An Epicurean Answers Habakkuk's Questions

It's rare to encounter a prophet who acknowledges the powerlessness of his gods to bring good, destroy evil, and fix the world. Rarer still to find one who acknowledges the evils that religion brings upon humanity. Habakkuk is one of the lesser, little-known prophets from the Old Testament, and one who bore witness against his own god and questioned him about the existence of evil, injustice, and suffering in the world. His disappointment is typical of those who confuse virtue with credulity.

O Lord, how long must I call for help before You will hear? I cry out to You, “We are being hurt!” But You do not save us. Why do you make me see sins and wrong-doing? People are being destroyed in anger in front of me. There is arguing and fighting. - Habbakuk 1:2-3

Habakkuk establishes that his god does not listen to the prayers of his people, and is indifferent to the violence that surrounds religious community. His second question then desperately attributes agency and volition to divinity, giving to divinity power over choices and avoidances. It is God that chooses evil people to punish presumably good and righteous people. It is God who favors those who do wrong. An ancient Epicurean would have considered these passages blasphemous. The prophet also engages in passive-aggressive appeasing of his god by attributing holiness to him, even while confronting him with his inaction in the presence of the evil seen everywhere, which indicates that the prophet still has unmet expectations and false beliefs about divine intervention in nature.

Have You not lived forever, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. O Lord, You have chosen them to judge. You, O Rock, have chosen them to punish us. Your eyes are too pure to look at sin. You cannot look on wrong. Why then do You look with favor on those who do wrong? Why are You quiet when the sinful destroy those who are more right and good than they? Why have You made men like the fish of the sea, like things which move along the ground that have no ruler? - Habbakuk 1:12-14

He specifically later mentions the Babylonians, so that we can imagine that he is perplexed at certain events in his recent history and can't reconcile this with his Jewish doctrine of divine intervention in history with the goal of people-building. We later see the depths of the prophet's spiritual disease in what might be the most blasphemous utterance in Habbakuk, but here the prophet intends it as praise.

Disease goes before Him, and much trouble comes after Him. - Habbakuk 3:5

Another translation uses pestilence in this verse: God has now degenerated further, into a bio-terrorist. He is later asked whether he was angry at inanimate things, like rivers and seas. Habbakuk's God not only is powerless to stop evil. He uses evil people to punish the good, and is essentially a Plague everywhere he goes. It's unclear why he's understood as holy instead of evil.

Now, since conversation is impossible with a divinity, as the Indianos reminded us recently, it falls to us to answer Habbakuk's questions to his god and to resolve his disappointment, which is a typical symptom of the cognitive dissonance seen in the souls of many sincere theists, and which is based on their false views and expectations which are not based on the study of the nature of things. Let's begin where the Masters in our tradition say we should: with the Canon, with empirical evidence, which should always be the starting point in all of our reasonings. According to studies linking crime, societal dysfunction and religiosity, the correlation is clear, observable and undeniable:

Despite the best efforts of “pro-life” Americans, abortion rates are much higher in our Christian nation, and lowest in relatively secular ones such as Japan, France, and the Scandinavian countries. In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies. This would seem to indicate that there is a positive correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, but what does that mean?

As this has been such an on-going and prevalent problem for most of human history, there are several Epicurean commentaries on this confusion of values created by popular religiosity.

In an argument reminiscent of what ISIS is doing in Syria and Iraq, Diogenes argued in his wall that the most religious and superstitious people of his day were also the most evil (presented here against Ptahhotep's Maxims), and Polystratus also argued at length that one who follows virtue without studying the nature of things, loses all virtue, that his virtue comes to nothing because it degenerates into trembling superstition, moralizing arrogance (this view was also expressed by Lao-Tse in the Tao Te Ching, where he argued for grassroots virtue), and many other inconvenients.

In any case, the fact that even virtuous actions often have no advantage because, in the cases mentioned above, men show too much arrogance or fall back without reason into superstitious fears, and because in other actions in life they make many mistakes of every kind, so that no one really exhibits virtue.

The confusion of values produced by bad, primitive theology is one of the great diseases in the human soul. It has made people surrender to the worst in themselves and others, and disown their own agency, volition, and power. It's why good people who are religious sometimes do horrible things. These beliefs not only impede our spiritual and psychological health and maturity: they also impede our happiness, our pleasure, our ataraxia and equanimity. They add to our suffering instead of taking away from it.

The responsibility to create a happy, pleasant, beautiful life here on Earth is ours, and only ours, and entirely ours. Let's have enough self-respect and compassion to put aside the childish things that keep us from taking that responsibility seriously.

Arguments against Paul

Argument 1: Paul's immoral views on slavery, women and gays

In Ephesians 6 Paul told slaves to be loyal to their masters, comparing slave-masters to Christ. In 1 Timothy 6, he again advised submission, praising his own teachings by saying that they were a 'sane doctrine'.

Jesus said by their fruits we shall know them. Paul's teachings on slavery were used by the Portuguese crown in Brasil when they commissioned Antonio Vieira, a Catholic priest, to produce a slavist theology and to teach slaves to submit to their white Portuguese masters. The theology that Vieira produced was absolutely obscene. He promoted the 'mark of Cain' doctrine, whereby blacks were the children of Cain and blackness was a curse. Africa was compared to hell, and servitude to white Christians was the only way to salvation.

Paul also promoted a Taliban-ish attitude toward women: they had to cover themselves up, sit in the back of the church and never speak or teach.

And then of course there's the long list of false witness that he bore against gays in Romans 1, where he even called gay people assasins, and then he concluded in verse 32 with his stance that gay people deserve to be murdered, as well as those who enable gay people. This is not coming out of the mouth of Reverend Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, but out of the pen of Paul: it was Paul who first wished gays would all just fall dead. There is still consensus among conservative Christians that it is okay to question gay people's right to exist, although many refuse to admit this problem. But in the dark ages, gays were cooked alive in public and no one experienced guilt, thanks to Paul the Bigot.

Paul's homophobia was the first thing that made me raise an eyebrow with regards to who he was and what he was doing writing epistles supposedly in the name of Jesus, whom he never met. I would like to share some of the facts that we can glean from scripture on this character, and let each person come to her or his own understanding and conclusion with regards to Paul.

Argument 2: "The lot fell to Matthias", says the Bible

I believe that the first and most important verse to ponder is Acts 1:22 where Paul's status as an apostle is flatly denied. When Judas was no longer considered an apostle, the disciples cast lots. Two candidates were considered, none of whom was Paul, and Matthias was chosen as the new twelfth apostle.

Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles. - Acts 1:26

Argument 3: "But do not ye be called rabbi", says Jesus in Matthew 23:8

It is clear in the Bible that Paul was no apostle, however he claimed to be one in 2 Timothy 1:11. I wonder how Matthias felt ... and the people who chose Matthias.

"And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher (rabbi)." - Paul

This verse is also an instance where Paul directly contradicts Jesus, who said: "do not have yourselves called teachers". By having himself called "teacher", he was challenging and contradicting Jesus. He clearly did not know that Jesus had said this.

Can someone who contradicts the Christ be considered a Christian prophet or apostle?

Argument 4: "They gave me nothing"

The mutual animosity between the apostles and Paul is evident in numerous verses of scripture: from Acts 9:26 we see that many did not trust or believe in Paul from the beginning. He had this to say about the apostles in Galatians 2:6

"As for those who were considered important in the church, their reputation doesn't concern me. God isn't impressed with mere appearances, and neither am I. And of course these leaders were able to add nothing to the message I had been preaching."

Let's brush aside the air of arrogance and jealousy in this verse (which we will see again in 2 Corinthians 11:5) and look at what he is saying. Other translations say 'they gave me nothing'. The Spanish versions say they 'taught me nothing'. Now, in those days the only way to learn the good news was hearing it from those who had heard it from Jesus because the Gospels had not been written. We know that Paul never met Jesus. This explains why Paul does not, ever, not even once mention one single teaching, one parable, or one event from the life of Jesus. If the disciples and apostles 'gave him nothing', then this can only mean that he basically made up his own gospel.

Argument 5: The vision on the road to Damascus

The claim that he had a vision on his way to Damascus has 3 different versions which all contradict each other in Acts 9:7, 22:9 and 26:14. In one version he falls to the floor, but in 26:14 they all fall to the floor, not just Paul. In one version the others hear a voice and see a light, in another they see nothing. One would think they would remember exactly what they saw and heard. It does not sound like a believable account. Furthermore, this is Christ's veredict in the Gospels:

"... if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it." - Matthew 24:23

Argument 6: Paul's confession

Paul himself, in his own letters, attests to his own dishonesty. This is as revealing as Jeremiah 8:8!

"Yet, crafty fellow that I am, I caught you by trickery!" - Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:16

Argument 7: The church in Ephesus

... I know that you ... have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. - Revelation 2:2

Here we see that at least one of the authors of the Bible mentions that there were false APOSTLES. Notice that it is not false 'prophets' but specifically 'false apostles' that are mentioned here. We should then ask ourselves: who claimed to be an apostle without being one?

Revelation 2:2 mentions that at least one church will speak openly about this false apostle: the Church of Ephesus. In 2 Timothy 1:15, Paul himself admits that he had been rejected in Asia ... and he concludes this chapter specifically mentioning that it concerned the Church of Ephesus.

The fact that Revelation 2 praises those who rejected Paul (I can't think of who else they may have been refering to) is even more important and shocking if we consider the fact that this chapter concerns the final judgement. In other words, whoever wrote this was hoping that these verses would be diluscidated in the last days.

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. - Matthew 7:15

Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder. - Genesis 49:27

... I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. - Paul, in Romans 11:1