Eagle’s Wings my hairy white ass! (Sorry for the visual)
Mount Sinai and Moses, the first vulcanologist?
Exodus 19.
Ah, here we are at Sinai, the God’s holy mountain. This, as we all know, is where God finally hands down that wonderful gift to humankind, the ten commandments. But before that leaden burden is laid upon us all there is a bit of a prologue here consisting of Moses trotting up and down the mountain bringing God’s messages down and the Hebrew’s replies back up. I have to say that this chapter has so much that goes against the idea of omnipotence, omniscience or even sense. There are so many items here that if viewed with eyes open and modern sensibilities, a thinking person could not help but recoil a bit. Read it for yourselves. It’s quite short.
So why don’t more people wonder? Why can’t more of humanity look at this and say, “Sum-bitch, that don’ make no sense!” I don’t know, but I strongly suspect. People have had the religious curiosity burned right out of them through years of “training” aka Brainwashing. Remember the old Jesuit boast “Give me the child until the age of seven and I will give you the man.” They understood even then that you can instill anything into a young mind, and once there it seldom dissipates without effort. Or without discomfort.
As you know, I take it upon myself to provide the effort. No problem. You can thank me later. You, however, are going to have to provide the discomfort. It is an unalterable fact that removing shit from the deepest recesses of the human brain hurts. So buckle up buttercups! This could be fun. (Note. The preceding statement comes without any guarantee of real or actual fun. The suffering, of course, does.)
After three months of wandering the desert, Moses has finally led his people to Sinai. The Bible actually says the wilderness of Sinai which does make one wonder at the quality of God’s establishment. I mean, where are the Heavenly Hiltons, the angelic servants, the 72 virgins. For a-lack-of-Christ’s-sake, even Allah has a better sense of how to draw certain people in. I do believe the Hebrews should have booked with another travel agent. However, the poetry in this section is lovely. Here:
When they set out from Rephidim, they came to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness; and there Israel camped in front of the mountain.
Darwin damn it all, I do wish I could write such eloquent prose. And before anyone leaps down my throat, I am aware that often shit is lost in translation. In fact, you might say that is usually my whole point. Shit is always lost in translation, and by this I mean something more than mere language. There are so many other ways in which ancient writings do not come across well. Morality for instance or cultural behaviors seldom translate well through the ages. You could make a valid point that few writings in the Bible do enter painlessly into the modern age. It becomes my purpose to show you all that it is a mistake to even try to bring them along.
BTW, I should probably tell you dear readers, and I do mean dear, (Do I say that enough?) that I have switched Biblical translations. My old version was the Catholic New American Bible, and alas, on my last trip out of town, I seem to have misplaced (lost) it. After some fruitless searching I decided to simply but regretfully replace it. Sigh! To stay with accuracy of translation as my primary concern, I replaced it with the study version of the New American Standard Bible by Zondervan. A lot of thought went into this decision and I’m sure my wife was ready to slap me for taking forever in Barnes and Noble the other day. Ironic isn’t it that I, militant atheist, had my family wait for me for an hour as I painfully tried to select the best Bible for BABS. Don’t tell my son but I’m pretty sure I never spent this much effort on choosing his name. Shhh!
Anyway, onward we go. So the Hebrews camp at the foot of Sinai and Moses ascends the mountain to talk to God. I’m not sure why Moses must always go up to God on the mountain. Why doesn’t the Lord Genocide come off the mountain, shoot the shit with Moses and the elders, heal a few lepers, kiss a few babies, play some poker and then return to the Mountain for supper? Who knows! He might even get laid. I’m sure from personal experience that that couldn’t hurt his attitude. But whatever the reason, Moses always went to the mountain, and here’s what God had to say.
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on Eagles wings and brought you to myself.
Uh… WTF? Eagles wings? Is he serious? After making Pharaoh pursue them, having them battle the Amalekites, arms upraised the entire time of course, being thirsty, being hungry, and above all, having the plethora of rules, rules, and even more goofy-assed rules, it was more like beating them with sticks until they crawled their servile butts over hundreds of miles of desert. Eagle’s wings, my ass! Eagles wings would have been what a kind God would have done, and I have yet to see how Yahweh fits that description. But wait; there’s more.
Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples for all the earth is mine.
Whew! Quite the deal here. Obey my every whim and follow my every arbitrary rule and you shall be my slave. Oh, shit yeah! Where do I sign up? Finally, at long last, you can get something for nothing. Whoo hooo!
Seriously though, read that again. I see some wisdom there, a way out so-to-speak. To make it clearer let’s put it another way. Don’t follow my whims and don’t obey my every capricious command and you will not be “my possession”, not my slave. Ah yes. That’s way the hell better. In the immortal words of Braveheart, “Freedom!” At long last, the Bible itself shows the way to break this chain of abuse, to free us from the shackles of tyranny . All we have to do is read between the lines and look for the real truths. You know the fundamentalists may actually be on to something here! But please don’t tell them! You know how insufferable they are already.
But then God ends with this beauty.
And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Ugh! Quite the salesman, that Yahweh. The bastard always knows just how to lure me into his cult. I’m just such a sucker that way.
Personally, I can’t imagine much worse than a nation of priests. Well, maybe a nation of astrologers. Or alchemists. Or lawyers… Oh wait, we have that one, already. Never mind.
Do you know why we haven’t actually seen a nation of priests in history? Think about it. We’ve had nations of shop keepers and nations of farmers but never one of priests. Even in a theocracy, the priests are always an elite few. Why is that? If you think in terms of biology, the answer is quite simple; parasites need hosts! That’s it. Period. Someone has to do the real work, food growing, science teaching, ipod building. Groups like priests can only exist in small numbers, for a nation could never support such a completely unnecessary population. If everyone was an imam or monk or priest, the nation would starve to death. I made fun of lawyers a bit ago, but even they have a purpose in our civilized society. But priests acting as a go-between for an imaginary God… Not so much. Too many would burden society to the point of paralysis, even death, and as any good science student knows, it’s never beneficial for a parasite to kill its host, bad form really.
So Moses returns and the people all agree that they will obey God, and Moses takes these words back up. Damn, Moses makes a lot of trips up and down the holy mountain. I’m not sure why, or let me say that I don’t know how the theists rationalize the necessity of Moses, the great communicator, hammering his way up and down the mountain bringing messages like some human texting service.
Looking at the world today, I can, of course, come up with a very plausible explanation. You see, when you can convince the people that God will only speak to you, you are the power, you become the God. Really, how can anyone argue this? I speak for God. That renders all your arguments invalid, Beyotch! Boom! Burned at the stake! Historically, disagreements with the I-speak-for-God brand of lunatic has never proven healthy.
When a priest is the sole link to divinity, how can anyone ever prove a discernible difference between the two. Being the Lord’s sole arbiter makes it so easy to just be the lord. Frankly, isn’t this how cult leaders work today. They control access to a concocted God and use this to control a real people. From Jim Jones to David Koresh to the Ayatollah Khomeini, this technique has proven immensely powerful, and here we have Moses pushing the original Cult, the prototype for all the rest. Here we have Moses blazing what will soon be a well traveled trail. For Darwin’s sake people, don’t drink the Kool-Aid.
God then demands that the people wash and be consecrated. We’ve talked about this before, but why does a being of infinite power and majesty need his followers consecrated? What the hell does that really mean anyway. I understand that it is a kind of purification and getting the body ready for the divine, but with today’s scientific knowledge what are they really purifying? What are they cleaning? The Bible does not say what the procedure actually is but take any of the other known consecration ceremonies and substitute those. Wash their feet and hands. Anoint them with oils. Scratch their left buttock. Anything. In any modern medical sense, except for the washing, these “Activities” are obviously not cleaning anything bodily. Are the readying the soul? How does sprinkling holy water or rubbing holy oils do anything to a supernatural soul?
Why does God need his followers purified or consecrated anyway? Is he worried about getting an infection? Is he a clean freak? No, although I do notice some serious obsessive compulsive traits among the rest of Yahweh’s flaws, the truth is that these are just recipes that cult leaders like Moses make up so people can feel that God is on their side. They are mystical spells whose sole purpose is for making the people think that they are special. They are your recipe, your formula for imaginary salvation. That’s all. Nothing else. There is no Deity at the top of this pyramid, people. Like astrology or prayer, these consecration ceremonies give people the illusion that they are in control, whereas they really have handed over control to the person who claims to speak for God. It fools people into thinking they have gained power when in reality, they have lost it.
They have willingly handed it over to the one who demands it.
Like Ayatollah Khomeini
David Koresh.
Jim Jones.
Moses.
Again, don’t drink the Kool-Aid.*
*This public service announcement has been brought to you by The Blessed Atheist Bible Study.
Remember: religion kills people dead!
A question I have never heard asked concerning the 10 Commandments is this–
Why were the 10 Commandments given to Moses instead of to *Noah*? Humans had been wandering around the earth for at least…Iiiiii don’t know, what, a couple of thousand years by that time, give or take? Wouldn’t everyone have been better off–wouldn’t it have been more *effective* to have given *Noah* the 10 Commandments? After the Flood? Fresh start and all, you know. I mean, maybe that whole Sodom&Gomorrah mess could have been avoided if those people had had some, well….guidance, not to put to fine a point on it.
Or, criminy, why not to Adam & Eve as soon as they started breaking some rules? Maybe Able would have lived to get his own set of Begats published if Cain had had the 10 Commandments hanging at eye-level from every tree. You know, just like those kids at Columbine. We’ve been told that that tragedy could have been *avoided* if the 10 Commandments had been carved into concrete next to the front door. Yeah.
And, parenthetically, I am also led to wonder why, since God (or gods, the original is somewhat murky there) had already mixed the languages at Babel, were the Commandments not made available in every language spoken at that time? Didn’t Yahweh expect *everybody* to behave themselves? Where are the Jehovah’s Witnesses when ya need ‘em?
Amy, it makes one wonder what all those earlier punishments were actually for doesn’t it, seeing as no-one had apparently been told the rules before that.
The whole up and down the mountain routine by Moses looks a lot like ‘don’t look behind the curtain!’ to me. I’d say old Moses was starting to lose his grip on the leadership front, and came up with a god-trump to squash a few rivals with. After all, we’re told that the people had started worshipping ‘false idols,’ rather than follow his creed. I’d imagine that would be intertwined with a loss of political power too.
It’s just so stunningly obvious isn’t it…follow the yellow brick road.
This part of the Bible always reminds me of the Mormon story. Prophet mysteriously receives tablets (edition one), God is displeased, prophet smashes tablets, God gives prophet a new tablets (edition two) with a different bunch of commandments… You get the idea. Why doesn’t God just smash the prophet and miraculously manifest 10 universal commandments on an indestructible tablet?