A Pocket Guide to...Things We've Fixed for God

With a critical, rational eye, and a comical and conversational tone, "A Pocket Guide to Things We've Fixed for God" takes the reader on a journey to uncover the many biblical absurdities and contradictions, archaic rules and values, and obsolete remedies we no longer take seriously. You'll see for yourself that we couldn't possibly take it seriously! Harper keeps us honest with example after example of the logical, moral, and scientific things we've "fixed" for the biblical God long after his stories were written several thousand years ago. Harper demonstrates that such stories were merely oral traditions captured by men as soon as writing was formalized—all to help them organize their lives, not ours. A few chapters into this read you'll begin to perceive God anew: he's more vicious than you think, hardly loving, despises women, plays favorites by choosing a tiny group of people from a tiny section of the earth, and relegates other groups from around the world to an afterthought. He gave the weirdest commands about how a woman is to be cleansed from the sin of menstruation, and how a woman must be married off to her rapist. It will surprise you how much God normalized incest and polygamy, slavery, genocide, and ethnic cleansing—all of which we've fixed for him in our revised laws and practices. No doubt, the real price of this book is your intellectual courage. Once you dive in, you'll begin to appreciate how folklore can evolve over millennia to become "truth" for new generations. You'll also recognize our need to either reinvent this God to meet the challenges of our modern times or toss him entirely for more humane rules, values, and ways of being. No matter what, you won't be let off the hook!