Joshua Kelly - Oh, your god!: the evil idea that is religion

[An] excellent new book.

Hemant Mehta, editor, The Friendly Atheist

Oh, Your god! offers a devastating critique of todays organized religions and holds no punches in making an educated and rational case for why humanity would be better off without it. This book belongs on bookshelves next to the likes of Dawkins The God Delusion and Hitchens god Is Not Great.

Dan Arel, author, Parenting Without God

Joshua Kelly offers a new and entertaining perspective on religion and the conflict that it has historically been responsible for. Kelly makes a strong case as he sets out to dispel the myth of the goodness of religion.

David G. McAfee, author, Disproving Christianity and other Secular Writings

Kelly has a voice that is important to hear. His book displays passion for a necessity to educate and understand.

Matthew ONeil, author, What the Bible Really Does (and Doesnt) Say about Sex

Insightful, alarming, and convincingKelly will become a common voice among those leading the fight for atheism and secularism throughout the world.

J. D. Brucker, author, God Needs to Go: Why Christian Beliefs Fail

Striking and thought-provoking a book that inspires people to think!

Fourculture Magazine

Down to earth and to the point for theists and non-theists alike. Opens religious beliefs to the light of day in a fair and descriptive manner.

Dennis Erickson, author, God, Man and Moses

Pitchstone Publishing

Durham, North Carolina

www.pitchstonepublishing.com

Copyright 2016 by Joshua Kelly. All rights reserved.

Illustration on ), used with permission

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelly, Joshua, 1989- author.

Oh, your God! : the evil idea that is religion / Joshua Kelly. Revised edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-63431-064-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. ReligionControversial literature. 2. Atheism. I. Title.

BL2775.3.K46 2016

200dc23

2015027508

Author photograph by Dustin Mennie

To My Family and Dear Friends,

In the ardent hope that some of them never read it.

To Ashley Trautwein, in memoriam;

To Christopher Hitchens, in memoriam;

Because sometimes the dead are the least silent of all.

First, because its based on a fantastic illusion. Lets say that the consensus is that our species, we being the higher primates, Homo sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says it may be 100,000; Richard Dawkins thinks maybe quarter of a million. Ill take 100,000. In order to be Christian you have to believe that for 98,000 years our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25, dying of their teeth, famine, struggle, indigenous war, suffering, misery, all of that. For 98,000 heaven watches it with complete indifference and then 2,000 years ago thinks, Thats enough of thatits time to intervene. The best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Dont lets appear to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization, lets go the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It cant be believed by a thinking person.

Christopher Hitchens

A mans ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Albert Einstein

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

Bertrand Russell

To the Prophets, All

O! the words of greater men

Are weaker, yes, by far

Than charmersmystics wild-eyed,

If in the desert they espied

A burning bush or star.

Muhammad, in his wisdom great

For business may have been.

But if in deserts one has heard

An angels voice with verse immured

Can he then judge my sin?

A wandering, drooling madman then

Is such a prophet, he

Who would partake in blank delight

The whimsy of an insane night

And then prescribe it me?

No farther in the dredge of time

Should we sojourn for truth.

Behind this merchant: bloody psalms

With screams and nail-impald palms

And men condemned in youth.

We are such things as dreams are made,

Though dreams shall not suffice

When roused in mornings with a smile

The sun still rises all the while

Without a sacrifice.

So, foolish men who came before

With heads stuck in the sky:

Your heaven blurred your view of stars,

But I shall see despite your scars

No Son for me did die.

And should such thoughts condemn me now,

I shall with patience go

No frothy-mouthed advice most queer

Will fill my heart with empty fear

Or curse me with your woe.

Ill have a lived the life of love

You swore I could not know.

Joshua Kelly

When I first sat down to write Oh, Your god! in the spring of 2012, I was twenty-two years oldand it showed. My desperation to contribute to a vitally important conversation could barely be restrained, and that kind of brash enthusiasm made its way into my narrative. Such zeal is an excellent lightning rod that magnetizes people toward ones rhetoric, but it did, admittedly, make for some pretty bad writing in certain sections.

In this revised edition, I have made an effort to trim the rough edges of an earnest and authentic collection of observations on the evil inherent in religion. Rest assured that I have not editorialized my convictions, nor have I dampened the flames of a hot debate in which parrhsia is sometimes necessarybut rather, I have taken this opportunity to clarify, correct, and calibrate my arguments in a more coherent fashion. The book you are now holding should be a much better submission of the previous edition, rather than a work displaying an entirely new character.

In the two years since Oh, Your god! first appeared on shelves, much has changed in my life. The maturational distance between twenty-two and twenty-five is, I think, a kind of evolution to which we all can attest. As a primary example: Ive simply become a far better writer and scholar than I wasthe academic effort of graduate school and the scholastic expectations of my Marxist theatre historian mentor have better trained me in the kinds of research methods, presentation of facts, and styles of rhetoric that make