Some Mistakes Of Moses
Robert Green Ingersoll
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/some_mistakes_of_moses.htmlexcerpt from the summary:Is it not far better and wiser to say that the Pentateuch
while containing some good laws, some truths, some wise and useful
things is, after all, deformed and blackened by the savagery of its
time? Is it not far better and wiser to take the good and throw the
bad away?
Let us admit what we know to be true; that Moses was mistaken
about a thousand things; that the story of creation is not true;
that the Garden of Eden is a myth;
that the serpent and the tree of
knowledge, and the fall of man are but fragments of old mythologies
lost and dead;
that woman was not made out of a rib;
that serpents
never had the power of speech;
that the sons of God did not marry
the daughters of men;
that the story of the flood and ark is not
exactly true;
that the tower of Babel is a mistake; that the
confusion of tongues is a childish thing;
that the origin of the
rainbow is a foolish fancy;
that Methuselah did not live nine
hundred and sixty-nine years;
that Enoch did not leave this world,
taking with him his flesh and bones;
that the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah is somewhat improbable;
that burning brimstone never fell
like rain;
that Lot's wife was not changed into chloride of sodium;
that Jacob did not, in fact, put his hip out of joint wrestling
with God;
that the history of Tamar might just as well have been
left out;
that a belief in Pharaoh's dreams is not essential to
salvation;
that it makes but little difference whether the rod of
Aaron was changed to a serpent or not;
that of all the wonders said
to have been performed in Egypt, the greatest is, that anybody ever
believed the absurd account;
that God did not torment the innocent
cattle on account of the sins of their owners;
that he did not kill
the first born of the poor maid behind the mill because of
Pharaoh's crimes;
that flies and frogs were not ministers of God's
wrath;
that lice and locusts were not the executors of his will;
that seventy people did not, in two hundred and fifteen years,
increase to three million;
that three priests could not eat six
hundred pigeons in a day;
that gazing at a brass serpent could not
extract poison from the blood;
that God did not go in partnership
with hornets;
that he did not murder people simply because they
asked for something to eat;
that he did not declare the making of
hair oil and ointment an offence to be punished with death;
that he
did not miraculously preserve cloth and leather; that he was not
afraid of wild beasts;
that he did not punish heresy with sword and
fire;
that he was not jealous, revengeful, and unjust; that he knew
all about the sun, moon, and stars;
that he did not threaten to
kill people for eating the fat of an ox;
that he never told Aaron
to draw cuts to see which of two goats should be killed;
that he
never objected to clothes made of woolen mixed with linen;
that if
he objected to dwarfs, people with flat noses and too many fingers,
he ought not to have created such folks;
that he did not demand
human sacrifices as set forth in the last chapter of Leviticus;
that he did not object to the raising of horses;
that he never
commanded widows to spit in the faces of their brothers-in-law;
that several contradictory accounts of the same transaction cannot
all be true;
that God did not talk to Abraham as one man talks to
another;
that angels were not in the habit of walking about the
earth eating veal dressed with milk and butter, and making bargains
about the destruction of cities;
that God never turned himself into
a flame of fire, and lived in a bush;
that he never met Moses in a
hotel and tried to kill him;
that it was absurd to perform miracles
to induce a king to act in a certain way and then harden his heart
so that he would refuse;
that God was not kept from killing the
Jews by the fear that the Egyptians would laugh at him;
that he did
not secretly bury a man and then allow the corpse to write an
account of the funeral;
that he never believed the firmament to be
solid;
that he knew slavery was and always would be a frightful
crime;
that polygamy is but stench and filth;
that the brave
soldier will always spare an unarmed foe;
that only cruel cowards
slay the conquered and the helpless;
that no language can describe
the murderer of a smiling babe;
that God did not want the blood of
doves and lambs;
that he did not love the smell of burning flesh;
that he did not want his altars daubed with blood;
that he did not
pretend that the sins of a people could be transferred to a goat;
that he did not believe in witches, wizards, spooks, and devils;
that he did not test the virtue of woman with dirty water;
that he
did not suppose that rabbits chewed the cud;
that he never thought
there were any four footed birds;
that he did not boast for several
hundred years that he had vanquished an Egyptian king;
that a dry
stick did not bud, blossom, and bear almonds in one night;
that
manna did not shrink and swell, so that each man could gather only
just one omer;
that it was never wrong to "countenance the poor man
in his cause;"
that God never told a people not to live in peace
with their neighbors;
that he did not spend forty days with Moses
on Mount Sinai giving him patterns for making clothes, tongs,
basins, and snuffers;
that maternity is not a sin; that physical
deformity is not a crime;
that an atonement cannot be made for the
soul by shedding innocent blood;
that killing a dove over running
water will not make its blood a medicine;
that a god who demands
love knows nothing of the human heart;
that one who frightens
savages with loud noises is unworthy the love of civilized men;
that one who destroys children on account of the sins of their
fathers is a monster;
that an infinite god never threatened to give
people the itch; that he never sent wild beasts to devour babes;
that he never ordered the violation of maidens; that he never
regarded patriotism as a crime;
that he never ordered the
destruction of unborn children;
that he never opened the earth and
swallowed wives and babes because husbands and fathers had
displeased him;
that he never demanded that men should kill their
sons and brothers, for the purpose of sanctifying themselves; that
we cannot please God by believing the improbable; that credulity is
not a virtue;
that investigation is not a crime; that every mind
should be free;
that all religious persecution is infamous in God,
as well as man;
that without liberty, virtue is impossible; that
without freedom, even love cannot exist;
that every man should be
allowed to think and to express his thoughts; that woman is the
equal of man;
that children should be governed by love and reason;
that the family relation is sacred;
that war is a hideous crime;
that all intolerance is born of ignorance and hate;
that the
freedom of to-day is the hope of to-morrow;
that the enlightened
present ought not to fall upon its knees and blindly worship the
barbaric past;
and that every free, brave and enlightened man
should publicly declare that all the ignorant, infamous, heartless,
hideous things recorded in the "inspired" Pentateuch are not the
words of God, but simply "Some Mistakes of Moses."
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