Blaise Moran takes a deep, personal look at the Bible in his new, self-published book, titled The Unethical Bible.
He spent six years writing, filling 818 pages with more than 300,000 words. The average book, by comparison, is about 50,000 words. It was released around Dec. 22, which is the winter solstice and, as he noted, is "a key date in many pagan religions."
"The Unethical Bible is an irreverent summarization of the King James Bible from a non-believer's standpoint that includes a running commentary on its stories' ethical worth," he said. "The viewpoints I state often vary greatly from those preached from a pulpit. It is also the world's first-ever complete statistical survey of the Bible's ethics, when judged by 21st-century standards."
"If you want to know who did what to whom, this book tracks all the inter-human edicts and actions of the Bible and gives statistics for how good or bad it really is, insofar as how humans should treat each other," said Moran, who started writing the book in November 2010 and finished in November 2016.
"In order to see clearly who says to do what to whom, all of the loving, generous, fair and good, evil, unethical, ridiculous and mythical, and contradictory and hypocritical edicts, actions, statements, and beliefs of the Bible's characters are color-coded, so that, at a glance, anyone can simply flip through the book and see how frequently and where each type of thing occurs. Each color code has various subcategories, with 27 in all. I totaled up each one, took a grand total, and determined what colors and individual categories have the predominant percentages for the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Bible in its entirety."
Moran said there was a two-fold reason for the book: "I wanted to know how often the Bible instructed people to love other people, and what was the Bible's most frequent message insofar as it would affect people physically or emotionally now or later in their lives."
Moran said The Unethical Bible could be used by atheists to counter untrue or unreasonable claims of the religious, by agnostics to help decide if they should believe in God or not, by theists who want to find the benevolent passages in it, and by scholars who want to hear a truly different perspective of the Bible's stories. All of them could learn what it's actual ethical worth is by today's moral standards.
Moran's favorite part of the book is the conclusion, "where I sum up my thoughts on religions and gods in general," he said. The most controversial aspect was, "My hypothesis that Jesus [Christ] was not only most likely gay, but also clinically insane," Moran said.
"Those who worship a god or follow a religion should know what it is they're admiring," Moran said. "Do Christians realize they're worshiping a god who murders children in the Bible? Do you fully understand that human sacrifice ( a pagan ritual ) is a key part of it? I doubt it. There are hundreds of good and fair rules in it, but this book's point is to find out what percentage of them are admirable, and what percentage aren't.
"The book does paint the Bible in an overall negative light, but this is the fault of the overwhelmingly evil and unethical actions and edicts of its characters. If they were nice people who advocated love and generosity most often, then the condescending tone I've taken would not have been adopted."
For more information about The unethical Bible, including ordering, go to the book's Facebook page: www.facebook.com/The-UnEthical-Bible-914052322061517/ .
THE STATS
- Age: "Over 50"
- Relationship status: "Married for two years, together for just over three years."
- Hobbies: Antique shopping
- Favorite Chicago restaurant: Tango Sur
- Job title: Sales representative for a major liquor distributor
- Favorite movie: Lawrence of Arabia
- Favorite book: Nicholas and Alexandra
- Little-known fact: "I visited [more than] 30 countries in my childhood."
