When it was forbidden to question religious teachings, the clergy could get away with their false claims that they and their "revealed" religions promote peace and brotherhood. This bald-faced lie, now that we have more freedom to confront the "revealed" religions of the world thanks to the heroes and martyrs who brought about the European Enlightenment and the American Revolution, can no longer go unquestioned.
The French Enlightenment Deist Voltaire pointed out how belief in a violent and cruel god makes believers believe that by committing religious violence they are serving their god. He also made it clear that religious violence will continue as long as the people of faith believe their god requires religious violence. Voltaire wrote,
"Men will never cease to cut each other's throats as long as they are persuaded that it is a duty to their God."
The above statement from Voltaire shows the importance of Deists doing all we can to reach as many people as we can with Deism. God-given reason-based Deism lets people know that The Supreme Intelligence/God gave us reason and not religion. This knowledge in and of itself is enough to cause people to realize that their "revealed" religion and its religious violence promoting scriptures are not from The Supreme Intelligence/God and that they therefore do not have a duty to God to commit religious violence.
In The Age of Reason and in his other writings on God, Deism and religion (all of which are contained in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition), Thomas Paine gave many examples from the Hebrew Bible that falsely claimed God commanded the Jews to commit religious violence and genocide against their neighbors. One example he included is from Numbers 31 which claims God commanded Moses, who is considered to be a prophet of God by all of the man-made Abrahamic "revealed" religions, to command the Israelites to commit genocide against their neighbors, the Midianites. When Moses realized the Israelite army had not killed the Midianite children and women, Moses became angry and verses 17 and 18 have Moses commanding the Israelite army to,
"...kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
This cruel, disgusting and ungodly mentality that inspired this command, to keep virgin girls/women-children "alive for yourselves" is still alive in the Israeli military. This mentality is evident by a statement made by Rabbi Eyal Moshe Krim who is the head of the Military Rabbinate of the Israel "Defense"/Occupation Forces. In 2002 in the "Ask the Rabbi" section of kipa.co.il, Krim was asked what the Hebrew Bible teaches about rape during times of war. Krim replied that Israeli soldiers are permitted to rape Gentile women in times of war to "satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will".
Many people believe the Sermon on the Mount shows that Jesus was opposed to religious violence. That's because they only look at the first section of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:1-12. The second section of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:17-19, has Jesus promoting the laws of Moses, who, as seen above, was ungodly, cruel, heartless and genocidal.
Another quote the anonymous author of the Gospel of Matthew (all of the Christian Gospels have anonymous authors who wrote their gospels decades after it is believed Jesus died) attributes to Jesus that promotes religious violence is Matthew 10:34 which has Jesus saying,
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
These contradictory statements attributed to Jesus makes this point Thomas Paine made to a Christian friend who was upset that Paine had written The Age of Reason:
"...the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it."
There are many more examples of violence being promoted in the Bible. The Quran also has many examples of violence being promoted as does the Book of Mormon.
The Jewish state of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, their expanding ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian West Bank and their unprovoked attack on Iran which has very strong potential of having America drawn into it, as well as all the religious violence people have suffered over thousands of years, would end once people realized that none of the various "holy" books are from The Supreme Intelligence/God. Thomas Paine did a great job of pointing this out in The Age of Reason when he wrote,
"People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this pretended Word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by His authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?"
Thomas Paine's anti-religious mentality caused him to write, "I detest everything that is cruel." This beautiful belief, to detest and oppose everything that is cruel, would, once a large enough number of people adopted it, bring an end to the Abrahamic "revealed" religions. Cruelty is at the heart of all of them, for they have The Supreme Intelligence/God either commanding the genocide of people and/or they have The Supreme Intelligence/God burning people in Hell for eternity, both of which come from minds that embrace cruelty.
The best tool we Deists, and all freethinkers, have to combat the harmful and ungodly "revealed" religions and the harm they cause is our innate God-given reason. To quote Thomas Paine again, he wrote,
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."
Since lasting peace cannot coexist with the "revealed" religions, Deists, and everyone who wants peace, must shine the light of innate God-given reason on the ungodly, violence promoting and damaging teachings of the "revealed" religions and let people know they are not limited to the "revealed" religions because they have the ability to reject the "revealed" religions and choose natural and rational anti-cruelty Deism.
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