No Room to Move by Butters Alan

Author:Butters, Alan [Butters, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St Ives Media
Published: 2013-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

A Question of Inerrancy

"Where it is a duty to worship the sun

it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine

the laws of heat."

John Morley

It seems to me an unfortunate business that people in general don't question more closely the things they hear or are asked to believe. Bigotry, intolerance and indifference all feed from this banquet of credulity.

It is also obvious to me that nowhere is this more true than in the arena of religion. Much injustice has been committed in the name of God and one wonders why those involved have not been able to see their actions for what they were. Appealing to the Bible as justification might have been persuasive but it cannot serve to excuse actions such as the crusades and inquisitions in which the basic rights of individuals were set as inferior to a religious and political philosophy.

I have already spoken of my discomfort with the central tenet of the Witnesses that the majority must perish for the good of the few. It appears once again that the rights of those who are designated for death are not figured into the equation. I recall a discussion with one particular Witness to whom I expressed this concern. His reply was that as these people would die anyway (eventually of old age) it would be merely a technicality if they were removed sooner. This ignores the fact that they are alive and have the right to live out their life without interference. It obviously reveals a very cynical view of the human race, and one not necessarily shared by all Witnesses, but what disturbed me greatly were the Biblical examples used by Witnesses to support this doctrine.

The Witnesses, in common with other fundamentalists, take the Bible to be inerrantly the word of God, free from error and infallible. If one examines the Old Testament within this constraint, a picture of a very different God to the one found in the New Testament emerges. To illustrate my point I will use just a few of the many examples available.

God's dealings with the Israelites paint him as very cruel and vicious. For example a man was able to beat his slave with a stick and if the slave lingered near death for a day or two and then finally died, no action was to be taken against the slave owner for the slave was "his property." (Exodus 21:20-21)

A child who cursed or hit his parents was to be executed (Exodus 21:15-17). Anyone that blasphemed God must be executed (Leviticus 24:16). The penalty for harming another was "eye for eye and tooth for tooth" which meant literally that the offender's eye was to be poked out if he damaged the eye of another. (Leviticus 24:19-20)

If a "spirit of jealousy" came upon a man, he could order that his wife undergo a ritual of drinking a poisoned potion. If the woman died, she was assumed to be guilty. (Numbers 5:11-31) One wonders how many women died as a result of the unfounded suspicions of their jealous husbands.

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