18. Its alleged miracles. The Bible is filled with marvelous stories. The sun and moon stand still; the globe is submerged with water to the depth of several miles; rods are transformed into serpents, dust into lice, and water into blood and wine; animals hold converse with man in his own language; men pass through fiery furnaces unharmed; a child is born without a natural father; the dead arise from the grave and walk the earth again. These marvelous stories—these miracles—are adduced to prove the divine origin of the Bible. They prove its human origin. If these miracles prove the divinity of the Bible, then nearly all the books of old are divine, for they abound with these same miracles. If these stories be true, if these miracles occurred, the laws of nature were arrested and suspended. The laws of nature are immutable. If the laws of nature are immutable they cannot be suspended. The laws of nature cannot be suspended; they never have been suspended; these stories are false; and being false, the Bible is not divine.
19. Its immoral teachings. If the Bible were of divine origin its moral teachings would be divine. It would be what its adherents affirm it to be, an infallible moral guide. But its moral teachings are not divine; it is not an infallible moral guide. It contains, like other Bibles, some moral precepts; but it also sanctions nearly every crime and vice. War and murder, bigotry and persecution, tyranny and slavery, demonism and witchcraft, adultery and prostitution, drunkenness and vagrancy, robbery and cheating, falsehood and deception, are all authorized and commended by this book. It cannot, therefore, be divine.
20. Its inferior literary character. If the Bible were the word of God, as a literary composition it would be above criticism. It would be as far superior to all other books as God is superior to man. Its rhetoric would transcend in beauty the glorious coloring of a Titian. Its logic would be faultless. The Bible is not such a book. It contains some admirable pieces and these owe much of their literary merit to the translators, appearing as our version did in the golden age of English literature. As a whole it is far inferior to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome; inferior to the literature of modern Italy, of France, of Germany, and of England. If the Bible be the word of God it is a long way from God up to Shakespeare.
21. Its writers do not claim to be inspired. Had the writers of the Bible been inspired they would have known it and would have proclaimed it. Had they claimed to be inspired it would not prove the Bible to be divine, for like Mohammed, they might have been deluded, or, like a more recent finder of a holy book, impostors. But they do not even claim that their books are divine revelations. Some of these books contain what purport to be divine revelations, but the books themselves do not pretend to be divine. The only exception is the book called Revelation, admittedly the most doubtful book of the Bible.
“All scripture is given by inspiration.” Waiving the questions of authenticity and correct translation, who wrote this? Paul. What was the scripture when he wrote? The Old Testament, the Old Testament alone. The writers of the Old Testament do not claim to be divinely inspired. This is a claim made by the later Jews and by the early Christians. Paul and the other writers of the New Testament do not claim that their writings are divine. This, too, is a claim made by others long after they were written.
The fact that the writers of the Bible do not believe and do not assert that their books are of divine origin, that this claim was first made many years after they were composed, by those who knew nothing of their origin, is of itself, in the absence of all other evidence, sufficient to demonstrate their human origin.
22. God has never declared it to be his word. The Bible does not, as we have seen, purport to be the word of God. Nowhere, neither in the book nor outside of it, has he declared it to be his revealed will. It contains various messages, chiefly of local concern, which he is said to have delivered to man; but the book, as such, is not ascribed to him nor claimed by him.
23. Whatever its origin it cannot be a divine revelation to us. Even supposing that the writers of the Bible had claimed to be inspired and that these books really were a divine revelation to them, they would not, as Paine justly argues, be a divine revelation to us. The only evidence we would have of their divinity would be the claim of the writer—a claim that any writer might make—a claim that even an honest writer might make were he, like many religious writers, the victim of a delusion.
24. A written revelation unnecessary. To affirm the necessity of a written revelation from God to man, as Christians do, is to deny his divine attributes and ascribe to him the limitations of man. If God be omnipotent and omnipresent a written revelation is unnecessary. To impute to him an unnecessary act is to impute to him an imperfection, and to impute to him an imperfection is to impugn his divinity. We do not write a communication to one who is present. Think of an infinite, all-powerful, and ever-present God communing with his living children through an obscure and corrupted message said to have been delivered to a tribe of barbarians three thousand years ago!
25. Its want of universal acceptance. A divine revelation intended for all mankind can be harmonized only with a universal acceptance of this revelation. God, it is affirmed, has made a revelation to the world. Those who receive and accept this revelation are saved; those who fail to receive and accept it are lost. This God, it is claimed, is all-powerful and all-just. If he is all-powerful he can give his children a revelation. If he is all-just he will give this revelation to all. He will not give it to a part of them and allow them to be saved and withhold it from the others and suffer them to be lost. Your house is on fire. Your children are asleep in their rooms. What is your duty? To arouse them and rescue them—to awaken all of them and save all of them. If you awaken and save only a part of them when it is in your power to save them all you are a fiend. If you stand outside and blow a trumpet and say, “I have warned them, I have done my duty,” and they perish, you are still a fiend. If God does not give his revelation to all; if he does not disclose its divinity to all; if he does not make it comprehensible and acceptable to all; in short, if he does not save all, he is the prince of fiends.