All of those people who take the Bible literally need to apply the proper rules for killing people by throwing stones. The process is quite straightforward. The purpose is to cause the stonees (the people being struck by the stones) to die of broken bones and hemorrhaging of blood. What are the Bible rules regarding stoning? Luckily, they have been summarized right here. [1] I’ll elaborate on a few of these rules in this post.
As you can see from Deuteronomy 22:13-21 [2], believers in the inerrant Bible need to stone all non-virgins who dare to get married. It’s all very logical, you see. “Oh, you’re a woman who is not a virgin? Then God requires that I must brutally kill you. But it truly was such a beautiful wedding . . .”
According to Deuteronomy 17:2-5 [3] , Bible literalists need to kill all of those people who worship gods, other than the god of the Bible, by hitting them with stones.
I escape judgment on these first two rules because I’m not a woman and I don’t worship any god, but I’m afraid that I probably am a “stubborn and rebellious” son. The Bible requires that such sons need to be taken out and killed by hitting them with stones. See Deuteronomy 21:18-21 [4]. It’s not entirely clear by this rule whether I also need to also be a glutton and a drunkard to deserve this death-by-stoning penalty. I might be a glutton (since I live in a highly materialist society), though I’ve never been drunk. If I qualify for the death penalty under this rule, I would need to be stoned by all of the men of my city. I live in Saint Louis; I’d therefore have to gather up about one million men for my stoning. They have to find one million stones, unless they could share a smaller number of stones by taking turns. The Bible doesn’t say whether they could throw things other than naturally formed stones, such as bricks, balls of hardened clay or toasters.
Here’s another important rule. Everyone who has gathered sticks on the sabbath needs to die by stoning. The stones need to be hurled by the entire congregation, per Numbers 15:32-56 [5]. This passage doesn’t say what to do if the entire congregation is guilty of gathering sticks on the sabbath. Maybe they need to gather everyone into one big circle, each person being obligated to throw stones at the person in front of him or her. The last one standing, I suppose needs to try to commit suicide by hitting himself or herself in the head with a stone.
For the most part, what these stoning rules lack in civility and empathy, they make up for in clarity. For example, compare these straightforward stoning laws with the immense amount of common law necessitated by vague Constitutional provisions such as the First Amendment. What would be the result, I wonder, if we put it up for a nationwide vote tomorrow: Shall we throw away the U.S. Constitution and, instead, interpret the Bible literally as the highest source of U.S. law? Given the religious ferver that still exists in the U.S., I suspect the vote would be about 53% in favor of the inerrant Bible over the manmade Constitution.
Perhaps we could then rename our three branches of government: A) Executors of Stoning Laws, B) Makers of Stoning Laws and C) Courts of Stoning. Maybe we could also create a new cabinet position of Department of Stoning or maybe a more expansive Department of Sticks and Stones.
What if the Branches of this new government disagree with each other? No problem. Just have them go out back and throw stones at each other.
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