Alternatives to the story of Abraham
What does Abraham actually teach us?
Many consider Judaism and/or Christianity (the European interpretation of Judaism) to be the foundation of morality. Such a grand claim deserves equally grand scrutiny.
As a disclaimer, this is not an attack against those religions, but rather, a reexamination of what it means to be moral. I myself am areligious but not atheistic. I am concerned more with discovering morality than divinity; divinity it seems is not interested in being discovered.
Enter Abraham, the father of the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
It is a worrying fact about the human condition that three of the largest (in influence and scope) religions of the modern world are based on an ancient illiterate who heard voices in his head telling him to slaughter his son, which he rushed to do without hesitation or self-reflection; and then he patted himself on the back for being “virtuous” for his blind obedience to random unverified voices.
Thankfully, many Christians and Muslims consider the Old Testament to be corrupted and unreliable, and therefore, only selectively valid when convenient to them (like the prophecy of the coming of the Messiah). But let us not fool ourselves: reading the story of Abraham -and interpreting it as somehow virtuous- is disappointing for the human condition.
Imagine an alternative version of the story of Abraham; one that is actually virtuous and moral:
Abraham is a desert-dwelling sheep herder with a stone-age understanding of reality. He has no concept of science, biology, philosophy, psychology. One day, he hears voices in his head, and because he is not aware of the condition of schizophrenia, he interprets those voices as the commands of a real supernatural being. Let’s call this unreal entity “god.” So, god orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham’s son. This sacrifice is an honour that god demands from Abraham. So, Abraham, cowardly as he is, obeys god without hesitation or protest. He takes the knife and prepares to murder his son, an innocent child. Then god interrupts Abraham and says:
“Stop, you dummy. What the hell are you doing? This was a test. I wanted to see how moral and courageous you were; if you would defend your son and take the hit for him. You failed. Your fear of me overwhelmed you, and you were willing to brutally murder your own son, an innocent child, so as to not anger me. You also offended me for assuming that I would be so cruel and insecure as to demand child sacrifice to get a needy power-high from terrorizing measly humans. Are you crazy Abraham? As punishment, I’ll separate you from your son, and I’ll give him to someone better to raise him. You are a slimy bootlicker who would easily sacrifice his own son just to suck up to power. You value power, not morality. Go away now, and never again use my name to make yourself sound important.”
Wouldn’t that story make more sense as a foundation of morality?
Here is an other alternative to the story of Abraham, if it were written by people with a sense of principled morality instead of fear:
Abraham hears voices in his head telling him to kill his son. Let’s assume that Abraham is again unaware of schizophrenia, so he can’t be humble enough to accept his possible mental illness as a valid explanation for the voices in his head. However, Abraham is philosophical in nature, which means that he questions everything and everyone using a rare thing called logic. Yes, he can even be skeptical of a self-announced “god,” because if a lowly human can grasp concepts of morality that this “god” can’t, then defiant theodicy is warranted.
So, Abraham talks back to those voices: “Excuse me. What? Kill my son to prove my love for you? Why? I mean, I have never experienced you, I have never interacted with you. How can I love something I cannot connect with and interact with using my limited senses? It would be a lie for me to claim that I loved you; something I can’t control. If anything, I am terrified of you. Sacrificing my son to you would only prove how terrified I am of you due to your commanding presence. Forgive me, god, but I cannot love you the way I love my wife or son. I absolutely fear you. My fear for you makes it impossible to love you. If you still want me to sacrifice my son to you, can I sacrifice myself instead? The child is innocent. If anyone is to blame for failing to meet your demands, it should be me. Please, take my life instead, oh god.”
These alternative stories of Abraham would have been moral and consistent with the ethics that a human can attain, let alone a god. Conversely, the original story of Abraham treats cowardice and blind obedience to a tyrannical “god” as virtues. And this is supposed to be a basis for our moral compass? I am sure monarchs and government officials would want nothing but that: for us to presume that obedience to power was somehow a virtue.
This is what the Old Testament is all about: it portrays a psychotic false god, a tormentor of humans, a deity that conducts atrocities and torment, and then blames the scapegoat “devil” who actually did nothing as bad, killed no one, tormented no one, judged no one. This is not devil-worship. This is pointing out the moral bankruptcy of agenda-driven texts written by stone-age illiterates guided only by fear, lust and thirst for power; not civility, not logic, not morality, not principled ideals.
The story of Abraham (the “father” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is awful and morally reprehensible. I sympathize with people who have fused their morality with their faith, but morality based on fear of eternal sadistic torture is not meaningful morality. If our morality cannot exist without fear of punishment, then we are not moral at all.
True morality is being able to be immoral and get away with it, and still choose to be moral. True strength is being able to tyrannize at no expense, and still choose to treat others as equals.
No, I am not an atheist. I don’t believe in the random emergence of reality as claimed by the big bang theory and evolutionary biology. I am also not a socialist, the fast-becoming synonym of atheism. The irony is that most self-advertised “atheists” are devout fanatic believers of the most cult-like, irrational and dangerous religion in history: the religion of statism and government where “the state” is the all-knowing, benevolent, all-powerful and somehow “moral” god here to take care of us with its divine providence and care (as long as we keep sacrificing our freedom -and our children- to it).
If you cannot be moral without the threat of punishment, then you are not moral at all; you are just reluctantly complying to superior force, and you’d be immoral the second you felt you could get away with it.
Would you still be moral if you lost your faith to a tyrannical god? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say yes, you would indeed be moral regardless; because your individual internally sourced morality is superior to your circumstantial faith.
You would be moral even if you did not believe in a god watching over you. That’s the only morality worth having.
Thank you for reading.
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The story of Abraham teaches us that the arbitrary words of a desert spirit make even killing a child okay, and that blind obedience is the highest virtue. It's stock-standard 85 IQ morality and appeals to low-agency people due to their innate compatibility with it.
It is shocking that so many people read the stories of the OT and the behavior of the god and his tribe in it and say, “yes, this appeals to me”.
Great essay.
Perhaps the conclusion that we can explore next is whether taking on the inverted morality of a foreign and perverted people as our own somehow corrupts or alters our own identity?
I think the simplest answer is that it doesn’t. It simply negates and weakens it. Imagine a human that grew up with bears thinking he’s a bear and trying to walk and hunt like a bear.
That’s the disconnect that the Bible engenders in it’s victims of European descent. Ban it forever.