Some Mistakes of Moses

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking socially as well as religiously
Review: Although none of the arguments in this book were especially profound, they were highly entertaining. It's amazing to think that such a droll and tenacious speaker was so widely regarded over a hundred years ago, yet today anyone espousing such candid opinions on the veracity of the bible would scarcely be registered by the media. Were he alive today, the poor fellow would be disheartened to see so many exhortions to prayer by the media and government; but this only underscores why this book and others like it are so relevant today.

All in all, light, funny and thought provoking; a joy to read.

Rating:
Summary: The perfect medicine for the so-called "holly bible"
Review: Beautifully written, sharp as a blade. It's a shame I hadn't read this book before my adulthood: it would have made my transiction from christian to agnostic quite easier.

Rating:
Summary: A Literary Showpiece
Review: Don't get me wrong, the book is extremely well written, it was a joy to read, and it even had a few arguments that I hadn't heard.

However, Ingersoll makes some mistakes that I don't believe are accurate. First, he places far too much stress on the importance of a literal belief. This was probably the case when Christians were running the universities in our country, but it is not any longer. More and more liberal takes on the Bible are becoming common, and the importance of believing in contradictory accounts is less worth arguing now than it used to be.

Another place that I believe he goes wrong is the assumption that the proportion of soldiers in the Exodus Judiac population is equal to the proportion of ours. A more accurate case may be made to the number of American men who were soldiers in the Civil War. That, like the exodus, was about survival.

All told, his writing is a joy to read. He points out things that most people don't normally think about, and he makes a (to me at least) novel criticism of the dimensions of the ark and its ridiculous ventilation system. However, this is more of the type of book that I would rent from a library. It is fun to own and let friends read, but you will probably only read it once. It is a light read, though, and a fun criticism.

A reader, but a renter.
Harkius

Rating:
Summary: Stands the test of time
Review: I am converting to Judaism (Reform) and while doing a search online stumbled onto this book. This book's critique of the Bible is amazingly sound considering it is 130 years old. His point of view is however as a Christian judging topics in the holy books of Moses, not as a Jew. This may sound like a silly point, but if you read any Talimud writings, stories and parables are a very Jewish way to get a point across! Hence, when discussing God, you must speak of the limits of knowledge and human existance, etc...Anyway, I wish he attended the Reform movement synagogue once in a while in his day...He would have found out the Jews consider sex a blessing, something you SHOULD do on the Sabbath, not be threatened with Hell and mope aound wishing you were outside... I suspect if his book was about the New Testament some resentful Christian would have lynched him! Good thing the Jews have a sense of humor ;)...

Nuff said...This book should be read by anyone who is considers himself Christian or Jewish. And yes I am still converting too! Books like these is a breath of fresh air and puts our religous quests on firmer grounds.

Rating:
Summary: This is only the beginning...
Review: Ingersoll himself stated that it was not his goal to shatter Christianity, but to shatter the complacency of blindly following fundamentalist doctrine. He was encouraging genuine reflective equilibrium on the part of the religious. At first, this may seem like a road that leads directly to atheism, but I am here to testify that this is not true.

I'm glad that our Jewish friend resolved to sustain his quest and that Alexandre was strengthened in his freedom from stagnant thinking. But this is not the end. This is not all there is to say about what the mono-theistic tradition can contribute to humanity. It is not the perfect remedy for the "holly bible" as a whole but the perfect remedy for the fear of questioning it, which leads to seeing it clearly for what it actually is and understanding its true value.

After the hilarious and witty Ingersoll, who will get you thinking, I recommend moving on to the excellent scholorship of Karen Armstrong, who will give you not only evidence to support Ingersoll's claims but a new way of understanding the tradition in question. Ready to accept the world with a God-shaped hole in it, I was floored to realize that such a perspective wasn't a clear way of understanding the situation at all. I can tell you with confidence that if Ingersoll peaked your interest that at least A History of God is worth a read (if not all of her other books as well, which I haven't read but am anxiously planning to). Another interesting argument (similar to Ingersoll's) about the nature of complacent awe of the Bible can be found in the first chapter of Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack.

Another fascinating perspective is that of the scientifically-focused Gerald Schroeder. All of his books are worth a read, but The Hidden Face of God is his most lucid account.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Outstanding Book!
Review: Ingersoll missed all the evidence that has been found that proves that the Bible is true. He was not looking at this situation with an unbias mind like he tells his readers to do.

Rating:
Summary: Ho hum, more unqualified trash from a dead sceptic
Review: Ingersoll was yet another deservedly obscure bibliosceptic whose works have been exhumed by adoring sceptics. They fondly assume that the rhetorical tricks of a man totally unqualified in science or Biblical language and culture are a substitute for intelligent debate.

It's also amazing how politically incorrect Ingersoll was. Of course, chronological snobbery abounds - we're far more intelligent today, while the ancients were primitive and superstitious. They couldn't even read and write, he seriously argued - demonstrably false, so sceptical groups should be ashamed of promoting his stuff. And the Old Testament authors were slaves, he keeps reminding us, as though this made them less intelligent - in fact as "ignorant as the inhabitants of Central Africa", he says! Not that the typical bibliosceptic would care about the odd bit of racism where it's all for the cause.

As with most bibliosceptics, he loves to feign outrage at parts of the Bible. Never mind that if we are all rearranged pond scum as he and all evolutionists believe, then our sense of outrage is just an epiphenomenon of something that evolved for survival advantage in our hypothetical ape-like ancestors. Nor does he bother to distinguish between *reporting* of an event and *approval* of same. And horror of horrors, a holy God who owns His creation and has the right to judge sin is just too much for the poor boy's sensibilities.

Ingersoll also does the conspiracy theorists proud - if you were honest and sensible, you would agree with him - the dismissal of a book by his august self should be enough. But no one dares to point out these alleged mistakes out of fear, so we have to leave it to this brave soul.

And of course, the ancients believed that miracles happened. Don't expect any reasoned argument against miracles - they are absurd, and you should just take Ingersoll's word for it. And the huge number of miracles reported in the Bible is proof that the Bible's writers can't be trusted. There's no way that the miracles could have happened as reported, because we've just established that the reporters couldn't be trusted, because they believed in miracles ... Circular reasoning, anyone?

Of course, in the Gospel according to Ingersoll, they were unscientific, and could believe in miracles like the virginal conception. Now that we are scientific and modern, we know how babies are conceived, so we should not believe those stories. Comment: the ancients knew very well how babies are made - needing both a man and a woman, although they did not know certain details about spermatozoa and ova. In fact, Joseph (Mt. 1:19) and Mary (Lk. 1:34) questioned the announcements of the Virginal Conception because they did know the facts of life, not because they did not! Similarly, ancients didn't know about bacterial enzyme-catalyzed hydrolysis of basic amino acids producing diaminoalkanes which strongly stimulate olfactory receptors, but they knew that a corpse will stink after a few days, and they informed Jesus of this before He raised Lazarus from the dead.

And of course, ancient people were gullible, but Ingersoll is oh-so-much cleverer. But, many ancients did not accept miracle claims, especially Christ's Virginal Birth and Resurrection. Conversely, today, all the evolution-biased newspapers promote astrology (horoscopes), and consider the total acceptance of spontaneous generation among the evolutionary establishment despite being disproved by Louis Pasteur. This speaks volumes about modern man's gullibility!

And Ingersoll, despite his ignorance of science, implies that science has disproved miracles. This argument also has a false view of scientific laws - they are descriptive, not prescriptive. The laws do not cause or forbid anything any more than the outline of a map causes the shape of the coastline. But if God made the heavens and the earth, a Virginal Conception is no trouble for Him.

Some of the arguments are the ultimate in question-begging. Some have been impressed with his claim that some of the Ten Commandments are simply absurd, because supposedly the worship of Jehovah cannot be more moral than the worship of any other god. But if Jehovah is the true God, then it makes perfect sense that only He should be worshipped. Of course Ingersoll and his devotees don't bother proving this.

In answer to facile questions like "Did kangaroos hop and swim all the way from Australia to the Ark, and then hop all the way back rather than stay and breed on Mt Ararat?":

First, the Bible teaches there was only one land mass before the Flood (Gen. 1:9), and the Flood rearranged the Earth's topography radically. Therefore Australia never even existed for kangaroos to come *from* (and the passage indicates that God brought them -- tough bikkies if we're supposed to take Ingersoll's word that He doesn't exist).

Second, as for kangaroos "hopping all the way back", this is just as silly as asking "did rabbits hop all the way to Australia, then from one side of the continent to the other?" Of course, rabbits were introduced by people, and they spread out through Australia through several generations. Similarly, some people groups preferentially took marsupials because of characteristics making them eminently suitable for long ocean voyages to Australia, e.g. unique growth rates; and of course the marsupials spread out over the continent over a number of generations. Shame on the positive reviewers for falling for Ingersoll's cheap rhetorical tricks time and time again.

Rating:
Summary: Poetry with a Punch
Review: Robert Ingersoll has fast become one of my personal heroes along with Thomas Paine (of whom Ingersoll writes a beautiful biography) and Bertrand Russell (who also wrote a biography of Thomas Paine). To live your life without reading the magniloquent prose of this brilliant man, would be in my opinion and unspeakable crime.

I could talk on and on and on about this book, but I won't because I don't want to waste your time. Don't miss your chance to experience something fantastic. Read SMOM. Then read everything else Ingersoll wrote.

Rating:
Summary: Properly Chastises Inerrantists for Insulting the Almighty
Review: Robert Ingersoll wrote for the common person, using common language and common sense. In fact, he appeals to the same simplicity that people invoke when declaring that there must be a God vis-à-vis the "design of creation." As one reads this book, it is easy to feel guilt for attributing the words of the Bible to the Creator of the Universe. And by the end of the book, one is left with the choice of (a) using common sense and common decency to absolve the Almighty from the barbarism that is contained in the Bible; or (b) continue to practice intellectual acrobatics in order to hold the Almighty responsible for every barbaric word of the Bible. Indeed, Ingersoll ensures that inerrantists are properly chastised for their continued insistence of an "inspired book." Such a position is unjustified and insulting to the Almighty. Perhaps it is too idealistic to expect inerrantists to recognize Ingersoll's simple arguments in defense of the Almighty and for that they will perhaps one day be held accountable for insisting that God did and said all of the awful acts found in the Bible.

Rating:
Summary: Simply wonderful!
Review: This book is joy to read, even if but for the literary style of Mr. Ingersoll. Though not a trained philosopher, Ingersoll points out much of the errancy and contradiction in the first books of the Bible.

Better yet, he does it with a style and flair that is only comparable to Mark Twain! Most theists (especially Christians) will certainly STILL object to this book. Of course, Mr. Ingersoll used to get death threats in his day so I suspect the criticism by and large, is nothing new.

Regardless, if you're a non-theist or have an open mind and appreciation for a well crafted and written book, this one is for you!