One of the most infuriating arguments I have heard from a Christian is that an atheist has no objective moral standard, and by this they mean, an atheist could think it is moral to be a serial killer and another atheist would have no grounds to disagree. They are suggesting that only God can establish rules of good and evil, right or wrong, but let’s look at some examples of God’s morality.

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In Exodus 20:13, God said, “You shall not murder.” The King James Version translates the Hebrew word rasah (H7523) as kill and the Strongs definition for the word is to kill or murder or slay, either accidental or premeditated. Now, that sounds like a pretty good moral standard, right? I wonder why God didn’t abide by his own moral code. In Exodus 32, right after God handed Moses the Ten Commandments engraved on stone with God’s own finger, God looked down the mountain and saw the Israelites were worshipping a golden calf. God told Moses in Exodus 32:10, “Now therefore leave me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, and that I may consume them, and I will make of you a great nation.” The Hebrew word God used in this verse is kala (H3615) and it means to consume, to end, to finish, or to complete. So God was clearly going to unleash his wrath on the Israelites and bring their life to completion or in other words, he was going to kill them. In Exodus 32:12, Moses talks God out of killing them by saying the Egyptians would mock them by saying God just brought them out so he could kill them with evil intentions. The words for kill and destroy in this verse are harag (H2026) and kala (H3615). The Hebrew word harag means to kill, slay, murder, or destroy. So Moses clearly understood that God’s intention was to kill the Israelites. I am going through the word study, because Christians try to justify God’s behavior by suggesting there is a difference between kill and murder. Moses successfully talks God out of killing the Isrealites and he makes his way down the mountain. When Moses sees the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, he said in Exodus 32:27, “Yahweh, the God of Israel says, every man put his sword on his thigh and go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp and every man kill his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” Moses used the word harag (H2026) for kill, which is the same word that Moses used earlier when he understood that God was going to kill them himself.

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The Ten Commandments are repeated in Deuteronomy 5 and in verse seventeen, God said again, “You shall not kill.” And again, God used the word rasah, just like he did in Exodus 20’s version of the Ten Commandments. So the command is not to “rasah”. In the previous chapter of Deuteronomy 4 and in verse forty-two, this word rasah is used in reference to an accidental murder. Verse forty-one begins the thought with, “Then Moses set apart three cities beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise, that the man slayer might flee there, who kills his neighbor unintentionally and didn’t hate him in time past, and that fleeing to one of these cities he might live.” Therefore, if you want to get picky about the difference between kill and murder or rasah and harag, then maybe we should interpret God’s moral standard to mean you should not kill anyone on accident, if you are going to kill someone, you should do it deliberately. I went through all that just to say, not only was God a murderer, he was also a hypocrite. If God is your moral standard, then you have no right to say that murder is wrong, because God did it many times and he even commanded that the Israelites kill many times as well.

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In case you don’t believe God commanded the Israelites to kill people, let’s look at Numbers 31:7-8. They fought against Midian, as Yahweh commanded Moses. They killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. Once again, the Hebrew word for kill here is harag, so maybe there is no moral problem with deliberating killing people. The word harag does not mean deliberate murder, just as rasah does not mean accidental murder, but Christians who can’t use logic or rational thinking try to justify the murder that God and Israel does, while condemning all other murder. But that also makes sense, since both God and Christians are hypocrites. According to Christians, neither murder nor hypocrisy are bad when God or Christians do it, but if anyone else does it, it is morally depraved.

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Did you know the Bible establishes God's expectations for slaves to humbly accept their unjust beatings by their slave owners (1 Peter 2:18)? If God is your standard of morality, then you must agree that beating your slaves with a rod is morally acceptable as long as the slave does not die within a day or two as a direct result of his beating (Exodus 21:20). On another note, do you think forcing a young female virgin to marry her rapist is moral? God does. If God is your standard of morality, then you must also conclude that young female virgins must be forced to marry their rapist. Deuteronomy 22:28 says, “If a man finds a lady who is a virgin, who is not pledged to be married, grabs her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the lady’s father fifty shekels of silver. She shall be his wife, because he has humbled her. He may not put her away all his days.” If this does not infuriate you, then you need to reevaluate your morals, among other things. According to God, a young woman is only valuable if she is a virgin. Earlier in the same chapter (verse 21), God commands that if a young woman gets married and it turns out she was not a virgin before, then she should be brought to the door of her father’s house, and the men of the city should stone her to death with stones, because she has done folly in Israel.

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Some Christians will make the argument that the Old Testament is no longer applicable, so I am quoting things that don’t apply to us today, so let’s check the morality of God in the New Testament, shall we? Let’s just ignore that the Bible says in the Old Testament that God never changes (Malachi 3:6) or in the New Testament that the Father of lights has no variation nor shadow of turning (James 1:17). Is murder ok in the New Testament? Jesus told a parable in Luke 19 and at the conclusion of his parable in verse twenty-seven, he said, “But bring those enemies of mine who didn’t want me to reign over them here, and kill them before me.” In this parable, Jesus is supposed to be the King who kills his enemies. Likewise, in Matthew 22, Jesus tells another parable about a King who holds a wedding feast for his son. In this parable, God is the King and Jesus is the son of the King. When those who were invited to the wedding didn’t show up, the king was angry and sent out his armies to destroy those “murderers and burned their city.” This is a direct reference to when the King of Rome, Vespasian, sent his son Titus to destroy the Jews and burn Jerusalem in 70 CE. This is one of the many verses that expose the lies of Christianity, because this verse is proof that the Gospel according to Matthew was written after Jerusalem was destroyed and the God/King that Jesus referred to was Vespasian. For more on that you can read my other book, “Jesus Demigod” or a book by Joseph Atwell called “Caesar’s Messiah.”

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I got a little side tracked with that last parable, because when you realize who really wrote the New Testament (the Romans), everything makes more sense. Continuing with the same parable in Matthew 22, the King invites other guests to the wedding, since the first guests “considered themselves unworthy and died.” So when the new guests actually come to the wedding, there is a man found who is not wearing the appropriate wedding garments and the King said, “Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and throw him into the outer darkness. That is where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be. For many are called, but few are chosen.” Again, the King is supposed to represent Jesus’ father in this parable, and Jesus’ father is supposed to be the Almighty God in Heaven. It sounds like the Father of Jesus is just as blood thirsty as the God of Moses and the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (off with his head).

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What does the New Testament say about stoning women who are not virgins? Well, nothing directly, but we have a similar story in John 8 where a woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Jewish Scribes and Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus to ask if they should stone her to death, but Jesus just said, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.” Now Jesus was supposedly some insignificant carpenter’s son who had the ability to work miracles, yet the Scribes and Pharisees bring this woman to Jesus while he is teaching in the Temple to let him judge her. Under Jewish law Jesus had no authority to condemn a woman caught in adultery if he was not a witness to the event, but the Jewish Law does say that an adulterous woman should be stoned to death. Deuteronomy 22:22 says, “If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman. So you shall remove the evil from Israel.” The Jewish Law never says only sinless people can stone others. Neither does it say that the woman can escape her death, if the man wasn't also captured. People make all sorts of excuses to dismiss lies and contradictions all throughout the Bible, and then they want to claim the moral high ground.

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Jesus said he came to fulfill the law and the prophets, not to destroy them (Matthew 5:17), and whoever teaches anyone to break any Jewish commandment will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:19). Jesus should have told the Scribes and Pharisees that the Law teaches that both she and the man should be stoned to death, but instead he actually violated the law and played the hypocrite by teaching others to violate the law. It is apparent why Christians are so hypocritical, since they get their moral codes from a hypocritical God and hypocritical Jesus.

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I think I have made my point clear that the God of the Bible is unqualified as a moral standard, and anyone who follows the God of the Bible’s standard of morality will be a murderer and a hypocrite. So what about this claim that atheists can have no moral standard? I believe morality can be summed up in a very simple phrase, don’t hurt others. According to this “godless” code, is it moral to stone young girls to death who are not virgins? She didn’t hurt anybody, but it is certainly harmful to throw rocks at people until they die. Is it moral to kill people whether it is intentional or not? If a person is driving while sleepy or texting on a phone and inadvertently causes a head on collision that results in the death of the people in the oncoming car, was the distracted driver doing something immoral? I would say yes. It is immoral to disregard other people’s safety and do things that could cause the death of others due to your lack of attention or concern. Is it immoral to smoke cigarettes around other people? I would say yes, you are causing others to breathe harmful smoke that could cause them to die early or decrease their quality of life. Well, is it immoral to smoke cigarettes alone? I would say no, you are not harming other people. This simple “godless” code of morality is much more reliable and consistent than the God of the Bible. I would strongly contend that this “godless” code of morality would be far better for society than the moral code of God in the Bible.