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Hector Avalos Quote

I have argued elsewhere (Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence [2005]) that we need to treat ethics in biblical texts just as we treat ethics in any other works of ancient literature. It is a vacuous exercise to pick and choose which atrocities were really ordained by any gods and which were not. We should have a zero-tolerance view of any text or collection of texts that at any time endorses genocide, misogyny, and other atrocities. We always judge ancient texts by modern ethical standards, and the Bible should not be treated differently.

Hector Avalos

I have argued elsewhere (Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence [2005]) that we need to treat ethics in biblical texts just as we treat ethics in any other works of ancient literature. It is a vacuous exercise to pick and choose which atrocities were really ordained by any gods and which were not. We should have a zero-tolerance view of any text or collection of texts that at any time endorses genocide, misogyny, and other atrocities. We always judge ancient texts by modern ethical standards, and the Bible should not be treated differently.

Tags: ancient literature, atheism, atrocities in the bible, biblical ethics, biblical morality, cherry picking, cherry picking scripture, ethics, genocide, genocide in the bible

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About Hector Avalos

Hector Avalos (October 8, 1958 – April 12, 2021) was a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, cultural anthropologist, and the author of several books on religion. Avalos was an atheist and advocate of secular humanist ethics.