The Necessity of Atheism | Page 9

of the evening, showing his hind
quarters to Moses, ordering abominable massacres, and punishing
chiefs who had not killed enough people. On further perusal, there is
revealed, "A great deal of Oriental bombast, incoherence and absurdity,
that the marvels recounted are often ludicrous or grotesque."
In a chance moment, when the Hebrew had relaxed his hold for a
second, a vile heretic points out to the visitor (Exodus XXII, 18): "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live!" and explains the witchcraft delusion to
him.
From a comparison between Exodus XXXIV and Exodus XX, he is at a
loss to decipher which are the true commandments that the Lord gave
to Moses. The first five books of the Pentateuch, he finds, are attributed
to Moses, although they contain the account of the latter's death. On
inquiry, he learns that this is still maintained by the synagogue. His
Martian intellect is unable to comprehend the logic of a God who
would demand human and animal sacrifice, and the story of Abraham
about to sacrifice his son Isaac fills him with disgust. His estimate of
the mentality of Jehovah receives a severe jolt when he reads in
Leviticus XVI, "Herewith shall Aaron come unto the holy place with a

young bullock for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall
put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his
flesh, and he shall be girded with the linen girdle, and with the linen
mitre shall he be attired; they are the holy garments; and he shall bathe
his flesh in water and put them on. And he shall take of the
congregation of the children of Israel two he-goats for a sin offering,
and one ram for a burnt offering. And Aaron shall present the bullock
of the sin offering, which is for himself, and he shall make atonement
for himself and for his houses. And he shall take the two goats and set
them before the Lord at the door of the tent of the meeting."
Our visitor reads on to Leviticus XVIII, after which he must stop to
question the Hebrew, for here he finds, "None of you shall approach to
any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness; I am the Lord.
The nakedness of thy father, even the nakedness of thy mother, shalt
thou not uncover; she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her
nakedness. The nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover; it
is thy father's nakedness. The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of
thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or
abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. The nakedness of
thy son's wife--the nakedness of the wife of thy father--the nakedness
of thy father's sister, thy mother's sister, the nakedness of thy
daughter-in-law, thy brother's wife, the nakedness of a woman and her
daughter, thou shalt not uncover. And unto a woman separated by her
uncleanliness thou shalt not approach to uncover her nakedness. Thou
shalt not be carnally with thy neighbor's wife, to defile thyself with her.
Thou shalt not be with mankind as with womankind. And thou shalt not
be with any beast to defile thyself thereto; neither shall any woman
stand before a beast to lie down thereto; it is confusion."
The Martian, totally aghast, is constrained to exclaim that he cannot
believe that a Deity should find it necessary to place this in a divine
revelation. The Hebrew Zealot relents somewhat to explain that
perhaps this was not revealed, but found its way into the divine text as
a moral lesson to the primitive tribes for which it was written. To this,
our guest counters with the remark that if this be a parable of manners
and morals, then, from what he observes on the earth, we, Earthlings,

have certainly outgrown the need for such coarse and obscene
statements made some 2000 years ago; and that on Mars, although the
inhabitants are not blessed with such divine revelations, common sense
and reason have taught their most primitive men the same lessons in
morality while they were yet in their infancy.
Reflecting on this maze of contradictions, the Martian determines to
analyze the Old Testament and the Hebrew religion in the same manner
that he would investigate any other problem presented to him.
Thirty-five hundred years ago, the Hebrews were a pastoral, primitive
people inhabiting the wilderness known today as the Arabian Desert.
Their religion was that of all other primitive peoples--Animism, an
illusion which made primitive man recognize everywhere spirits similar
to his own spirit. They worshiped the spirits of the sun and the moon,
the mountains and rocks, as well as the spirits of the dead.
It