Archive for the ‘ Exodus ’ Category

Exodus Vs Genesis, A Biblical Cage Match.


You have to love the humor.

Well, well, well.  At long last we have reached the end of that Damned Book.  No. no. Not the Bible just Exodus.  I know that it seems like we’ve been here forever and in reality it has been close.  Having been mired in the quicksand with you, I, too, feel the need to scramble forth into Leviticus and see what other shit-assed crazy rules God has for his Sheeple.  Oh Lord, my kingdom for a change of scenery!   However, I must insist on a brief review of Exodus before we leave.

Exodus, a book review by KKBundy/Waylon Hedegaard ( a work in three parts)

To set forth my feelings I believe a comparison of Exodus to its predecessor is in order.  Contrasting the first two books of the Bible bring out some interesting points.  The first of these is simply how much I loathe Moses.  In our detailed examination of Genesis, I wasn’t terribly in love with Noah and Abraham.  They were human and at times beautifully so, however, they were hardly stalwart moral examples.  But when compared to Moses these people become exemplary.  Abraham, Isaac and the rest of the Genesis crowd generally bumbled their way through life but were only products of their time in terms of morality.  Sure they killed and fought, but their humanity was one I could find attractive if barbaric.

Moses, on the other hand, does not come through the wash smelling quite so rosy.  Moses demands and gets what he wants with many of his arguments ending in the deaths of those involved.  Dissension was betrayal, disagreement – treason.  Although pitiable in his desperate need to stay ahead of everyone, he is not a likable or sympathetic.  Let’s be blunt.  Moses is a nut-less bastard who rules through massive doses of terror and intimidation.  Inventing the same tricks used today by hundreds of modern cult leaders he convinced everyone that their God was a terrible and vengeful god who wallowed in the ability to make humans suffer.  Only he, Moses, could hold back the wrath of God.  Only by listening to him could the Hebrews escape destruction.

Abraham and his descendants were not like this.  Oh, sure.  They’d slaughter an entire village over a daughter’s seduction or sell a brother into slavery, but they were not on a level with Moses.  They were foolish and selfish.  Moses was malignant, a tumor in Hebrew life bending everyone to his terrible power.  I know it’s backwards to say it in the modern world, but Moses was evil.  It’s the only way I can describe him.  Sating his lust for power only seemed to increase it.

I understand his story is not over, but thus far, I’m not impressed.

Second, as to the writing style, while more detailed than Genesis, Exodus seemed to lack a kind of coherency that should have been present.  There were thoughts brought up in the oddest of places as if they were just thrown in at a later date.  Hey, Wait… Do you think???   Seriously, the Bible will be going on about the covenant and suddenly lurch into a non sequitur about “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” Then it will go onto the tabernacle but not before threatening you with death for working on the Sabbath.  It’s like listening to some homeless dude telling a convoluted story who breaks his thought process every minute to scream obscenities at his nonexistent cat.  I constantly fight the urge to look over my shoulder to make sure that he isn’t talking to me.  Creepy.

The third and last point is very much related to the first.  Genesis, while somewhat trite, had some truly beautiful parts to it.  The love Rebekah’s family shared at her parting to marry Isaac was fantastic.  My favorite line of the Bible thus far is their somewhat savage but touching blessing to her as she left. “”Our sister, may you come to be thousands of myriads, and may your offspring inherit the gate of its foes.”  Think of me as a barbarian if you will, but that is a great blessing, and it left me touched.

Nothing similar lies within the pages of Exodus.  While Genesis has a dozen good stories about people struggling to survive, Exodus has a single story of an individual’s quest for power and domination of his tribe.  Genesis could be viewed as stories wherein a flawed humanity live and struggle facing those flaws.  Exodus’ Moses admits no flaws, shows no humanity, suffers no opposition.

The difference between the two books can best be summed up in two sentences.

Genesis is the imperfect saga of a people inventing their god.

Exodus is the sordid tale of a man desperate to become one.

2011
08/19
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Genesis
Myth
Religion
6 comments

The Tabernacle Revisited. Again.


Behold the wonders of God... Um... Well, let's give it a second... Is this thing on?

Exodus 35 to 40.

We all know sometimes I have a tendency to get bogged down in a small section of the Bible and expound on it at length.  I can write a thousand words on a meaning of a single sentence in large part because those certain sentences contain so much of what I find absurd… And, of course, I always find it difficult to shut the hell up.  As any long time reader of this blog will know, a meaningless law, an absurd restriction, or an illogical divine demand can set me off on a rant and keep there until I have exhausted myself.  You people simply have no idea how much work it actually is just to be me.

However, this is not going to be one of those days.

Remember several chapters back when we went over Exodus’ endless, coma-inducing detail on God’s tabernacle instructions?  Well, Exodus finishes with a nearly complete recapitulation of that event.  Yeah. I know.  I just read it thrice.   To be honest it’s not exactly the same.  The first one was how God wanted it built and this one is the Hebrews actually building it.

For example, here is the original in Exodus 25

“They shall construct an ark of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, and one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high. “You shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and you shall make a gold molding around it.  “You shall cast four gold rings for it and fasten them on its four feet, and two rings shall be on one side of it and two rings on the other side of it.  “You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold.  “You shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry the ark with them.  “The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be removed from it.

“You shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you.
”You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide.  “You shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat.  “Make one cherub at one end and one cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat at its two ends. “The cherubim shall have their wings spread upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings and facing one another; the faces of the cherubim are to be turned toward the mercy seat.  “You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony which I will give to you.

And here is the mildly condensed version in Exodus 37.

Now Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood; its length was two and a half cubits, and its width one and a half cubits, and its height one and a half cubits; and he overlaid it with pure gold inside and out, and made a gold molding for it all around.  He cast four rings of gold for it on its four feet; even two rings on one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. He made poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold.  He put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry it.  He made a mercy seat of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide.  He made two cherubim of gold; he made them of hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat; one cherub at the one end and one cherub at the other end; he made the cherubim of one piece with the mercy seat at the two ends.  The cherubim had their wings spread upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings, with their faces toward each other; the faces of the cherubim were toward the mercy seat.

Yeah, I know.  Riveting.  I can’t wait for the movie.

Any brevity gained in the abridged version is lost with the lengthy descriptions of how happy the Hebrews were to give to their God.  They just gave and gave and gave until Moses himself had to put his foot down and say no more.  I am quite sure that’s true.  After Moses had slaughtered three thousand of them just a few days before during the Golden Calf fiasco, I’m quite sure that everyone was quite… um… willing, yeah, willing to give up their valuables.  All that congealing blood on the ground has a rather profound effect on generosity.

Sigh.

Once again a huge section of this book is not about human needs and human desires.  It’s not trying to get humans to be better.  It’s not about the wonders and beauties of science. It doesn’t say a damned thing about the Germ Theory of Disease or Natural Selection or Quantum Mechanics.  There’s not an iota of information that would make people live longer, healthy or more productive lives.  It’s all about glorifying God and by very close proxy, his chief priest, Moses.  No matter what Exodus is talking about the subject matter always returns to glorifying God.  It’s like that person at the dinner party who takes over every conversation and redirects it towards themselves.  Yeah.  I hate those people.

It becomes apparent that people in their ugly and squalid little lives are unimportant.  Their needs are irrelevant.  Humanity’s suffering is insignificant.  It’s God’s needs that are paramount here, his and his alone.  Page after page drip with his demands.  For example, his Sabbath must be observed as the second verse in Exodus 35 states so clearly and cruelly.

“For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to the Lord; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.”

How sweet.  God brought us the weekend… under pain of execution.

People starved all over the world.  Sentient beings old and young died of terrible diseases.  Pain, suffering and sorrow ruled life utterly and what is God doing about it?  Healing them?  Teaching them medicine or crop rotation?  Making things better?  Fuck no!  He’s demanding his children build him a house.  With all the power he is reputed to have he does nothing about the condition of humanity but uses that power and the fear it generates to glorify himself.  Because to this God and his biggest fan that is what is supremely important; fear, glory and power.

Oh sure, Exodus has a few verses about protecting widows, a few more about strangers and others on the solving of property disputes.  If taken as a whole it’s three or four pages added together.  Contrast that with the 20 or so involved just with building and sanctifying the Tabernacle, a house whose sole purpose it to demand subservience and reverence.  Why?  What other purpose could it actually serve? It was built to increase the awe of the people and keep them in thrall.  This is the purpose.  This is the raison d’être.

Oh, I’m sure it also gave Moses a chubby, but let’s not dwell on that now.

It’s so obvious to anyone who really looks that in the church of that time, maintaining and increasing power ranked far above easing the suffering of the weak and helpless.  Back then God was only interested in his glory and the subservience of his worshipers.

But the real question you have to ask yourself is this.  With fundamentalist churches leading the way to cut spending for the poor, fighting ferociously against any kind of universal health care, screaming against medically necessary abortion, cutting taxes to the richest Americans and supporting corporate interests above any concerns with mere human beings, are today’s churches’ all that different?

For many of the purest and most fundamental Christian Churches, I think not.  The difference here is that the ancient Hebrews couldn’t have known any better.

We should.

I grow very weary of people whose entire message boils down to “I speak for God, and he, too, thinks you’re an asshole.”

2011
08/16
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Myth
Religion
5 comments

Moses’ Shiny Face


Moses with your face so bright, won't you guide my face tonight.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”  So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

For 40 days and nights Moses rewrites the Ten Commandments.  40 days!  It was ten freaking commandments.  What the hell was he doing?  Inventing the script?  Hasn’t he already done this once before? And of course, to add to the myth he did it all without eating or drinking.  The chapter says nothing about pissing, or jacking off but I’ll just assume he also felt little need for these mere human requirements.  Myself… I would last more than a few days in any of these categories without a help of a deep coma, but then again I’ll never be the legend our friend Moses is.

It came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses’ hand as he was coming down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him.  So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers in the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke to them.  Afterward all the sons of Israel came near, and he commanded them to do everything that the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai.  When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.  But whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded, the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would replace the veil over his face until he went in to speak with Him.

Um… yeah.  Moses of the shiny face.  That’s… cool.  I guess.

But…

I could go into the whole shiny face phenomena speaking endlessly (You know me) on the absurdities of that particular manifestation of God, but… no.  There is something else that has been pecking at the back of my skull for months now.   The shiny face is just a symptom of the underlying problem.  You see I’ve become fascinated with how Moses continually has to portray himself as the biggest badass on the planet.  The wonders he relates are seldom the miracles of God alone, but rather they are always presented as God’s power shining through Moses making it implicit that Moses is a necessary part of this formula. He is constantly finding it necessary to claim he is more important than anyone at anytime.  I know this is hard to understand but in these times, when he’s never satisfied, when he’s constantly looking inflate his own image, is when he seems the most real, the most human.  Not that I believe a thing written about his deeds. No.  No.  Decidedly, no.  He remains as full of shit as always, but rather his expression of humanity lay in his need to write such tripe, the need to be superior, the absolute need to somehow matter.

I am not unfamiliar with this idea.  Through high school I had a friend who was what I can only classify as a pathological liar.  I’ll call him Mike.  Any story I heard someone tell in his presence, no matter how embellished, was always topped by one even more outlandish.  Nothing was too much for credulity.  He told every lie like it happened to him yesterday, every story like his life depended on it.  Forced by previous lies and a need to top them, the stories became more and more absurd until nothing of what he said could be believed.  There was simply no end.  Stories of beating up would be muggers in the neighboring town would be followed up with one of him jumping off the back of a snowmobile and killing a coyote with his bare hands. These are actual examples, but there are hundreds of others equally ridiculous.  The odd thing was that no matter how tall the tale, Mike always seemed to believe his own lies.  Toward the end of our friendship he was the only one who did.  Most friends fell away tired of the lies.  My own feelings for him ranged from genuine affection to a churning contempt, but all of mixed with pity.  Pity for he felt compelled to present himself as better than everyone at everything.  The feelings of inferiority that must lie at the root of such a terrible need must be immense.

All through Exodus, Moses has reminded me strongly of Mike.  The difference being one of success.  Mike faded as he grew older.  Never able to stop lying, the best he could manage was an improved ability to hide it from those he’d just met…  For a while, at least.  Fired from several jobs, divorced from more than one wife, he has, sadly, dropped off my radar completely.  I do not know what he is doing now, but I still feel a great deal of empathy for his plight.

Moses, on the other hand, seems to have done quite well for himself.  In a more credulous age with a better ability to lie, he succeeded where Mike failed.  He crawled to the top of his people and somehow, through a vast series of improbable historical accidents, managed to survive history’s rampant amnesia.

He’s a bastard.  No argument.  He’s a liar, conniver and murderer beyond a doubt.  He has done terrible things to maintain his eminent position and my feelings toward him range widely throughout the disgust, contempt and hatred category.

But…

But through it all, from time to time, I catch just a glimpse of Mike in Moses, a being wracked by such feelings of inferiority that he’s felt compelled to make up a countering mythology, a legend where he’s God’s right hand man.  Feeling worthless in his own eyes, he’s compensated by making himself a virtual god in other’s.

And then I feel pity, a terrible empathy for someone who can never be what he has convinced everyone else he is.

Real.

2011
08/15
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
11 comments

Renewing The Covenant or How Not To Cook Baby Goat.


A realistic view of the "laws" of Moses

Exodus 34, the rest of the story.

Then God said, “Behold, I am going to make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform miracles which have not been produced in all the earth nor among any of the nations; and all the people among whom you live will see the working of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am going to perform with you.

First, does Yahweh always have to be such a douche bag?  Oh, pardon me, “Douche Bag.”  I hate to not show the proper respect while discussing the mighty one.  Just out of curiosity, haven’t you always wondered why fear is such a good thing in the Bible, a God fearing’ people, for instance.  God, by all accounts, loves for us to be afraid, pissing in our undies terrified.  Why?  Any  devout Christian with answers to the riddle should write them on the back of a brand new iPad 2 and mail it to The Blessed Atheist, Bismarck, ND 58501.  Be sure to charge it up first… and don’t bother with the Bible apps.  I already have four.

Ahem!  Back on subject, Moses is on the mountain getting a backup copy of the Ten Commandments. You remember, replacing those he broke in the sordid Golden Calf affair, but before the real work begins God demands a renewal of his covenant with the Hebrews.  Apparently, their lease is almost up and Yahweh’s worried some other god may come in and snatch them up at a good price.

So they renew their covenant.  Thinking on this covenant, I find that it bothers me more and more.  Simply put, it’s not fair.  Not even close!  Personally, I think the Israelites are getting a divine screwing, but then again I think that about all religions, but this seems particularly bad.  You see a covenant is a contract, a deal, a trade for services of a sort.  In it both sides agree to certain actions and are bound by that agreement.  But for it to be a fair deal both sides should be getting something of equal value, a quid pro quo so to speak.  Do they?  You decide.

Now, God’s part of this deal is to give to his people the promised land , a land flowing with milk and honey. Wow! Really!  Yeah baby! Now that may seem like a fine deal to the uninformed, for at first glance who wouldn’t want that?  After all, real estate deals have been happening for millennia and taken at face value it seems like a good one.  But the problem is that Yahweh never quite gets around to actually giving it to them.  They’ve been waiting for centuries and here they still are  wandering through the forsaken lands.  That and has anyone here actually seen pictures of Israel?  undoubtably, it’s a beautiful country, but milk and honey?  By Yahweh’s jagged anal fissures, it’s a freaking desert .  Milk and honey?  Hell!  Most people would settle for simple rain.

Oh, Yahweh talks the talk, making promises right and left, but where is his fucking walk?  Admit it, people. By this time he should have certainly shown the Hebrews the goddamned money. They have suffered for it.  But after centuries of waiting what do they really have?  Shit!  Oh wait, let me correct myself here.  They still have a batshit crazy leader dragging them randomly about the desert on a large-scale never-ending family vacation in the world’s worst station wagon.  40 years worth of zigzagging back and forth to see such sights as Arabia’s largest pile of goat shit, and hey!  Look over there, kids!  It’s another rock.  And no “vacation” would be complete without dad pulling over the caravan and killing several hundred children for playing with a Golden Calf in the back seat.  This they have.  But any of them would have been overjoyed to trade all that god-given wonder for 40 acres and a mule.

Shit!  I’d have traded all that for a used stick of gum… Sugarfree.

“Oh,” you say, “but the Hebrews do eventually get their promised land, don’t they?”  Yes… In a manner of speaking.  When the Hebrews do finally get to the land of milk and honey, they run into difficulty.  God’s gift comes with a serious infestation of Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. This place is absolutely crawling with them. Does God call the exterminator?  The sheriff? A moving company?   No!  In other words, when God does “hand it over”( A phrase synonomous with the Hebrews finally stumbling out of the desert  into a land that was slightly less desert.), there are a few complications, namely the inhabitants who are presently living there.  Sure, God swears that he will drive all these peoples forth, but when it finally does come down to it, the Hebrews are forced to battle for every inch of it themselves.  As I’ve said previously, generosity cannot be based on telling people to steal something from others.  Neither can morality.  Go figure!

So the Hebrews get a great deal of empty promises and in return what do they give up?  Truly?  Damned near everything.  Heart and soul, they’re in for it now.  For this mythological homeland, they give themselves into a slavery as arbitrary and capricious as any known.  Look at this smattering of bullshit they have to follow.

“Watch yourself that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a snare in your midst.  “But rather, you are to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice, and you might take some of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters might play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods.

And this “Jealous” is the father of the Prince of Peace?  Yeah… OK…  Lord of breaking shit into pieces would be more accurate.  You just gotta admire the inherent selfishness of this commandment, though.  If someone’s living on the land that you think you want, attack them.  Take it.  Don’t compromise.  Don’t abide. Just smash them.  What better divine excuse for violence and theft do you need?  The answer to the ancient question of “Can’t we all just get along?” must be “Shit no!  Don’t get along with anyone. Kill ‘em. Break ‘em. Push ‘em out.” I’m always fascinated in how modern Christians spin this.  Where is the “love everyone as your brother?” ideal.

But in truth, passages like these have been one reason why Christianity has been so reluctant to throw away the Old Testament completely.  Peace is fine as it goes, but sometimes you’ll get a lot further ahead by some ass-kicking, theft and genocide.  Anyone who doubts this truth really needs to read more history.  We may not like it, but on one level that’s what history is, a vast panorama of butchery and genocide followed by the victor living merrily off the vanquished’s  goods and lands.  Of course, this is usually followed by a thanksgiving celebration to their god for gifting them this new, freshly fertilized land.  Hooray to  God for allowing us to kill whoever is in our way.  Might makes right and it always has.

And there’s this:

“You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread, nor is the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover to be left over until morning. “You shall bring the very first of the first fruits of your soil into the house of the Lord your God.
”You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

“Yeah… Um… don’t mix peas and carrots and… do the dishes.  And of course, give the priests the first of everything.”  More arbitrary rules.  The last one about the goat we’ve heard before, but twice-baked Christ, why make such a big deal out of it?  Thus far, we’ve seen as many rules against this form of cooking as against homosexuality so why don’t we see people raging against this on Fox News?  It’s right there, plain as the Neanderthal brain in Sean Hannity’s head.  To my knowledge Glenn Beck hasn’t done a single raving lunatic-inspired show about this subject.  Doesn’t he follow the Bible?  Isn’t he a Christian.  Get the chalk boards out Glenn.  The world needs you. this evil must be abolished.

Honestly, don’t these seem like they’re just random directives whose only purpose is to show who’s in charge?  And like most other occultist arcana, the more off-the-wall it is, the more power it is believed to have.

Sadly, these restrictions also seemed designed to be very difficult to follow thus giving Moses a constant opportunity to chastise, punish or kill those who do not.   Pulled blithely out of Moses’ ass, the regulations put the Hebrews in such a desperate strait in that they must obey yet are doomed to fail.  Like modern Fundamentalists today, the Hebrews are forced to follow such random rules and senseless restrictions, that they ultimately stagger from one failing to the next, failings which are never the creator’s fault.  With the overpowering need by the priests to claim their God is perfect, the blame for any mistake and suffering must always rest in the creation.  Like God somehow made us all perfect, and we alone fucked it up after that.  Every single one of us!  Bar none!

A perfect God creates a perfect creation which then, consistently and without exception, turns themselves into the most screwed up beings on the planet.  Yeah.  That’s logical.

In addition, the poor Israelites are saddled with a perpetually unfulfilled covenant while having to abide by capricious laws.  It’s like having a rich uncle who swears you will be the heir to his fortune when he dies.  So you spend you entire life caring for him, enduring his rages, wiping his ass, and changing out his colostomy bag, but in the end the son of a bitch lives to be 106 and leaves everything to his Chihuahua.  Great covenant!

Can you say “bullshit,” boys and girls?

I knew you could.

2011
08/14
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
9 comments

Beautiful Balls Of Biblical Bullshit ©


I saw these and just couldn't resist. Now we can finally determine who would win the final battle.

Exodus 34

I’m not bragging or anything, but people, this next part is going to be great.  As a Biblical critic working my way systematically through the damnable book I am stuck with whatever dull and meaningless material the particular section I’m going through has to offer.  Far too often useless Bible babble goes on incessantly as with God’s never-ending instruction on how to build his temple.  It’s not that I can’t make fun of it, but when the same bullshit goes on for pages I feel I am telling the same joke over and over with increasingly unsettling results like a child constantly screaming “Knock! Knock!”  This can get tedious.  Painfully Tedious!

Now don’t get me wrong. Many other times the Bible is interesting even fascinating; that is not to say I find it a great moral guide with impeccable logic and perfect ethics.  Whoo… Yeah.  Damn, just thinking about that made me laugh so hard I hurt myself.  Whoo! Let me catch my breath… OK.  What I mean to say is that it is often interesting in that I can poke its flaccid and limp logic with a sharp stick and watch it squirm apathetically out of the way.  These are the good parts, the parts I enjoy.  Nothing I like better than the Bible and a sharp stick.  But now and then come the parts that I live for.  These are the chapters and verses that are so laden with irony and contradiction that I do not understand how anyone not suffering from either congenital idiocy or a traumatic brain injury cannot realize how absurd it is.  These are the parts I love.

And people, here we are at one of those Beautiful Balls of Biblical Bullshit. (© 2011 KKBundy)

Moses, having smashed the original copy of the Ten Commandments in a huge hissy-fit over a certain Golden Calf affair, now desperately finds himself in need of a new set of tablets.  Personally, I understand this for what society could survive long without constantly gazing upon admonishments to not kill each other or to not sleep with your neighbor’s wife.  Myself, I simply can recount all the times I’ve held a huge rock high over the head of my fellow human ready to smash his or her brains to pudding when, suddenly, I glanced up and saw the Ten Commandments. Every time this happens I’m like “Shit! What the hell was I thinking?  This is just wrong!”  At times of these ethical temptations, I find it most relaxing to go over and satisfy myself on all the slave women I kidnapped after slaughtering their husbands and family.  Damned if I don’t love being righteous!

At any rate Moses needs to find the bronze age version of Kinkos and run off another copy of that fantastically valuable set of rules.  So God tells him to carve out another set of blank tablets and meet him, again, on the mountain and, again, don’t bring anyone. So Moses takes his two stone tablets up the mountain to meet the Lord.  This is where it gets good.

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;  who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

If there is a more fucked up sentence in the Bible, I have yet to run across it, and to me, this sums up all nutless douchebaggery that is the Great Lord Genocide.  How do we know God is loving and compassionate?  Why he tells us so right here.  And if your have the temerity to think otherwise, he will bust a cap in your ass… And your children’s asses… and your grandchildren…, and possibly one or two other generations depending how he’s feeling that day.  In the words of the kind and gracious Ming the Merciless,  ”All creatures shall make merry…Under pain of Death!”

I particularly like the “slow to anger” part.  This is a guy who just condoned the killing of three thousand people for the terrible crime of… making a statue.  Making a fucking statue!  Thank Baal none of the Hebrews took up oil painting or he would have wiped them all out. And how can any being possibly forgive “iniquity, transgression and sin” but leave no guilty parties unmolested?  Isn’t the nature of forgiveness that you do not seek retribution?  If I publicly forgive someone for their crimes against me but then gut shoot them with a 12-gauge, people are going to justifiably doubt my sincerity.  Does he forgive them after he butchers them but before sending them to hell?  Oh wait… Hell hasn’t been invented yet.  I guess not.

And someone please tell me what the children and grandchildren could possibly have to do with this so-called crime?  And don’t give that shitball of an argument that I can’t possibly understand perfect justice and therefore, have no right to judge God.  Think about this for a minute.  If someone kills my wife and I ask myself  that common ethical question, “What would Jesus do?”  the answer would not only be to hunt the bastard down and kill him, but Jesus (Remember that he and God are one and the same) would then slaughter the man’s kids and grandkids.  What a dickhead.   This jackass has all the graciousness of an acid enema.

When theists wonder why atheists find the God of the Old Testament such a sociopathic bastard, we should quote them this passage. I am sure it would do no good.  Their ability to spin doctor every irony and contradiction by cherry picking their way around the Bible is legendary.

Then Moses does what he does best.

Remember last time God said this to Moses, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way.”  Now Moses hastens to bow low toward the earth and worship. He said, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession.”

Moses is again offering the Hebrews to God as his bitches and this makes God happy because he wants everyone to be his bitch.  Nothing God likes better than his people submitting and humiliating themselves.  Moses, by his own admission, appears to be the only person who can calm the Lord Genocide down and stop him from killing everyone, and the only way he can do this is by enslaving the entire nation, but hey, what’s a guy to do?  Yahweh is undeniably a psycho killing machine that needs his ego stroked and Moses is the only one that can do that and, therefore, the only person who can save the Jews from their loving Lord.

Yeah, I know.  I know! As I have pointed out before there is another way of looking at this.  Much of the writing in Exodus is simply Moses convincing all his people that he is the only man who can save them, and for him to do that they will have to obey his every whim utterly.  Moses spends so much of his energy not persuading Yahweh to spare his chosen people but persuading those people that he, Moses, is the only one who has that power.  Moses becomes invaluable because he has forced people to believe that he is invaluable. It’s a great trick.

This is how all cult leaders work.  It’s an easy path to a great deal of power. When one speaks for God, believers must listen, must obey.  It’s the only path to salvation.

My answer to this is a simple equation.  Bear with me.  Moses = God’s best friend, and God will do as Moses asks.  God = God + great power over believers because they believe. Moses as the only person that can control God is thereby powerful. But… God is imaginary.  The only easy way to use imaginary numbers is to cancel them out.

Moses + God =  Power.  God = 0

Moses = Power

Although not strictly mathematical, it follows that Moses = God. Moses was nothing if not innovative.

It’s kind of a Pythagorean Theorem for cult leaders, or perhaps, a recipe for being a jack off.

I report. You decide.

2011
06/12
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Myth
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
27 comments

Moses and Yahweh, Lost In Translation.


Moses, now having The Lord Genocide’s precise instructions on how to live and more importantly, how to build great altars and temples to He Who Shall Not Be Named ( I am just Shittin’ ya. It’s God.) is instructed by God that he should move on. Unfortunately, like a cuckolded lover, God is still pouting from the Hebrews affair with that Golden Hussy from the last few chapters. We all know the old saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” which — I’ll try to be diplomatic here — may or may not be true, except for God. No one can throw quite such a dumb-assed hissy fit quite like Our Lord God when people aren’t falling all over themselves in adulation. That shit-ass takes every perceived slight way too seriously and gets worked up over the smallest of things. Eye just one golden bovine while walking through the mall and Bam! All the sudden, he wants to kill you and everyone you know. Shit dude, lighten up a bit. I was just looking for Baal’s sake! It’s not like you caught me in a Motel 6 rubbing oil on her udders.

So God wants the Hebrews to move on. I’m not really sure why as he doesn’t actually want them to get to the Promised land for another 39 years, but nevertheless, he demands they move and wander around for another few decades, and they do. Have you ever noticed how Yahweh’s not into just giving gifts but instead makes people suffer for everything they get? So they go, but he refuses to go with them. I told you he was a pouty little bitch. Just look.

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, and I might destroy you on the way.”

Now I’m not sure I know what that means but it sure sounds to me like Yahweh has a bit of a temper, and like a mother who has had a very bad day, he doesn’t trust himself around his children. “If I gotta stop this caravan, your all going to be sorry!” You ever think that there are some beings, divine or not, who should never be parents? This entire concept is reinforced by the next line.

When the people heard this sad word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are an obstinate people; should I go up in your midst for one moment, I would destroy you. Now therefore, put off your ornaments from you, that I may know what I shall do with you.’” So the sons of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

So not only does he doubt his self control– notice how it changed from “might” to “would” –but takes away their ipods and jewelry. Apparently, he’s using that old parental maxim handed down through the ages, If dad’s pissed, everyone suffers… and perhaps, dies! His feeling are hurt and he’s not ashamed to let everyone know… then threaten to kill them for it. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for getting things off your chest, but that seems to take it a wee bit too far. Seldom do my crying jags end in bloody rampages.  Well, um… Yeah, seldom.

I’m just sayin’.

What we need here is a kind of Divine Prozac, a Mega Marijuana, or perhaps, a Holy Hashish, anything to get Yahweh in a better mood. Hell, while we’re dreaming lets’ get him something for all those obsessive-compulsive, bi-polar and schizophrenic traits too. Wow! That’d be the drug to end all drugs. It’d make heroin look like a placebo.

The only problem is that with that asshole, I’m sure it have to be administered hourly… as a suppository.

Any volunteers?

Anyway, Moses has built a special tent where he meets God on a regular basis. This is a particularly funny part.

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp. And it came about, whenever Moses went out to the tent, that all the people would arise and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent. Whenever Moses entered the tent,the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent; and the LORD would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent. Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

I think this passage says much about Moses and the writer’s need to show him back in control. The rebellion is over, beyatches.  Moses won.  The people all obey him for he is the only one who remains in God’s favor. Don’t believe me? Just ask him. God actually listens to him. Somedays, he and The Lord Genocide just sit around shooting the shit and getting high. “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.” Yeah just like a friend… Who appears in the form of a cloud… and who’s mere visage can be fatal… and who regularly threatens to kill everyone you know. Yeah, I got a lot of friends like that.

The old saying has never been more true. With a friend like Yahweh, who needs enemies.

BTW, anyone else notice the young man who would not leave Moses tent. Can you say Boytoy? I knew you could.  Seemingly, Ted Haggard was just following an ancient tradition.

But to further the idea that Moses and the priesthood in general are absolutely essential, Moses is constantly finding it necessary to intercede for the Hebrews to change God’s malevolent little mind for Mister Pouty Lip is constantly wanting to kill them. The writer of Exodus tries so very hard to show how essential the priesthood is. Shit like the following litters the pages of Exodus.

Then he (Moses) said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. “For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?” The LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.”

Sheesh! I know that the common consensus today is that Exodus was not written by Moses himself and was likely written much later, but some of this positively smacks of a great degree of self-aggrandizement as if Moses was padding out his celestial resume.  1354 BCE — Became God’s best friend.   1356 BCE — Cured cancer  1357.  BCE — Saved the Hebrews… Again!  These pages are so full of conceit that a part of me screams that a man named Moses must have had something to do with it’s writing. A chorus of voices in the back of my head demand that this asshole has pulled off the greatest scam of all-time. Just read the self serving propaganda through these chapters and judge for yourself. It reminds me of all that shit Stalin used to personally write for Pravda regarding himself.

“Should you feel tired at a time when a man should not be tired, think of him — of Stalin – and work will become easier. Should you be at a loss as to how you should act, think of him — of Stalin – and your decision will be the right one.”

Yeah. When I have a difficult personal decision to make I always use the old “What Would Stalin Do?” wisdom which, of course, mostly boiled down to “Kill the fuckers!” Then again is it any different from using the wisdom of the incestuous son of another mass murderer? At any rate according to themselves, both Stalin and Moses made life better… um?; they both had violent purges of dissidents; they both ruled by terror and fear and they both thought they talked to God. That is Stalin thought he was god and talked to himself in the shower every morning, and Moses thought he was God’s best friend which, when referring to imaginary beings, comes out to be pretty much the same thing.

It brings to mind other possible similarities. Most people are aware that Stalin is not his birth name. He was born with the fine sounding handle of Yosif Vissarionovich Dzugashvili. Understandably, he realized early that to go far in politics and genocide, he needed a name that didn’t sound like someone pissing on a fence. He required something that would bolster his image, something manly, “steel”. Stalin is Russian for steel, the Man of Steel. In light of their other similarities, I’m sure that “Moses” is really an archaic Hebrew word for “He with the Large Dick”.

That or it could mean “I am a huge Prick”.

Translations can be a bitch.

2011
05/18
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Myth
Religion
57 comments

Moses, Aaron And The Great Golden Calf Caper; Liars, Fukwits And Divine Blowup Dolls


Here we are at the not-so-happy end of what shall be known as the Golden Calf Affair so let’s sum up the story so far.  Moses is gone for forty days making up God’s rules, but the people get all God-horny in his absence so Aaron creates a perfectly acceptable substitute out of some cheap baubles, a sort of inflatable doll of a god, much like the other one.  Everyone is joyous… Except Yahweh, of course.  He is set to kill everyone for this sleight to his dignity but is persuaded by Moses to change his mind and will now proceed to merely hold a grudge against the people he adores above all others.  Yep, that’s about it, the entire plot with all its contradictory absurdities intact, the whole enchilada, one big steaming pile of sacred cow shit… But now with raisins!

So Moses, peeved that his people have turned from the one true Lord Genocide, charges down the hill stone tablets under his arm.  He is determined to set things right which means, of course, to get himself back into power ASAP.  As he approaches camp his servant hears the sounds of battle but Moses corrects him.  ”It is not the sound of the cry of triumph, Nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat; But the sound of singing I hear.”  The people are partying down getting to know their new god who is obviously a bit more fun than the old one.  Yahweh was always a bit of a downer at the keg.   But a grand party it was right up until Moses charges in, throws the Ten Commandments at their feet and rages around the camp.  He grinds the golden calf to dust, sprinkles the dust into water and then forces everyone to drink.  Party’s over! Dad’s home.

Aaron being the whiny little shit he is tries to wheedle his way out of the blame.  “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil.  ”For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”

Yeah! Sure it did.  Walked right out!  Personally, I think this was a power play of Aaron’s. He was the closest witness to how Moses created a god and coaxed everyone into belief and subordination.  Aaron was well aware of the power that could be gained by simple but crafty manipulations of human emotion so I think that this was Aaron’s attempted coup, but the truth is apparent that Aaron even with Moses’ deceitful example before him simply wasn’t clever enough to pull this off.  The Great Golden Calf Affair was the attempted overthrow of a liar by a fukwit, but like rocks versus scissors, liars will beat fukwits any day. If only the fukwits could learn that immutable fact the world would be a calmer albeit duller place.

But Exodus 32/25-29 is the most interesting part.  Read this quite carefully.  In fact, go back and read the entirety of chapter 32.  The chapter tells much about the nature of religion and God in society.

 Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control–for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies–then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him.  He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’”  So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.  Then Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves today to the Lord–for every man has been against his son and against his brother–in order that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.”

Aaron had lost control of the people.  They were not out of control as in running around like a bunch of psychopaths but were out of Moses’ control. Aaron in his bid for power had screwed up Moses’ well honed and terrified machine.  The people were now off thinking for themselves, not being rational, mind you, but not allowing Moses to dictate their every belief and value anymore.  This was intolerable.  So he gathers the sons of Levi and commands them  ”Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’”   Of course, the sons of Levi obey and rush through the camp killing brothers, friends and neighbors; 3000 people in all. Well that ended the party, let me tell you!  The whole of this slaughter was for the simple and innocent sin of making a statue and paying homage to it, of marching to the beat of a different drum, of doing something “else”.  As you can see, the Bible’s not exactly into diversity… Or mercy.

But then Moses ensnares deep into his web all those who took part in the murders.   Then Moses said, “Dedicate yourselves today to the Lord–for every man has been against his son and against his brother–in order that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.”  This is the most fascinating and revealing line in the Bible so far.  Throw yourselves on the Lord Genocide so he will bless you for you have killed your kin in his name.  Those who have murdered now have no where else to go.  They have all committed atrocities on sons and brothers and neighbors and will never be fully welcomed back into their communities.  How could they be?  They may be the victors but they’ll be alone on their blood covered hill. They must stick together now, for apart they are outcasts.  This horrendous crime has tied them together more tightly that anything else Moses could have done.  This abomination forever bound the assassins to their leader, the bloody sheep to the bloody shepherd, the guilty to the guiltier.

Regarding the whole coup, it’s likely that a people who have been wandering the desert for months following a schizophrenic dick-head just may have been interested in a change of leadership.  It’s a fucking desert for a lack-of-Christ’s sake. After barely surviving the whims and caprice of a tyrannical and insane shitbag and his God.  After a constant flirtation with exhaustion, dehydration and starvation, people were likely ready to follow anyone who would lead them out of the desert.  Even a golden calf!  They were ready for a change, but Moses was not, and like tyrants after him Moses knew that enough spilled blood, especially the right blood, would silence the opposition for a long time.  So he set his most loyal followers to butchering their neighbors and friends, their sons and fathers all in the name of their God.  Their hands dripped with the life of their kin and now the only people who could look past the enormity of their crime was their fellow conspirators.

As I have said for months now, Moses as a cult leader knew how to keep his grip on power in the Hebrew nation. Kill the opposition and then claim God’s wants it that way.  Terror and death a well-used formula performed effectively throughout the ages but never surpassed. Moses is the undisputed master of tyrannical cult control.  He has no equal.

But he’s still a shitbag.  No equal for this either either. His actions reek of douchebaggery and nutless puttpluggery, and has set the stage for the thousands of pogroms to come against people of differing faiths.  He gave sacred credence to the slaughter of the dissidents.  The first religious civil war was over.  Diversity and variation lost.  Critical thinking and reason were soundly defeated.  The enforced religious monotheism created a rigid and linear thought structure.  Thou shall not deviate.  Being different is a capital offense.

We see the same thing today around the world.  People killing or oppressing others for the simple crime of not believing exactly as they do.  No matter how similar the belief systems, it’s so easy to find a single difference and point to it as critical.  I’m convinced that if the entire world was forced to be a single religion, Christian, Muslin or whatever, we’d soon be preaching against and oppressing others because they’re not Protestant.  Then because they’re not Baptist.  Then because they’re not Westboro Baptist.  Then because they don’t sit on the left side of the church.  Then…

The hierarchical state of humanity requires that we arrange ourselves into a pecking order and then try to claw our way to the top of that order both individually and as a group. Our status within these groups large or small, is what the evolutionary need to find mates has bred us for.   This selfishness and need to be seen as better than others is an integral part of being human.  This is the very essence of the worst of what it means to be us.  Created by a perfect God, my ass!

One of my problems with so many philosophical and religious arguments is that they make rules and guidelines for us based on what they want us to be, not how we really are.  Though many philosophies may be dangerously utopian and prone to collapse in real world situations, people seldom go out and butcher others for those beliefs.  Only when philosophies reach the point of religion, are people overtly willing to kill their fellows.  Following religion or making our current philosophy into a near religion makes terrible acts possible because then we think we are doing the right thing.  We think we are saving the world.  Murdering jackasses rarely think of themselves as such and even more seldom want to be seen in that light. Even murdering jackasses want to be heroes. From Stalin and Hitler to the cross-bearing destroyers of the Incas and Aztecs, from the slaughter and enslavement of Africans to the decimation of the Native Americans, from one religious war to any other religious war, the worst acts in our history have been committed by people who convinced themselves they were doing the right thing. They were convinced they were saving the world. And here in Exodus is the inception of that concept.  Moses really did lead the way.

When someone is willing to kill and oppress people to force them to believe in the One True Thing, there are few limits to what horrors they will inflict.

Adding God into the mix, removes even those.

2011
05/14
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Religion
13 comments

The Golden Calf And Divine Schizophrenia


Adequate substitutes for God: a golden calf, a pigs head and scrapings from the cat box.

Ah!  After long and fruitless searches through the deserts of Exodus, we have come upon our promised land.  No, it’s not the promised land of the Hebrews for that is a few books further along, but it is our promised land, a chapter in the Bible that is actually interesting.  I know!  I know!  After that long list of temple building and other excrement, I, too, thought we’d never get here, but Exodus 33 is a real story with a plot and everything.  Oh, never fear, it’s still quite ridiculous with fantastically twisted logic and plot holes we could throw Aaron through.  But as any long time reader of this blog knows, these are the parts I most enjoy, parts we can point at and laugh, parts in which it defies common sense to believe, parts that require one to only pull their head out of their ass a little way before they come to a WTF moment.  Damn, are we going to have fun.

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”  Aaron said to them, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”  Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”  Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”

Allow me to paraphrase. Moses has been on the mountain for forty days making up shit and learning how to chisel  stone tablets… um, I mean, of course, talking with God.  Meanwhile his people, bored without him ask Aaron to make them another God for as every one knows that when your first imaginary friend proves inept, just make another out of what ever you have lying around. Aaron takes everybody’s gold and fashions a calf out of it.  Everyone gives offerings and a great time ensues. Sound about right?  Most of us have heard this story before, myself included, but have never really thought about what this honestly means.

So let’s think about this now. The Hebrews have worshipped Yahweh since their release from Egypt.  Great miracles were supposedly preformed by his priests and terrible plagues were laid upon Egypt proving his magnificence as a deity, yet as soon as Moses is gone for a few days, they all turn rapidly to another god to lead them from here on.  Yeah… Yahweh was so powerful and magnificent that as soon as they are alone for a few minutes, the Hebrews manufacture a different God out a few baubles and proceed to merrily worship it?  Even more interesting is that they seem quite as convinced of the divinity of this hand-made statue as they were with “real” Yahweh. WTF!   By left testicle of Christ, they supposedly just saw Yahweh in all is smoky glory on the mountain.  How in the hell were they convinced of this new god’s authority so easily.  Could they really see so little difference between the real Yahweh and the false Calf?  Allow me to say that judges of character, they were not.

Well, there is one perfectly plausible answer here, so let me state this bluntly.  The only reasonable way to look at this is that Yahweh’s actual majesty was so pathetically inadequate that without Moses, the demagogue, around to browbeat his cult into obedience, God himself could be replaced without a problem…  by a fucking statue!  Really?  The great and mighty lord God can convincingly be usurped by a rough carving of a young goddamned cow in a few days?  You’d think that if he had actually been baddass enough and truly proved to all the people that he was The God with all those miracles, they would be reluctant to piss him off, but… not so much. Obviously, he never made much of an impression on the Hebrews, and his “miracles” were even paltrier than we had first imagined.  Moses’ God was and is all smoke and mirrors piled with bullshit.  What a wanker!

But now he’s pissed!  How dare a people worship some other wanker God in place of his superior wankerosity.  For this slight, God, the ever merciful, tells Moses that he will destroy the Hebrews for their sin.

 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. ”Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation.”

If the Hebrews refuse to follow his every whim then he will annihilate them.  Yeah… Isn’t that how everyone raises their children?  Unfortunately, the old “Obey my every whim or you’re dead,” path to a righteous life is well trodden. But Moses doesn’t want the destruction of his people. Who in the hell is he going to push around if the Hebrews are no more?

 Then Moses entreated the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ”Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people. ”Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’”  So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.

God changed his mind… What?  God, all-seeing, all-knowing and perfect, flies off the handle and is going to kill everyone, but then Moses puts him through a little anger management therapy and God changes his mind. Changes his mind?  Will someone please tell me how perfection changes its mind?  Was he out of control?  Can perfection fly into a rage? Did he actually forget his promise to Abraham?  Did he make a mistake in judgement?  My paltry moral compass would indicate that flying into a rage and wanting to kill all the people you professed to love just a few weeks before is certainly a mistake in judgement, but Perfection doesn’t make mistakes.  That’s the definition of perfection — never ever ever making a mistake!  So how did Moses, a mere human, persuade his God, the perfect, not to act out the genocide he had set his mind to?  It’s a puzzle to be sure.

Obviously, I suspect, nay, insist that down deep Moses and his God are the same person, a sort of divine schizophrenia.  As with all religions, the voices Moses hears in his head are simply his own.  Moses’ God is an echo of Moses himself. But isn’t this the basis of all religion, an internal and wholly invisible voice telling us what we want to hear.

Not always, I understand.  But those two voices, the angelic and the devilish, we tend to imagine on opposite shoulders are really just that, imagined.  The voices we ascribe to conscience or God are really just echos of us, wisps of ourselves trying to find our way through the situations in life.  The voice of God that all Christians think of as thunderous and deafening is really just the quiet depths of our own little brain whispering its subconscious desires.  The “angel” whispers of desire to protect those we love and to conform to our society to fit in.  The “Devil” whispers to us of ways to get ahead of the crowd, to take what we may not have earned, to lie and cheat and steal.  This is the product of our evolution, a games theory approach to passing on our genes.  We strive to fit in and obey the mores of the group to succeed in mating and have offspring, but at the same time we are always on the lookout for the easy path, the quick fix, a cheat code to life. Now, cheating is inherently destructive to the group and only so much of it can be selected for, but evolution will never eliminate it entirely for it can be a very successful shortcut.

These “voices” are a normal part of being human and can lead to both good and bad, but when you consider them to be the voice of God greater evil can result.  When you ascribe to God the moral wrestlings of your own conscience, you open the door to horrors and atrocities.  Instead of looking on these internal conversations as the flawed workings of their own mind trying to find the best path in life, people can now view them as the divine wisdom of a perfect God. This allows the justification of nearly any action, any crime. A look at history will show what outrages we are capable with God in mind.  Our past is littered with barbarities committed by people who thought they carried the will of one god or another.

God said it.  It must be true.

Only God didn’t say anything.  We did.  The words we hear urging us into one course of action or the other isn’t God and the Devil pushing us into the role of saint or sinner. All the good and evil, all the virtue and vice, all the saintliness and bastardy that flow through our brain in the course of our life are not God or the Satan.

It’s us, all us.  We are angels and we are devils, divine and demonic.   We are large.  We contain multitudes. For good and ill, we are legion. It’s time we started accepting our schizophrenic nature for what it is and take responsibility for our actions.

Faith is not doubting that voice in your head.  Faith is mistaking that voice, that echo of yourself, for the perfect wisdom of a nonexistent being.  Reason is understanding that we contain no perfection, that every thought and desire we have is suspect.

Faith is the way backward.  Reason is the way forward. It’s time to choose.

2011
04/21
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
27 comments

Butchery On The Sabbath or God’s Mercy Shines Through Again.


Yep! This about sums it up.

Originally, I was going to skip right over this section and cuddle up to the Golden Calf story. You have no idea how I have looked forward to that chapter, any other goddamned chapter, in fact. Fictitious or not, I’d have characters and events to write about rather than bullshit temple construction plans and priest consecration. Ugh! But then I read Exodus 31/12 and fell in love with its merciless incongruity. It sums up so many of the inconsistencies so much better than all the other dreck that I feel we can’t just pass it by without even a look. It’s like one of those campy pieces of Americana that still litter the landscape of North America such as the world biggest ball of twine or the largest working toilet west of the Mississippi. Who the hell could resist stopping if only to claim some bragging rights later. How can someone not go out of their way to see a huge working toilet? C’mon people!  Large! Working! Toilet!

That in mind, let’s look at this toile… um…. I mean, rules and regulations regarding keeping the Sabbath.  Yeah.  That’s it.

“But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.
‘Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.
‘For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. ‘So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.“It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.”

Killed for working on Sunday! Wow!  Ain’t God a bastard? Holy shit people, that’s positively baddass. No labor protections back then.  No mercy.  Just sudden and swift “justice”. What I find odd is the same people who hold to a strict Biblical prohibition of a gay lifestyle never bat an eye about going out to eat on the Sabbath. I sure don’t see many people pushing for this particular literal view of the Sabbath any more, and dammit, I wonder why? It’s Biblical after all. God said it. Was he just kidding here? In fact the condemnation of Sabbath violations is more even firmly stated so why do all those people raging about the immorality of homosexuality based on Exodus simply gloss right over this one? Why aren’t the Westboro Baptists screaming about God killing clerks manning the Seven-Eleven cash registers on those Sunday shifts? Why aren’t religious fanatics stoning all those waitresses and waiters shoveling food into our fat little mouths at Perkin’s Sunday Brunch? Why in the name of all that is holy between Yahweh’s butt cheeks, are they not screaming about God’s retribution for all those people violating the Sabbath by driving taxis, flying airplanes, and making electricity? It obvious that all those poor working bastards who are trying to feed their families by puling extra shifts are offending God, so why aren’t we killing them?  Don’t they deserve it, Biblically?

If someone wants to subscribe to a literalist point of view and use the Old Testament to support shit-assed crazy theory of morality, why don’t they use all of it? Why do they get to pick and choose what they want to follow? Any guesses? Oh, I know that the “real” Christian will have a long list of other Bible verses that if taken in the proper order and with just the right amount of weight and with one eye closed, will mitigate the concept as much as they need to get on with their lives, but that’s not the real reason, people.

This is an easy one. Why don’t people choose to follow rules, however obviously stated, that go against everything they already do?  Because they don’t want to! That would require them to actually change their behavior instead of merely finding justification for what they do, and who in the hell wants to do that. Change is hard.  Justification is easy. Christians choose not to follow the Sabbath because it would gain them nothing and cost them a great deal in terms of money and fun. To the vast number or theistic capitalists, what good would a day be if you are forbidden to make money? To all the rest of Christendom, what good is a day of rest when you are forbidden to do anything truly fun?

The truth is that observing the Sabbath as the Old Testament demands is just too hard and unprofitable. This is the essence of religious power. If what you preach can bring you greater power, influence or comfort then find some kind of Biblical justification. Trust me, there are oodles of rationale for nearly any action you choose. Want to condemn a neighbor for witchcraft and buy up his or her land? It’s in there. Want to annihilate native peoples and just take their country as your own? Yeah,it’s in there. Want to condemn a vast group of people whose only crime is to be aroused by genitalia similar to their own? Oh baby, the Bible has it. That fucker’s a regular Walmart Supercenter!  It has everything you’ll ever need to accomplish your goal.  Seek and ye shall find.

On the other hand, you’re not required to buy everything at Wally World.  If what the Bible actually says interferes with your life, just ignore it.

After all, everyone else does.

The Bible: Noun. (1) An ancient tome written by bronze-age sheep-herders in search of answers in a world without science. (2) A book used by Christianity to justify its superiority over all the other superstitions that are as senseless as their own. (3) An unholy and ancient mess of a book, primarily used today to support, indiscriminately, whatever actions are taken by a concerned individual and condemn those of his or her enemies, also indiscriminately. (4) An ancient work of fiction whose primary historical function has been to create a path of destruction through the ages while giving its holders a desire for more.

Now that’s versatility.

2011
04/01
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Religion
25 comments

Consecration Of Priests Or Why The Bible Didn’t Invent Soap.


If this doesn't reek of ironic truth, I don't know what does.

AAARRRRGGGGGG!!!!!! @#^$Q$%&#%!!!

Goddamn it people, there are times I really question my intelligence. Do you have any idea how many times I have started on this post? Four! This is my fourth pathetic attempt to bring some degree of sense to the end of Exodus. The others, needless to say, were less than inspiring. Dross would be a polite word to describe them; shit would be more accurate if less socially acceptable. In general, I prefer accuracy to social conventions so shit they were. This is it! Last Chance! One more failed attempt and I’m taking my Bible out back and burying the goddamned thing in the backyard.

Sigh! Writing is always unpredictable. Sometimes what you are writing is golden. Words come easily and fine. Sentences gush forth and perfect images form on each page. Writing, at those time, is effortless. Let me tell you that is a beautiful feeling, a feeling every writer loves to have. But then… then… sometimes I do everything I can: scream, bang my head, type, delete, retype, concentrate until a stroke seems imminent and what the hell do I get as a result? A herculean exertion and on the page is some foul and rancid literary vomit, disgusting tripe. Is this really what the interior of my mind looks like, a slowly congealing mass of uninspired and limp mediocrity? I’m pretty sure that If I were intelligently designed, my brain’s output wouldn’t resemble the chunks off the bottom of the Cat box. Jesus Christ, now in cracker form, it wearies me. What I need is an upgrade, Bundy 2.0 had better come soon, or I’m doomed. This first adopter prototype mind I have several serious bugs.

Truth be told, I think the problem lies with the ungodly, pardon the pun, level of detail in Exodus. There’s no story, no people, nothing of interest what-so-ever. Let me tell you the majority of this bitch is one vast and complicated formula to please God and you all know how fascinating I find that. Put this bauble there, this robe like that, cut the bull’s throat, spray its blood here, here and, of course, here. It’s like some ancient form of Super Mario Brothers. You jump three times, hit a block with your head and leap on top of a huge green pot while pressing down and you’re transported to a magical world where princesses need rescuing from dangerous walking mushrooms. It’s just like that only without the fun… or the action… or the princess. Well… actually it’s nothing like that, but I just couldn’t think of another analogy that even came close. If you think you can do one better knock yourself out.

My point remains valid. This part of Exodus is all Moses on the mountain getting instructions from God on how to please God. And we all know the only thing God likes more than being pleased is being displeased and knocking shit down. This is Yahweh’s own self masturbatory ejaculation. As background, we should remind you that Moses is up there for a long time, 40 days to be precise. He has supposedly received the ten Commandments and other rules in this time and is now getting the lowdown on making the people God’s bitches. He has instructions for building the temple, ark, altar and lampstand and is now taking down all the things that God wants his priests to do to make God happy.

But when the temple is built and the Ark and altars and lampstands are in place, what could be left for the glorification of the Lord? What the hell else could God possibly want? What indeed, but the consecration of his priests. Holy shit people, (which I guess would be the point!) God can’t have unholy shitbags, AKA ordinary people, touching his altars? Do you even know what they wiped with back then? Charmin, it wasn’t. They live in a desert, for a lack of Christ’s sake! Even leaves were in short supply, so who the hell knows where those dirty bastards have been. Well, God would know and that’s why he gave them the formula for soap.

Naw, I’m just shitting you. Of course God didn’t give us soap. Soap would have had a function not to mention a real benefit for humanity, and as everyone knows that actual ideas for workable inventions appear to be forbidden in this midden heap of literature. No, God only allows the dreck of vague arcana and mystical voodoo to pervade his most sacred tome. All that practical stuff like atomic structure and the Germ Theory of Disease were left out, strictly unnecessary. And of course, soap. What possible good would those have done us? As a people struggling our way through ignorance and death… Death by disease… Because we weren’t clean enough… Yeah, useless!

Oh? Do I sound bitter? I’ll tell you what, you slog through the effort of trying to shovel through the gory details of bull sacrifice and the bloody anointing of priests four separate times desperately searching for threads to tie it all together. I feel like I’ve had my head up my ass for weeks now… No! Actually I feel like I’ve had my head up Moses’ ass for weeks now. Moses… A guy who had never used soap. You try it and we’ll see just how bitter you get.

Ok, no soap. Making his priests worthy of touching him (let’s not go there) involved a dark and mysterious purification process to sanctify them. The rites are dark for they deal with sacrifice and blood splattered everywhere. They’re mysterious because, well frankly, who the hell could possibly figure out why spraying blood here or there has any effect on anything, but especially how does it help in making people more alluring. Think about this. What kind of jackass god would think that this butchery somehow makes people cleaner and more appealing? Doesn’t every civilized god — an oxymoron, I know — love their followers even more when the reek of the slaughter house hangs over them? I’m sure it sure gives Yahweh a chubby, but why would this be so? Do you really find your friends more trustworthy if they’re dripping in blood? Do you find your sexual partner hotter when they look as if they have come from butchering an ox? Well, I don’t, but maybe that might be someone’s kink but in a God we worship? What does this say about him?

These few chapters could best be described as a bunch of shit so we’ll dip into this section gingerly and briefly. There is simply too much nonsense here to linger for long , and I don’t want to become any more bogged down here than I already have. Take my word on it. Moses’ ass is not a place you want to spend much time. Trust me! But something of the flavor needs to be tasted, pardon the expression, so here are a few lines of Exodus 29 just some of the many involved in this purification ritual.

“Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them to minister as priests to Me: take one young bull and two rams without blemish, and unleavened bread and unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil; you shall make them of fine wheat flour. “You shall put them in one basket, and present them in the basket along with the bull and the two rams. “Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the doorway of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. “You shall take the garments, and put on Aaron the tunic and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breastpiece, and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod; and you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. “Then you shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. “You shall bring his sons and put tunics on them. “You shall gird them with sashes, Aaron and his sons, and bind caps on them, and they shall have the priesthood by a perpetual statute. So you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.

“Then you shall bring the bull before the tent of meeting, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the bull. “You shall slaughter the bull before the Lord at the doorway of the tent of meeting. “You shall take some of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger; and you shall pour out all the blood at the base of the altar. “You shall take all the fat that covers the entrails and the lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, and offer them up in smoke on the altar.”

And skipping ahead a bit get this

“But the flesh of the bull and its hide and its refuse, you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin offering. You shall also take the one ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram; and you shall slaughter the ram and shall take its blood and sprinkle it around on the altar. “Then you shall cut the ram into its pieces, and wash its entrails and its legs, and put them with its pieces and its head. “You shall offer up in smoke the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord: it is a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to the Lord. “Then you shall take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram. “You shall slaughter the ram, and take some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear and on the lobes of his sons’ right ears and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the big toes of their right feet, and sprinkle the rest of the blood around on the altar. “Then you shall take some of the blood that is on the altar and some of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and on his garments and on his sons and on his sons’ garments with him; so he and his garments shall be consecrated, as well as his sons and his sons’ garments with him.

Yeah, that’s what every God wants, right? Blood on the ear and the big toe. Yeah, I’m sure he’ll get really hot and bothered over that. Anyway, sorry for the long quote, but mind you as tedious as it is, this is but a small part of the entire ritual. There are more sacrifices, food for the priests, sin offerings, wave offerings, incense and altars for incense, anointing oils, and at last, the exact skilled craftsmen God wants to build and manufacture all his stuff. Whew!

Let’s just skip the rest and deal with the big question. What does all this remind you of? I mean really think about it for a minute. What does all this highly ritualized rubbish most resemble? It’s magic, of course! Every line of Exodus 25 – 31 is part of a complicated magical spell to appease the gods or in this case God. In fact, the whole temple and its furnishings sections belong to the same basic concept. Magic. Magic. Magic. As much as the Christians constantly harp on the occultism in today’s society from Harry Potter to Wicca, can they really say this is any different? This is an ancient ritual to get the forces of nature on our side using the mystical power of blood and fire and bizarre actions. There can be no other way of looking at this.

Let’s do an experiment. Let us take these chapters of Exodus and change nothing but God’s name. In fact let’s replace it with the name of Allah. Then let’s approach people and read our slightly altered version verbatim while claiming it was from the Koran. Tell me how many Christians would hold it up as evidence that Islam is evil and the religion of barbarians? How many believers in Christ would denounce Islam as a sect of blood and violence using our “Exodus” as evidence. Just imagine the looks of fury and disgust on their faces as they are told the insane demands of our Allah. Damn, I think I’m on to something! Maybe we should start it as one of those emails that makes the rounds where people are horrified at what is being taught in the name of Islam, the kind of email my mother used to send me.

After all the horrified responses, we could point out that it really is the Bible. Oh, just imagine the look on their faces then. Priceless! We gotta try that. All right, people, this is your homework assignment for BABS university next week. Your grade depends on it. I want a full report.

The reality here is that the world needs to face the fact that these are the same activities and beliefs as magic. They are just aimed at a different imaginary power. The Hebrews were appeasing the powers that they couldn’t understand yet affected their lives. As are the Wiccans. The difference here is that the modern Wiccans should know better… as should modern Christians. The time for magically controlling the universe is over. Is superstition in itself evil? No. Occultism isn’t any more evil than having an imaginary friend. It’s just something that we should have outgrown by now. So the question we need to ask our Fundamentalist brothers and sisters is why is Wicca superstitious nonsense while this mumbo jumbo from Exodus is simply logical relations with a divine being? There is no good answer to that.

Keeping in mind my earlier theory of Moses being a cult leader, another thing to remember is that Moses goes up to the mountain for 40 days, plenty of time to make up some quasi-magical horse manure. He had nearly six weeks to churn out some mystical rites along with a few of the practical rules we studied before. Did a perfect God really take that long to impart his sacred ideas into Moses bony skull, or did Moses use this time to invent a more complicated version of his religion to consolidate control over his people? Look at this closely and you can’t fail to come to the realization that this severely limits access to the sacred to just a few top people, top people who are to be treated like kings. First, only the top men could approach the mountain and now only a very select few will ever be allow to “interact” with God. The priest-kings are established. The shackles are set.

Can you see how convenient this is from a cult point of view? The apparatus for lasting control is in place, and Moses has the people just where he needs them, he and his cronies on top with all the power because God will only talk to them and everyone else at the bottom desperately eager to please the forces they cannot fathom.

But we now know that such rubbish changes nothing of the world. We now know better.

Or we should!

2011
03/27
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Myth
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
19 comments
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