Story 1. Imagine you want to take a break from the grind and you decide to leave your two young children at your babysitter’s house while you and your partner go and see a movie. While you are out, the babysitter sits your kids down and tells them that she has a cookie that tastes better than any other cookie. She sets this cookie down in front of them, and tells them they can look at it but not eat it. She does not tell them what will happen if they eat the cookie--just that it is the sweetest, most delicious cookie ever and that they are not allowed to eat it. Then she leaves the children alone with the cookie.
The children resist as long as they can, but finally talk each other into eating the cookie.
The babysitter returns a few minutes later and finds the cookie eaten. She is angry. She tells your kids that they were very bad for eating the cookie that she had left in front of them, because she had told them not to eat it. She says that because they disobeyed, she now has to punish them. She leads them outside of the house and locks the door. She turns the porch light off. She does not respond to their knocking on the door or to their crying. When you return to pick up your children hours later, you find them cold, scared and desperate on the front steps of your babysitter’s house.
Story 2. Imagine that an all-knowing, all-powerful deity created two children in a beautiful garden. He sat these two, innocent creatures down and told them that there was a tree that grew the most amazing fruit in the entire world. He led them to the tree and showed them the fruit. He told them eating the fruit would give them special powers, but they should not eat it. Then he left.
The children ate the fruit.
When he returned, this all-knowing, all-powerful deity told them that they were very bad for eating the fruit he had left in front of them. He said that because they disobeyed, he now had to punish them for the rest of their lives, and after they died, he would have to raise them from the dead and continue to punish them forever. The punishment would cause the most horrific, painful, agonizing suffering imaginable. But he explained that they deserved it because they ate the fruit.
He continued. He said that any babies that they had in the future would be getting the same punishment. He said that, since they—his first children--had eaten the fruit when told not to, that this meant that all of their children would have made the same choice and would automatically be evil just like they are. He explained that all of their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren—on and on, for all of their potential offspring, would be receiving the same punishment starting as soon as they were born.
The story does not end there: After consideration, the all-knowing, all-powerful deity said that he definitely had to punish them now and had to punish all of their children when they were born, but maybe they didn’t have to be punished again forever after he raised them from the dead. He said that maybe he could make a way for them to go to a happy place instead of a horrible place after he raised them back to life.
He suggested that, yes, he would offer this option to their children and all of their offspring as well. All they had to do was be in the right place and the right time to hear a story that would sound completely unbelievable and would go against all known understanding of the universe and against every observation of biology and physics--and believe it.
Finally, the deity said since they ate the fruit, he was soon going to stop talking with them or anyone else until after they died and he raised them from the dead, which would take place at some unpredictable time in the future. The children’s offspring would have to read the unbelievable story in a book that would be written, well—also at some unpredictable time in the future. He didn’t mention that there would be lots and lots of other similar stories that promised a happy place rather than a horrible place, and that they would have to hope they chose the right one—and, of course, the cost of picking the wrong one, no matter how well-intentioned, was to end up going to the horrible place.
Then he kicked them out of the garden and never spoke with them again. Because they ate the fruit.
How is it that this foundational moral story from the Bible--so utterly sadistic, irrational and cruel—is so easily accepted by millions of people when they would never even consider treating their own children the same way? Of course lots of Christians do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, but they still consider this deity to be a requirement for objective morality and/or consider the Bible to be the ultimate source of ethical principles. The continued cycle of indoctrination and conditioning to accept unreasonable claims is responsible for this blind acceptance of utter absurdities by millions of people whose own moral intuitions should be calling out to them that there is something very wrong with this story.
Many of these same people are about to cast votes based entirely on this Biblical morality, and the outcome will directly affect the rights and freedoms of each of us. The alternatives to religion provide far better sources of comfort, meaning, and morality, and yet the tide of belief continues to move out to sea, sweeping the minds of billions along with it, generation after generation.
Consistent criticism of bad ideas is the only way to break this cycle.