Comedienne Julia Sweeney’s play “Letting Go of God,” must be something to behold. Professor Richard Dawkins refers to her and her play seven times in his book The God Delusion. The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Dan Barker has likewise cited her as may be seen in this post.
Dan Barker quotes Ms. Sweeney to the effect of,
“When God told Abraham to kill his son, shouldn’t the proper response have been, ‘No. I will not kill my son.’?”
Certainly, our rightful gut reaction is something to the like of “Right on!” or “Of course.” Yet, there is something more to consider here besides the inner workings of our guts.Certainly, a comedienne, whose purpose is to make jokes and poke fun may not necessarily be blamed for spreading fallacious assertions yet, the issue here is that Dan Barker approvingly repeats it. And why not? Well, I’m glad you asked.Dan Barker has gotten a lot of mileage off of being an “ex-preacher.” This affords him some level of authority when speaking on biblical, religious, Christian, issues. “Well!” saith the skeptic, “He used to be a preacher and now he is an atheist, he must really know something, he can tell me all of the Bible’s dirty laundry and I can just take his word for it,” or some such thing.In the post referred to above, Dan Barker rightly urges, “Look up the bible verses I quoted.” I have done just that and have found that his understanding of the Bible leaves much to be desired. I am not here referring to esoteric minutia but am addressing even the most basic level of understanding. I am referring to some things that are as basic as making assertions based on one, two or a fraction of a verse when merely reading one or two verses either before or after quite clearly reveals that he was pulling a text out of context in order to make a pretext for a proof text.I believe that this claim of mine is clearly demonstrated in at least two of my essays,
And,
Dan Barker’s Scriptural Misinterpretations and Misapplications
It appears that Dan Barker uncritical regurgitated Ms. Sweeney’s statement. This is not to say that someone has to have any knowledge of the Bible per se, perhaps merely a tiny bit of historical or comparative religion type of knowledge.Let us actually begin by noting the term “proper” in Ms. Sweeney’s statement. How does she, an atheist, determine what is “proper”? Perhaps a bit more pointed: just who is she to determine what is “proper”? Or perhaps more specifically, and this will be key, how does she, and who is she to, determine what was “proper”?When reading any text whatsoever, particularly an ancient text, it is important to keep certain things in mind such as: grammatical context, historical context, cultural context, et al. Dan Barker fails to consider that in the time and place where Abraham lived when a god told you to kill your son, the proper response was, “Yes, of course I will kill my son.”It appears that this was one of the things that the God of the Bible wanted to make crystal clear: even though the other gods, the false gods, did demand and accept child, human, sacrifice He did not and would not.
Dan Barker argues for relative morality to the point of stating that rape is not absolutely immoral (see my essay Dan Barker and the Alien Rape Voyeurs). How then can he, or Ms. Sweeney, condemn the morality, or lack thereof, of the ancients? Perhaps they consider themselves far too erudite and enlightened when compared to those people way back them. However, they must empathize with the time, place, beliefs and culture of what they are considering. One things that Jews and Christians (and by extension, Muslims) have never done for God is child, human, sacrifice and the episode with Abraham and Isaac was the premise upon which this was never done is premised.
These simple facts and the fact that Dan Barker ignores them, or perhaps is ignorant of them, and chooses to side with a comedienne further discredit’s his criticism of the Bible. As is so often evidence: when certain people critique of the Bible they only ends up discrediting themselves.If you are interested in a more detailed handling of this issue see my section entitled “Child Sacrifice: Sanctioned and “the right thing to do”?” in the above mentioned essay on Dan Barker’s scriptural misinterpretations and misapplications.
I also dealt with Richard Dawkins’ mishandling on this text in my essay, Planting God More Firmly on His Throne.