Encyclopedia of Bible-Criticisms

Created on Shevat 16, 5781

Me, who has seen A LOT of Bible-criticism, has noted that the vast majority of Bible-critics just reiterate the same old garbage that is used elsewhere uncountably (hopefully when I'm in a debate with someone I can just pull up this list whenever their argument is on it). So, I decided that I would write a list showing the lack of originality present in Bible-criticism videos. Note: the first six were added to the list when it was only intended to be a list of "6 Things All Bible-Critics Say." I have probably seen most of these at least seven times, so in my ever increasing bordom upon seeing them, I present to you, the encyclopedia of Bible-criticisms (also I hope I don't sound like a young-Earth-creationist, because I'm not, I'm an old-Earth[-evolutionary-]creationist!):

1: "The Bible condones slavery.": This myth comes from the mistranslations of the Torah that call certain workers "slaves". These "slaves" are not at all like the type of slaves the Jews were in Egypt. They are workers, usually working as a punishemnt for stealing, that are at a "lower" class than regular workers. Shemos (Exodus) 21:20 seems to mean that "slave" owners are allowed to beat their "slaves"; nope, this just means that the courts won't punish that crime, but beating a slave is still forbidden and will be punished in Gehinom (Hell). Bible-critics have no idea what they're talking about, so of course they pretend that the Torah condones slavery, even though Passover, which commemorates the exodus, is all about liberation.

2: "The Bible condones genocide.": Every single example of condoned "genocide" in the Torah is a misrepresented to look evil, instead of what it actually is, justice. To look at just one example, Amalek: they were sent many peace letters and they refused to have peace. When the Jews excecuted them, they only excecuted the evil ones; ones who agreed or pretended to agree to be righteous were spared.

3: "The Bible is incompatible with science." Alternatively, "GRAND CANYON!": I have seen uncountable instances of the this erroneus claim that the Torah is incompatible with science. To quickly dismantle just one, the Torah's creation """""myth""""" is indeed very easily compatible with science, and to see how, just read Gerald Schroeder's works. I have also written on this website about how the Torah is not anti-[biological-]evolution. I have also written about how the Torah's flood story essentially need not comply with science. To summarize, science deals with events that comply with the laws of physics. When science attempts to explain things beyond the natural realm, it becomes pseudoscience. In the Flood (which at least initially consisted of boiling water, which would likely deform the earth without a miracle), all the plants survived, so why not the Earth stay geologically how it was? There is not any real reason why this miraculous event must comply arbitrarily with certain laws of physics.

4: "G-d is cruel and unfair.": One form of this is that G-d hardening Pharaoh's heart was immoral. This article perfectly explains one of many ways in which it could have been moral. Any other claims of G-d being "unfair" are just him punishing the wicked justly, although of course they are ignorant of the oral tradition (well, they're actually ignorant of basically everything that has anything that has to do with the Torah) which explains all these instances.

5: "The exodus did not happen, because of ignorance of evidence.": To quickly debunk this one, the Egyptians would certainly wish to bury evidence of their epic downfall, but actually failed miserably, because there is a ton of evidence (this article has nowhere near all of it), and even if we did find none, it commits the argument from ignorance fallacy.

6: "G-d is jealous and hates idols for his sake.": For the last one on this list, people often say that G-d desires that we abandon idols for his sake. No, it is because it is much less pleasant to us to serve them. I wrote an article on why G-d is not a narcissist, and is, in fact, the very opposite of one.

7: "It is immoral to send all atheists to hell for eternity.": This statement is actually true, but is irrelevant to the Torah, as G-d will not send atheists (or anyone) to Gehinom (hell) for eternity. In fact, the vast majority of atheists will not get sent to Gehinom at all because of their atheism, just because almost everyone commits at least one bad deed in their lifetime, which warrants a visit to Gehinom, even if for only an extremely short time. As long as an atheist is moral (which is fortunately very commonly the case), they will, after being sent to Gehinom for whatever bad deeds they did, go to Olam Haba in which they will receive eternal reward!
8: "Other flood/creation/revelation/etiological/etc myths existed before the Torah, therefore... The Torah is... Not Divine?": The existence of similar creation/flood myths simply means that, if the Torah is true, many ancient cultures simply knew about the creation/flood and slowly, as with all oral history, they grew more untrue as the generations passed, adding their own gods and mythical characters to the story. The existence of unrelated untrue myths has no relation to the Torah, like saying that because ancient science was wrong, all modern science must be wrong too. This argument is clearly just a non-sequitur.

9: "The Torah uses multiple names for God, therefore multiple gods/authors.": The morons who push this argument haven't a clue about Judaism, because if they did, they would know that the different names for God simply convey different "attributes" of God. For example, Elokim refers to God working through nature (like evolution) and the attribute of justice. Hashem (Yud Hei Vav Hei) conveys the attribute of mercy and the supernatural side of God's deeds.

10: "The afterlife was a recent innovation to Judaism.": The short answer is, no. The Oral Torah makes many, many mentions of the afterlife, but like many other scandalous groups, Bible-critics deny the Oral Torah, leading them to make many, many, many idiotic statements.

11: "The prophets said the Earth is flat, therefore the Bible isn't divine.": The Earth's shape wasn't part of their prophetic message. They just used the unscientific cosmology of the time.