What is the percentage of evil verses in the Bible?

Anywhere between 69% and 666%.

I’m looking for serious answers. 69% evil verses means there are about 21,000 evil verses. Where’s your evidence @mazingerz88 ?

I’m trying to define what “evil” means. That’s a rather ambiguous concept.

I counted all the evil verses. You can find the answer in my book, which you can pre-order for $220. It’s not a long book. Only two pages. But worth every penny.

Jeez, Matt! What are you expecting? Someone to do the analysis for you?

What do you mean by evil? From a Judeo-Christian point of view? From an atheist’s point of view, or that of someone from another religion?

Note: This is @mattbrowne‘s motivation for the question. Cute and all, but not at all relevant to the discussion. Remember @mattbrowne, if the percentage could be determined to be 0%, the original question still stands. So, the question is meaningless in that context.

Back to definitions:

1) Jacob lied to Abraham and stole Esau’s inheritance with the connivance of his mother. Was that evil?

2) Jacob took Isaac up the mountain and prepared to kill him when god intervened. Was that evil?

3) God destroyed Sodom and thousands of people died. Was that evil?

4) God flooded the earth and only Noah and his kin survived. Millions died. Was that evil?

5) David killed his brother Jonathan. Was that evil?

6) David seduced Bathsheba. Was that evil?

7) In Exodus, the story of the plagues tells us that the Egyptian first born sons were all killed in plague #10. Was that evil?

The bible is full of immorality, murder, and and on and on. Are those evil?

The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible has a list of the good verses. It was easier to do it that way.

Good Stuff in the Bible

There are 511 good verses in the Bible. Everything else is either fictional, inaccurate, unnecessary, or evil.

Since evil is what is created by the mind of the observer, there can be as many as you wish to read.

This is a surprisingly ambiguous question from you @mattbrowne .

It’s in response to myself an @tom_g asking him why he bothers to use the Bible at all if it’s full of “bad cherries” as it were.

There are as many as there are virtuous ones. Zero.

A passage in a book is not evil or virtuous.

Don’t know about evil, but large protions of it are certainly inconsistent, misogynistic, cruel, poorly written, confusing, obscure, outdated, and a bore to read.

Well, the Old Testament is pretty violent. I’m not going to read it and count passages but we all know the stories. A father tries to violently kill his son. A prostitute gets stoned. Entire cities are sacked and all the population men, women and children are slaughtered per God. Noah has sex with his daughters. People getting killed, left and right, in the name of God. In fact…I can’t remember even hearing of a benign, gentle story from the Old Testament.

Let’s use the word evil in the sense that a verse discriminates and/or asks people to harm people, e.g. killing enemies including children or telling women to shut up or stating that being gay is a sin.

No one is being asked to count. Google doesn’t seem much of a help, but I was hoping someone knows about good sources helping with this question. My intuition tells me it’s less that 1% but I could be wrong.

OK. Lots. In the old testament. But that’s why Jesus came, hence the New Testament.

Again, according to Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (If anyone wants to buy me a copy of the hardcover, I’ll love you forever.)

These are “instances”, not necessarily single verses.
Cruelty and Violence: 1313
Intolerance: 699
Injustice: 1528
Homosexuality: 36 Note: This number includes the potentially pro-gay verses which encompass the David/Jonathan relationship, and the verse in Revelations that suggests only men who “haven’t been defiled by a woman” will be saved
Misogyny: 385

The “sex” category is a little rough because it’s not split up between random “good” sex (i.e.: “Adam knew his wife and she conceived…”) and “bad” sex (such as the rape of the Midianite virgins, and Judah buying sex from his daughter-in-law, then burning her to death for being a whore.) Total instances: 253

None as evil as Mary telling Joseph she’s pregnant & he’s not the father & she’s still a virgin…that shit can fuck with your mind man.

@elbanditoroso , I agree with you that the Bible is full of immorality & murder & most of it is at the instigation of “God”. By the way, there is no verse in the Bible that praises INTELLIGENCE.

Well…the word “wise” is used often @Linda_Owl.

Great answer! Thanks @Seek_Kolinahr.

All of them if you take them literally word for word.

@mattbrowne But are you defining an “evil verse” as a verse in which something evil occurs? Or does it mean a verse in which something evil is prescribed?

I would have to read it to find out and then by what criteria would I judge? The Bible itself is supposed to be the gold standard of morality.

I am going to say 2%. Because almost everything you think the bible is talking about is not actually talking about that.
Racism
Homosexuality
If God kills people, doesn’t that make Him a murderer?
Did God create evil?

I am going to say 2%. Because almost everything you think the bible is talking about is not actually talking about that.
Racism
Homosexuality
If God kills people, doesn’t that make Him a murderer?
Did God create evil?
Prostitution

@glacial – I mean when something evil is prescribed or could be interpreted as a prescription (and not just a description). Basically as summarized by @Seek_Kolinahr, i.e. cruelty and violence, intolerance, injustice, homosexuality and misogyny. Of course most progressive and well-meaning conservative Christians no longer interpret these problematic/evil verses as a prescription for today’s life. And most of these verses never ended up as Jewish law, see for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_mitzvot#Maimonides.27_list

Judaism evolved. There’s Talmudic Judaism. There’s Moses Mendelssohn. Christianity also relies on the New Testament. A key part is the Sermon of the Mount. And Christianity also evolved. Today we have female bishops and openly gay ministers.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl – If we take @Seek_Kolinahr‘s numbers and take each as one verse we’d end up with 14%, but I think these instances refer to sentences and verses are made up of multiple sentences, so 2% could be a good estimate.

@Seek_Kolinahr – There’s also a Skeptic’s Annotated Quran, e.g. at

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm

Do you have an overview here as well, summarizing cruelty and violence, intolerance, injustice, homosexuality and misogyny? I’d be interested to see how it compares to the Bible.

@mattbrowne They are instances, so (for example) the entire story of the Concubine who was raped, left on a doorstep, then murdered by her owner, chopped into 12 pieces, and shipped all over Israel is considered one “instance”. Many verses full of evil and misogyny.

@mattbrowne On the right side of the screen, you can click each word “Good Stuff,” “Misogyny”, “Sex”, and get a rundown.

@Seek_Kolinahr – Okay, this means the concubine story affects multiple verses but was only counted once. This drives the percentage up.

Yes, sir.

Okay, I’ll compile a summary.

The total number of verses in the Quran is 6346. They contain: injustice (769), intolerance (536), cruelty and violence (532), homosexuality (4). That’s about 29% even without misogyny. I’m not sure how to count misogyny. There’s plenty but that’s not clear from the annotation links.

Unlike in Judaism, this found it’s way into Islamic law (Sharia). Men and women are not treated the same before the law. It would be interesting to have a skeptic’s annotated Hadith as well. Lots of misogyny in the Sunnah and Hadith like women are deficient in intelligence (Sahih Bukhari).

@mattbrowne, I keep returning to this thread and reading comments because number one, I think it’s a very interesting question, and two, because I’m very disappointed with myself for the way I answered it. Truthfully, I’m not qualified to comment because I’m not a Bible reader.

And whats the moral of the evil concubine story?

As long as men are wicked… women will suffer. But that one of the most important things we can do to improve women’s status in the world and to prevent more suffering is to bear, raise and support righteous boys and men who love women like Christ loves women. Imagine how different the world would be for women if all men loved their wives like Christ loves the church and fulfilled their duties as fathers, brothers, and sons with righteousness and exactness.  That would be a world in which it would be safe to be a woman.
So that is the moral of the story. Evil exists. It did then and it does now.

Wow. Evil exists? Srsly? That’s the lesson?

Tanks, Bible, never would have figured that out without the combined help of your horror story and the questionably relevant interpretation of a moderately literate preacher.

Probably could have gotten that across without the Black Dahlia – slash – Se7en story arc.

Also, two delicious aspects of the article you’ve linked:

1. “This article contains graphic information and may not be suitable for children.” Questionable content? bible verses about butchering concubines.

2. It’s a blog. Your spiritual guide here is a self-promoting web-shaman who didn’t even mask the domain of its Blogspot host.

No I do not mean it has to happen so you can learn a lesson from it. I understand evil does not need to exist, but apparently Adam and Eve made the choice for us, so yes I am sorry, it is a lesson now and if you can’t deal with that lesson it’s not my problem. We do not get a life suffer free, I don’t understand why people think God has to make life suffer free because when He sent his only begotten son Jesus to earth who died on the cross for us that was another lesson and Jesus certainly did not die free from suffering in fact He was tortured for our sins. So the irony of it all is that yes there is evil in the bible, yes you may not like it, yes there is suffering but Jesus was also an innocent and yes Jesus died for all the very evil acts that are being mentioning, even the concubines and so let suffering be the lesson. So who is going to stand up for Jesus as he stood up for innocents and got nailed to a cross for it? So why forget about Jesus and only talk about all the evil things that happened and not what happeded to our creators son who stood up against all the evil things and got tortured and died doing it.

Interesting.

The bible is an account of things that happened. As evil as they may be, evil things did happen. And the bible can show us as much as we evolve and try to change things evil stays the same which to me is the not so “delicious aspect” in your comment.

The scapegoat concept (Jesus dying for our “sins”) is arguably the single most evil instance in the whole of the “Good Book”.

It doesn’t matter what manner of harm we cause in our lives, as long as we “repent” and “accept Jesus”, he’ll take all the blame and we’re just as good as innocent.

No.

I will pointedly ignore any statement made referring to Adam and Eve as literal, living characters, because I will not argue the merits of a children’s story as though it were fact.

That “Interesting” article is cherrypicking at best.

Dawkins says repeatedly, in just about every book of his that I’ve read, that he is for all intents and purposes an atheist. He is agnostic in the sense that one can never be 100% sure about anything. He claims he is “an atheist in the same way that I am an a-fairyist, or an a-unicornist” Obvi, the magical horned horse type, not the “old word meaning rhinoceros” type. No, one cannot prove that there is no god at all, but that is more an issue with defining the deity in question than anything else. You can’t run a medical test for “perfectly healthy”, you can only test for specific parameters for detection.

One must define the god they would like to disprove. Now, if you want to disprove Zeus, it’s simple. Go to Mount Olympus, and and climb to the top. Nothing there? Yep, no Zeus. .

Also, this is FAR off topic for this thread, but I’d be happy to discuss in PM why “theism” and “gnosticism” are not mutually exclusive. One can be an agnostic theist, or a gnostic atheist, or an agnostic atheist, or an gnostic theist.

”Now, if you want to disprove Zeus, it’s simple. Go to Mount Olympus, and and climb to the top. Nothing there? Yep, no Zeus. .”
Zeus is invisible.

Unless he happens to be screwing someone in the form of a bull, a swan, a golden shower, a serpent…

Either way, that elaborate home of the Gods hovering about the summit should leave some trace.

That one is invisible, too.

This answer is going to be kind of long, please forgive me.

You and I differ in opinion, it is true. I do not see God dying for our sins as “The scapegoat concept (Jesus dying for our “sins”) is arguably the single most evil instance in the whole of the “Good Book”.” The bible to me is not a “Good Book”, I think religion is the cause for all the inconsistencies, because each religion teaches its own way, that is why I do not choose religion, some certain religions can be almost cultish.

And as for this idea that “It doesn’t matter what manner of harm we cause in our lives, as long as we “repent” and “accept Jesus”, he’ll take all the blame and we’re just as good as innocent.” That is wrong! Put religion aside, can you really tell me what God is going to decide if we do not follow his rules? No. And neither can I. Religion and church gives you an interpretation and sometimes I think it is what they want. I don’t trust church or most religion because I don’t trust many people, but that is my mental illness. At certain times in my bipolar if I am a preacher I am, it’s the crux of the disorder for me because I only trust me and I believe everyone else should only trust me.

Let me tell you why I believe in a God. Everything on this planet in this galaxy works together as if it is ruled by something that made it that way. From the trees, to the oxygen, to water, from the sun being just the right distance, gravity, we have everything that no other planet that we have been able to find as of yet has that makes this planet work and then we have this little book that talks about a man named Jesus sent down by a God. And there are things in this book that coincide with how things were. There are also recent accounts unlike Zeus the Shroud of Turin, the visions at Fatima, historical Sodom and Gomorrah.
FYI:—“Late in the 19th century, archaeologists in Madaba, Jordan, discovered an ancient map in the form of a mosaic
under the floor of the church of St. George, only thirty miles from Jerusalem. The map contains a specific reference to the ancient city of Zoar, the destination of Lot when he fled the destruction of Sodom. The map offers powerful evidence the city once existed.Excavation of gravesites at a location suspected to be one of the two cities found mass graves containing as many as twenty thousand people. Scientific research of ice cores performed at the Ohio State University indicate a worldwide cataclysmic event took place in 3123 BC that could well have been the result of an air burst asteroid strike as suspected occurred in Kofels.”—

So know we are at a crossroad in this question because since I believe that Jesus dying for our sins is not an evil thing in the book, however the action to him was evil but then how do we answer the question properly if no one can agree? Are we voting based on lurve? Because atheism wins!

I can’t decide whether this is worth the fight.

shroud of Turin. Oi.

It’s not about a fight. It is about whether the bible has evil verses or not, so that we may actually come to an amicable agreement on what the actual percentages are. I suppose if one wants to rule out the bible as being fictitious with a “fairy tale Zeus like God” then wouldn’t ones answer be more inclined to be that the verses are evil, while someone who sits on the other side of the fence would rule in favor for the opposite?

So I rule that considering if this was a court room and we were the jury and the question was the defendant then I vote for a mistrial because there is a flaw in the question itself considering the jury is biased.

How do we even come up with real world results, we have to find some common ground I suppose.

BTW, Typing from android sucks, sorry for me and you lol

Facts are not determined by tribunal. A thing is either right or wrong. And the shroud is a fake

@nofurbelowsbatgirl I like you. You know that. I think you’re a smart girl. In fact, you remind me quite a bit of me when I was a religious fundamentalist. You certainly use many of the same arguments.

If you’re willing, look up phrases such as “confirmation bias” and the “anthropic principal”.

“Confirmation Bias” will lead you, hopefully, to understand that any fact must be further researched before you agree that it supports your decision. I’m sure that if you knew that the Shroud of Turin was conclusively determined to be a product of 14th century forgery you wouldn’t have used it in your argument. It may also help to deter you from using random “holycrap the Bible is historically accurate! See this one vague instance!” arguments, because frankly, Joshua fought the battle of Jericho before Jericho had been established as a city, and the rest of his conquering was done to cities which had already been ruins for over 1000 years.

The Anthropic Principal is a simple slam-dunk against the “the Earth is perfect for us, so it must have been made for us” theory.

Simply, we are here because the universe contains the necessary rules to support life sometimes. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. Since we are here, the universe we have must be consistent with the development of life. We won the cosmic lottery. Say “thank you, probability” and move on.

@Seek_Kolinahr – You said “It doesn’t matter what manner of harm we cause in our lives, as long as we “repent” and “accept Jesus”, he’ll take all the blame and we’re just as good as innocent.”

Actually, very few theologians come to this conclusion for the “Jesus died for our sins” concept.

The practice of absolution in the Middle Ages was one of the reasons Martin Luther demanded reformation of the church.

Jesus said: “Go and sin no more.”

He did not say: “Go and if you sin again, don’t worry you can always come back and I’ll ask you not to sin anymore.”

@mattbrowne – What exactly is it you do believe?

@Seek_Kolinahr – In what way?

You simply spend a lot of time saying “Well, I know the bible says this but I don’t really believe it”. So I’m wondering exactly why you consider yourself Christian, if so many pages of the holy book have been torn out.

You know, the same question that spawned this entire thread, that you still have never answered.

@Seek_Kolinahr – No, not at all. Here on Fluther I spend a lot of time saying “Well, I know the bible says this, but I don’t agree with your interpretation. Instead I believe in the following interpretation: ...” Quite often atheists interpret the Bible differently. And the same is true for Christian fundamentalists. Adam and Eve were not real people. Snakes can’t talk. Myths and parables have symbolic meanings.

@mattbrowne – Why are you a Christian?

In fact, strike this. I’m making a new thread.

http://www.fluther.com/156783/why-are-you-a-____/

@Seek_Kolinahr I like you too. Of course our ideas on this topic may never align. I am a believer in a “fairytale” if that is what we are calling it. I am not ashamed of it. It doesn’t matter to me what archeoligists say. Perhaps you missed the last quote in the Shroud of Turin “evidence”... “They won’t give up,” he said. “Those who believe in it will continue to believe.”
If you examine the first 4 words “They won’t give up.” This basically tells me that Garlaschelli’s entire “research” was performed knowing that it most definatley would be debunked. And lets face it, are you seriously going to use Garlaschelli’s like he does to assume that is a real world test?

I have said this before and I will say it again, due to my illness I don’t trust people as far as I can throw them and what I don’t get is why archeology and science get to hold the upper hand when they don’t even have answers to to many questions like gobekli tepe, and to me it seems to be a more common occurance that they do not have all the answers. And to me science has it’s own branch of problems with experiments that are flawed because they do not even mimic real world scenario but are usually and like in your shroud of turin debunking evidence well thought out, planned and executed, sterile environments for the test subjects, in this case the shroud being the subject, usually it is some other unlikely non-human candidate stepping in for our big shoes. Archeology likes to dig up the dead that those tried so hard to hide so they would not be revealed after death even hiding them in tombs of unknown locations in pyramids built with a simple outward appearance but a highly complicated inside, so we excavate the tombs of their royalty because we are curious. And we are different from grave robbers how?
Science and archeology are EVIL!

@nofurbelowsbatgirl And yet you use a computer to talk to me, from your air-conditioned and/or centrally heated home, possibly wearing eyeglasses, and protected from myriad diseases by standard vaccinations, and taking medication that keeps you from wanting to commit suicide.

Yes. Science. The one true evil.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl: “Science and archeology are EVIL!”

Are you missing the sarcasm tilde?

@Seek_Kolinahr – Why am I a Christian? See my answer in the new thread you created.

I could live in the forest off the land….but I think if I were to be the only cavewoman out here I would become their next experiment. You really think we have a choice in the matter? I was born into this. I would love to and have given up my pills for my “mental illness”, which I would prefer to have instead of supress, but society doesn’t believe I should be like that so science gains your “lurve” by impressing you and filling me with monkey tested evil pills.

Aaand, we’re done here.

And that was my bipolar talking. I am basically only a few weeks in on the new high dose of these “monkey tested evil pills” so hopefully people will understand why my comments may seem to rant. I apologize. I assure you that under the standardized rules of the normal society,if they even exist lol, the monkey says I am on my way.

If God doesn’t show us evil what would we learn, I still believe it is a lesson. And since evil has always existed then the bible should have evil in it, I suppose it is just a matter of how much is enough to have an adequate answer.

“There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.”
~Buddha

“All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.”
~Scott Alexander

@nofurbelowsbatgirl: ”“There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.””

FYI – This appears to be one of those fake Buddha quotes.

I’ve never found it particularly hard to be good, except when “good” was defined by the church, and the definition made little if any sense. Nor have I ever had to suppress the desire to be evil.

If a person needs a deity in order to be a good person, then by all means I hope they hold that belief. But I think most of us can do just fine without one.

Perhaps someone else has made this point, but focusing on percentages can be highly misleading.

You only need one single passage in a book which claims divine inspiration to indicate that women are inferior, homosexuality is evil, hell exists, or slavery is acceptable, to do reprehensible harm to countless generations of adherents and those under their control.

Whether the rest of the text is 30,000 verses or 100,000 doesn’t by default dilute the impact of setting such far-reaching immorality into supernatural stone.

Atheists focusing on the evil verses can be highly misleading as well. How many of today’s Jews and Christians support injustice, intolerance, cruelty and violence, slavery, homophobia and misogyny? I’ve yet to meet a single atheist on Fluther who quotes a good verse from the Bible. It’s not happening. What’s happening is cherry picking. A mindless repetition of bad verses. Again and again. Year after year. Evil God. Over and over it’s all about a god who is the most unpleasant character in all fiction, jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

It makes you wonder how Martin Luther King organized nonviolent protests and ended segregation. Shouldn’t he have organized violent protests? With sadomasochistic attacks on white folks? Why was King not a bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser? Why didn’t he kill all white people? As a pastor, didn’t he know what the Bible told him to do?

It makes you wonder how Dietrich Bonhoeffer supported staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. Bonhoeffer should have loved the racist Nazis. Because it’s in the Bible to be racist. Yet this pastor ignored the Bible too? How dare he.

It makes you wonder how hundreds of millions of Christians support the creation and signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These anti-biblical Declaration of Human Rights. Down with them. They are against the Bible. We can’t have that.

Why are there so many very bad Christians ignoring clear biblical orders made by their unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully God?

I think whatever leads anyone to act compassionately and justly to fellow humans – whether it be their belief in a deity’s moral code or atheism or their own internal compass – is a benefit to humankind. Why this endless need to batter each other’s beliefs back and forth or to try to convince? It is always the “us vs. them” mentality that gets us into danger.

I’m sick of Judaism and Christianity being depicted as evil religions again and again and again. I think I am ready for my next Fluther break.

Are you equally sick of Nazism being depicted as evil again and again and again?
It is, after all, misleading to only focus on the evil parts of Nazism. They also had these youth programmes that had nice outdoor activity, they supported family values, they supported good health practices by being against smoking, and not to forget, Hitler himself loved dogs, his family, and was a vegetarian!

The Abrahamic “god” commanded and committed genocide, both globally and regionally, that makes the Holocaust pale in comparison, categorised women as property on par with cattle, supported slavery and draconian punishment for trivial offences, and all the nice fluffy “love thy neighbour as yourself” and “turn the other cheek” and “sell all your possessions and give to the poor” can not compensate for the inherent evil nature of the abrahmic god, are just drops of water on the proverbial hot stone, just as the few good parts of Nazism, which no doubt existed, are dwarfed by its racist, nationalist and genocidal nature.

@mattbrowne Yes, I understand what you are saying. Interesting, though that you didn’t include Islam in your comment.

@janbb I don’t really see these discussions as “battering each other’s beliefs”, and I think very rarely does one person try to convince another. For many atheists, it’s difficult to understand why anyone would be a believer – and many believers have the same question about atheists. What I see in these threads is a lot of people saying “how can you possibly believe/not believe this?” Due to human nature, it’s not surprising that the tone sometimes becomes incredulous or dismissive – but the question itself is not a bad one to ask.

@mattbrowne Let’s get this straight.

You start a thread specifically asking people to focus on the evil bits in the bible, and then get upset because it ends up with everyone focusing on the evil bits in the bible…

@glacial But I’ve been here a long time and we go around and around and around in the same circles. Of course, I know the answer is don’t read it if you don’t want to. i was just trying to find a middle ground position.

The Chinese have a proverb: the truth doesn’t make the man great, the man makes the truth great.