmade religion and scriptures are often chained instead. This happened in antiquity, in the Age of Reason, and it is occurring again today. God is truth. Laws govern truth. So God rules the universe. As we strive to undertand the laws of nature, we reach out for our Maker; and each new discovery brings more comfort to our lives and a greater realization of the infinite wisdom of our Creator! Manmade religions and their scriptures do not focus on universal truth, but mysterious hocus pocus instead. In fact, that is what has destroyed much of humankind’s scientific progress, and most people aware of our stupid history do not want to see it repeated today. Blind faith, beggars' prayers, bigoted bibles, counting beads, railing sermons, holy water, dunking babies, reading scriptures, washing feet, chanting creeds, singing praises, and dancing in front of an arc light never solved a natural problem. Only observation, experience, and reasoning found the solution. However, superstitious church goers, old and young alike, still persist in dreaming on and wasting their time with these silly rituals while they dance away their lives to the beat of a crazy drummer: 
If this world is to become a better one, we should wise up and acknowledge our past mistakes. Many innocent souls have suffered severely because of them, even young ones. They too paid the ultimate price for questioning the precepts of religion and denying the authenticity of “divinely inspired scriptures.” History’s shameful list of religious atrocities are almost endless. The Inquisition recorded many, and Roman Catholics are hardly the only perpetrators. Protestants did the same, and Muslim fanatics, whom we watched in action in New York city recently, still carry the burning torch of religious superstition and intolerance to the greatest height. 
Civil War Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll’s illustration above, prefacing his work on Heretics and Heresies, aptly sums up the points in regards to religion and science thus far. He was a man in the know, the son of a Presbyterian preacher; and his account shows that that questioning the divine inspiration of the Scriptures in Scotland—not so long ago—could be a tragic and deadly affair. This famous orator, whose portrait is presented below, pointed out that “About the beginning of the nineteenth century, a boy by the name of Thomas Aikenhead, was indicted and tried at Edinburgh for having denied the inspiration of the Scriptures, and for having, on several occasions, when cold, wished himself in hell that he might get warm. Notwithstanding the poor boy recanted and begged for mercy, he was found guilty and hanged. His body was thrown in a hole at the foot of the scaffold and covered with stones.”  Beside this deep, dark act of religious cruelty lies the ironic fact that the Bible’s authors, for the most part, do not claim any "inspiration of the Scriptures." In one of a series of articles in some 1901 issues of The Truth Seeker, John E. Remsburg, who avowed “to combat the dogmas of the divine origin and infallibility of the Christian Bible,” addressed this issue by emphasizing that
“Had the writers of the Bible been inspired they would have known it and would have proclaimed it. Had they claimed to be inspired it would not prove the Bible to be divine, for like Mohammed, they might have been deluded, or, like a more recent finder of a holy book, imposters. But they do not even claim that their books contain what purport to be divine revelations. Some of these books contain what purport to be divine revelations, but the books themselves do not pretend to be divine. The only exception is the book of Revelation, admittedly the most doubtful book of the Bible.  “‘All scripture is given by inspiration.’ Waiving the questions of authenticity and correct translation, who wrote this? Paul. What was the scripture when he wrote? The Old Testament, the Old Testament alone. The writers of the Old Testament do not claim to be divinely inspired. This is a claim made by the later Jews and by the early Christians. Paul and the other writers of the New Testament do not claim that their writings are divine. This, too, is a claim made by others long after they were written.
“The fact that the writers of the Bible do not believe and do not assert that their books are of divine origin, that this claim was made many years after they were composed, by those who knew nothing of their origin, is of itself, in the absence of all other evidence, sufficient to demonstrate their human origin.”
Another important point on this matter was made by Dr. Isaac Watts (1674—1748), an English theologian and hymn writer, who composed 600 hymns, including “O God, our help in ages past,” “When I survey the wondrous cross,” and “There is a land of pure delight.” This great theologian, who also wrote sacred poems and metrical hymns, pointed out that
“The greatest part of the Christian world can hardly give any reasons why they believe the Bible to be the Word of God, but because they have always believed it, and they were taught so from their infancy.”
Furthermore, its acknowledged and revered authorities: popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and preachers can give no other valid reasons for why they believe the Scriptures to be divinely inspired. And human emotions and conjured up beliefs are no substitutes for valid reasons!
In his History of Rationalism, the great Irish historian and essayist William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838—1903) explained the effect of authority and the occupation with the cares of this world on people’s beliefs by relating that
“The overwhelming majority of the human race necessarily accept their opinions from authority. Whether they do so avowedly, like the Catholics, or unconsciously, like most Protestants, is immaterial. They have neither time nor opportunity to examine for themselves. They are taught certain doctrines on disputed questions as if they were unquestionable truths, when they are incapable of judging, and every influence is employed to deepen the impression. This is the origin of their belief. Not until long years of mental conflict have passed can they obtain the inestimable boon of an assured and untrammeled mind.”
The mind of the renowned German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) was not tangled up with “certain doctrines” when he explained the tenacity of the belief in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. He observed that
“There is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” Sadly, many sincere parents disregard absurdity, shun truth, and rely on useless hope as they replant the sorry seeds of "the divine inspiration of the scriptures" in their children’s tender minds. If religious Jews and Christians continue to teach their children the priestly notion of divinely inspired Scriptures, then they continue to insult their own Creator. A bumbling drunk could do a better job of pasting a hodgepodge of contradictions together like those divinely-inspired Scriptures revered in the Bible.
This page was last modified on Thursday, August 19, 2010 | |