Book Review – God Hates You, Hate Him Back

Disclaimer: This is a review copy provided by Dangerous Little Books.

I remember somewhat fondly my formative years where I was given the “gift” of a solid Catholic Education.  We studied the bible regularly, we had the bible read to us at weekly mass.  Yet I don’t seem to remember the bits about God’s suggested punishment for rape – CJ enlightens us:

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered,he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

Deuteronomy  22:28-20 NIV

There’s the slam dunk.  How fortunate for the poor young lass that is brutally raped by a male attacker that she gains a husband out of it – the guy who raped her.  Furthermore what of the penalty for the rapist? Fifty shekels, that’s all?  God commands in Leviticus that a mean must be put to death for fucking a goat, but a payment of only a couple of dollars for raping a young girl?…

Page 72, God Hates You, Hate Him Back

The quote above is a fair representation of the tone of the book.  CJ Werleman gives us an everyman’s guide to the Bible.  He readily admits upfront that he’s no biblical scholar (one could argue that you don’t need to be).  This is the everyday bloke having a look at the bible and finding it’s “fuller than a Labradors lunch box” with rape, incest, violence and stupidity.  Now while it’s written by the layman for the layman, don’t think that Werleman has just cobbled together some contradictions found on the Skeptics Annotated Bible and started laying the boot in.  No, Werleman spent the better part of 18 months reading the bible, researching and finally writing this book.

CJ, has read the entire bible(give the man a beer), and given us a rather irreverent “cliff notes” version of it. The book is sure to offend the deeply religious, the moderately religious will opine that, “you must read the bible with a view to its historical context”, or mention something about metaphors and Atheists will have a good old snicker.  If there is one danger with this book, it’s that the sheer stupidity of the source material could make Werleman’s wit and irreverence seem like the flogging of a dead horse.

I think Werleman’s wit manages to keep the reader reasonably well engaged, though I found myself dipping in and out of the book, and I’d recommend that to readers.  I think it better to savour the stupidity and evaluate CJ’s commentary than to try and finish it in one sitting indeed the way the book is written makes it easy to do so.

The first part of the book deals with the Old testament,  here CJ deals with a book at a time summarising the story, pointing out oddities, contradictions and commenting as he goes along.   His handling of the New Testament differs in that the plagiarism amongst the gospel writers forces CJ to compile the narrative or risk being overly repetitive.

Not sure about the title.  I think its intention was to capture attention, but I have already read some Christian commentary on the dreadful “Atheist hatred of Christians” and the title really does not do the book justice.  It’s certainly more entertaining than reading the original, and it illustrates well the ridiculous notion that Bible is divinely inspired.

Recommended for atheists and those without a biblical background(much of modern Christendom?).

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