Stonings

Warning: This page contains an eye-witness account of an actual stoning that occurred this year. Some readers may find it disturbing.

Yahweh, the tribal god of the Hebrews (now the Christian god) authorised stonings.

Here are 3 examples (there are many more).
1.  If you worked on the wrong day of the week, it was commanded by "god" that you should be put to death by stoning. (Exodus 31:15)

In the passage below, we see this horrific law put into practice on god's instructions.  This could have been your grandfather.  Someone who was thinking for himself instead of bowing to Moses' totalitarian regime.

Numbers 15:32-36: Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation; and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

2.  If you were an unbeliever, you were likely to be stoned to death.  Even by your own brother, parent, husband or best friend.

Deuteronomy 13:6-10 If your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, `Let us go and serve other gods' (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him. "But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. "So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God

3. If your son or daughter was rebellious or disobedient towards you, you were commanded to kill them - by stoning. In the passage below we see a direct order to kill teenagers who didn't obey parents.  This is not acceptable behaviour and no real god would have made such a law.  We know that teenagers are sometimes wilful and annoying; they struggle with immaturity, physical change and  hormones.  No reasonable person would sentence a teenager to death for challenging authority.

Deuteronomy 21:18-19,21 If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death.

A Real Stoning

The problem with religions is that they bind people to the past.  It might have been trendy to murder people with stones 3000 years ago.  These days it is not.
Yet religious people - those who believe their texts - cling to old myths and old moralities.
Stoning a family member is, for some religious people, a reasonable thing to do, because it is in their holy book.

Christians will say that their god changed his ways in the New Testament.
Well, an unchanging god cannot do that. Even if god appeared to me and invited me to his heaven right now, I would seriously doubt his morality, based on the Bible.  I would no sooner trust him than you would trust a "reformed child-murderer" to babysit your kids.  We have his behaviour on record.
God speaking: "their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes" (Isaiah 13:16)
"Their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open."
(Hosea 13:16)
 

There now follows an extract from an article that appeared in the UK's Daily Express newspaper, on May 4 2007. I include this only to demonstrate that Religion can make well-meaning, basically good people do appalling things. The family involved probably had some love for their daughter, but they placed their loyalty to an imaginary friend higher than their allegiance to her. "Stoned to Death as 1,000 villagers take pictures... Her crime? Loving a man from the wrong religion", by Jane Wharton. Blood-stained and pleading for her life, this is the moment a teenager is stoned to death in Iraq." (Photos were included with this article). Relatives of Du'a, the helpless 17-year-old girl, were among a gang who murdered her for falling in love with a boy from a dirrerent religion. The slaughter was cheered on by a braying mob of around 1,000 people, some filming it on their mobile phones for "sport". ..local uniformed police officers stood by as Du'a was partially stripped, taunted, kicked and pelted with large stones for 30 minutes." The killers posted the images on the Internet. Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International, said: "The killers have shown that their sinister intention is to make her death serve as a warning to other Iraqi women - [the images] are clearly designed to scare Iraqi women into complete obedience." Relatives and religious leaders condemned her to death. Film clips show her stripped naked from the waist down, to symbolise that she had dishonoured her family and their religion. Large stones and concrete blocks were then thrown at her head and face by eight or nine men. She was also verbally abused and kicked in the stomach during the assault. Sickeningly, her death was accompanied by cheering onlookers and witnessed by members of the local security force, who failed to intervene or make any arrests. Bleeding heavily and crying for help, she was eventually killed when someone threw a large stone on her face.

If you are a Christian, Jew or Muslim, your god commanded this type of activity.  It doesn't matter that it was written 3000 years ago, by a god who later told you to ignore it.  The fact is, this is a serious blemish on his character.  I could be the nicest person on the planet, but you would still doubt my trustworthiness if I had once butchered someone.  Your god is guilty of butchery - or would be if he was real.

In reality, scribes wrote the Bible passages, long after Moses had lived, in an effort to control the masses and force obedience. Just as the killers of Du'a hoped to scare all Iraqi women into complete obedience.

Geoff Mather 2007

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