Panegyric on Abraham

Everyone (who’s not a psychopath) knows that the story of Abraham and Isaac is deeply wrong. No non-psycho parent would attempt to kill their child. Nor should they be asked to because someone else–anyone else, for any reason–told them to.

Kierkegaard wasted pages explaining all the different ways the story might or might not make sense, as, I’m sure, have millennia of theologians before him. But, the truth is, we all know it’s wrong and Kierkegaard could have saved a lot of ink.

For this reason alone, not to mention the hundreds of other instances where the bible presents an immoral position as a moral one, it should be treated as, at best, extremely suspect advice, and, at worst, an immoral guide to how to be a psychopath.
What remains in the bible that isn’t terrible is either irrelevant or so obvious that it can be neatly tucked into the golden rule.

The bible has no place as the moral center of our culture.

While the “War on Christmas” doesn’t actually exist, there should exist a campaign to rid our culture of the bible. It is a bad book, poorly written, poorly conceived and full of terrible, harmful ideas best ignored.