Archive for the ‘ Young Earth Creationism ’ Category

Finally! Proof that he is real!


Ooh! Ooh! Hot thing!

Leviticus 9/23

OK then! As we remember from the last episode the sacrifices have been made in all of their gory detail, and apparently heaps of dead carcasses lie on the blood soaked earth outside the tent of meeting waiting for… Well, something.

Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces.

Hooray! Another of God’s fabulous miracles.   Fire actually roared out onto sacrificial meat, and everyone was awed.   Damn… Well people, this one leaves me stumped.  Could this be the proof we have been searching for?   Could this be the culmination of the true quest of my blog–the quest to find God?  Why, yes!  Yes, it is. Why, now it seems obvious that God is real, for how else could this have been pulled off.  By mere trickery and fraud?  No!  By the charred corpse of Saint Lawrence, it’s fire, or shit’s sake!  It’d only been around for three or four hundred thousand years.  That’s just not enough time to learn a few simple tricks.  How could these primitive people who had just escaped centuries of slavery from one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet ever know much about fire.  How could they possibly have known about pitch, tar or other accelerants many of which had only been around for several millennia and then known to pour said accelerants over the animals to have them roar into flame?  I mean these are tricks that would take us at least six or seven minutes to accomplish today using any number of common household chemicals.

To have the fire come out and consume the sacrifice as stated, the priests would have to have access to some kind of oil-like substance like the oil that has been seeping out of the ground for millions of years.  By the rancid bowels of Buddha, they were walking around the Arabian Peninsula, and everyone knows what a paucity of oil they have in that land.  Sure they may have been able to fake it if they had some access to another kind of oil.   You know like the kind they burned in the lamp they made for the Tabernacle…  Or alcohol which… they… drank…  Um…  Or pine pitch… or…

Well… I admit it’s true that dried animal dung when powdered and thrown in a heaping handful over a campfire will produce an impressive column of fire, but tell me all you fucking skeptical geniuses, where would simple goat and sheep herders possibly find enough animal dung to do this?  Riddle me this?  Hmm?

Um…   Hey wait just a minute…   Shit!

Goddamn it.  Back to square one.

2011
09/18
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Leviticus
Myth
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
12 comments

And Now For Something Completely Different, Leviticus.


Leviticus 1-9

So Aaron came near to the altar and slaughtered the calf of the sin offering which was for himself.  Aaron’s sons presented the blood to him; and he dipped his finger in the blood and put some on the horns of the altar, and poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar.  The fat and the kidneys and the lobe of the liver of the sin offering, he then offered up in smoke on the altar just as the LORD had commanded Moses.  The flesh and the skin, however, he burned with fire outside the camp.

Then he slaughtered the burnt offering; and Aaron’s sons handed the blood to him and he sprinkled it around on the altar. They handed the burnt offering to him in pieces, with the head, and he offered them up in smoke on the altar. He also washed the entrails and the legs, and offered them up in smoke with the burnt offering on the altar.

 Then he presented the people’s offering, and took the goat of the sin offering which was for the people, and slaughtered it and offered it for sin, like the first. He also presented the burnt offering, and offered it according to the ordinance. Next he presented the grain offering, and filled his hand with some of it and offered it up in smoke on the altar, besides the burnt offering of the morning.

 Then he slaughtered the ox and the ram, the sacrifice of peace offerings which was for the people; and Aaron’s sons handed the blood to him and he sprinkled it around on the altar. As for the portions of fat from the ox and from the ram, the fat tail, and the fat covering, and the kidneys and the lobe of the liver, they now placed the portions of fat on the breasts; and he offered them up in smoke on the altar. But the breasts and the right thigh Aaron presented as a wave offering before the LORD, just as Moses had commanded.

And much like a Monte Python sketch, Leviticus starts with absurdity and blood.  And more blood.  And still more blood.  And so on.  I’m sure by now you know the drill.

Remember the good old days when I could carry on rhapsodically over the senselessness of a single sentence.  Allow me to assure everyone that this isn’t one of those days.  The entire first nine chapters of this book follows a similar vein to what I have quoted here.  Similar?  Shit!  To the uninformed (aka. Rational) being, it’s impossible to tell the difference from one chapter to the next.  For eleven pages we get to dwell on the proper way to sprinkle blood and where to pour it after that.  So much blood was spilt in the sand in front of the altar that God’s tabernacle must have reeked like rotting corpses and decaying meat.

Sigh.  Here I was struggling to get past Exodus with all its sacrifice and glorifying Moses and his God, but what do I find upon opening up Leviticus?  An eleven page essay on the various ways that God wants you to sacrifice animals to himself.  It’s like a cookbook for how to make God happy.  It’s an amazingly simple formula really.  Violate some taboo?  Sacrifice a goat.  Light a fire on the Sabbath?  Sacrifice a goat.  Get caught fucking a goat?  Sacrifice the goat.  Well… there is that stipulation about unblemished and clean.  I’ll get back to you on that one.

Oh, if only life were so blessedly simple.  For every sin I committed, every person I hurt, every lie I told, all I would have to do to atone would be to take some helpless beast and slaughter it, burning a good chunk in a fire, of course, and I would be forgiven.  God will be fine with you violating his commandments as long as you bloodily butcher something  for him…  And, of course, burn it on a fire.  Because that makes God happy.  Oh so happy.  God loves to see things burn.

And let’s be honest here, who could refuse to be pleased with someone who butchers a harmless beast for you, pours its blood around an altar to you, dabs drops of it here and there in honor of you, then wastes the large majority of the meat by burning it to a cinder.  All for me?  Gosh!  Just what I’ve always wanted, blood dripping everywhere, while perfectly good meat transformed into a  inedible charred corpse which no one is allowed to eat.  No one!  Can you believe it?

Oh, the fat guy in me screams with the injustice of it all.  Not one goddamned bite?  Are you fucking kidding me?  A bat-shit crazy barbecue where no one is allowed a single lamb chop?  Disgusting.  And what does dear old God get out of all of this?  Hmm?  Apparently, he likes the smell.  It seems the aroma is pleasing to him.  By a refried Christ, widows and orphans going hungry and they waste hundreds of pounds of meat because the smell of burning flesh gives Yahweh a chubby.  OK, I’ll admit that I’ve been a little aroused before by the smell of cooking meat, but that is only in anticipation of the eventual meal.  Burning it just for the aroma?  Perverted!  Unnatural!  Evil!  Every ounce of my cellulite screams for revenge!  I must have justice!

Oh, the great genocide of the Flood angered me.  The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah pissed me off.  But this… this…  Depravity.  Yahweh, you son-of-a-bitch, you go too far.  Fat people of the world unite!

Yahweh, the pisser on chubby men, has a new enemy, and his name is Bundy!  265 pounds of quivering anger are coming your way you prick.

By Yahweh’s testicles turning on a spit, I will have my revenge!

Hmm?  I wonder how… ? Oh, never mind.

2011
08/26
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Leviticus
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
8 comments

The Preacher’s Kid’s Story, A Loss Of Faith


PK, you need to get one of these.

A week or so back I got to chatting with a commenter on the site, a preacher’s kid and former born-again bible thumper.  Since I went through a similar experience, I’m always fascinated by people’s loss of faith.  So here in his own word’s is the Preacher’s Kid’s Tale.  It’s a great story.

The human mind is such an incredible thing…

“But Mrs. Steinly, how did every kind of animal get to the ark?”
This is my first memory of questioning what I was told was the truth for the duration of my young life. I believe I was around eight years old and it was just another Sunday morning in Sunday school.
“Well, Timmy, god magically made every animal want to get to the ark. So they all made the trip.”
Mrs. Steinly’s answer succeeded to quell not only my curiosity that morning but millions of eight year olds around the world to this very day.
I remember thinking of her answer later on in the day. I guess I couldn’t quite understand how powerful god really was. I needed to ask my Dad.

My father was the pastor of a conservative evangelical Lutheran church in the Arizona town where I grew up. He spent eight years at Bethany College in Minnesota to earn a Master’s degree in theology and then received several vicar positions in the mid-west before finally being “promoted” to the position of pastor. Now that I think of it, it sure sounds like the way a business runs…Hmm. Anyway, along the way my mother conceived six boys and quite a temper. I guess the short fuse was a result of trying to corral all six of us to prevent needless blood loss from normal everyday male adolescent activities and I do thank her for that.

I remember asking my father that afternoon after the Sunday morning hustle and bustle was over the same question I asked earlier that morning during Sunday school. I’ll paraphrase his answer:
“Well, Timmy god has a way of doing things that not everyone understands. I think he instilled in the animals a great desire to get to Noah and the ark and they just knew that was where they needed to be and what they needed to do. Kind of like when ducks fly south for the winter or a dog instinctively knows how to swim when they are in water.”

Dad’s answer sounded so matter of fact to me at the time and I was satisfied. He was the smartest person I knew. I don’t recall ever being curious about that subject for the rest of my youth. At the time, I believed my parents knew the answers to things (and I would too, eventually) because they instilled in us that the bible HAD all the answers. My brothers and I were sold on the idea and I took this “knowledge” with me, one way or another, through my elementary, high school and college years. The bible was not and could not be wrong. Dinosaurs? I didn’t believe they could exist because it just didn’t seem to jive with the creation story. All fossils found were just bones of other animals that were pieced together until they came up with something that looked pre-historic. The Grand Canyon? It was formed by the flood waters receding as well as all the continents of earth and the lakes that occupied them a couple thousand years ago. Evolution? Don’t even get me
started. There was NO way something could have transformed. God made it right the first time. Everything presently living was exactly the same as it was at the time of creation. Earth science, geology, astronomy, biology…hogwash. This was the basis of my thinking.

During my youth and teenage years I attended public elementary and high school. My high school years were pretty typical of a lot of people. My parents were strict with our grades and wanted us to do our best. I excelled at English and History and my parents were proud of me for the marks I received in them. A ‘B grade’ in those two subjects was frowned upon. Funny thing, though. They never punished me for receiving D’s and sometimes F’s in biology or any of my science subjects for that matter. My mindset was in “bible” mode during those classes and my parents, in a weird way, kind of admired that about me. When asked about the grades when my report cards came I simply told my parents that I could not go against what they had taught me growing up and what was so hardwired into my thought pattern. The bible and everything to do with it was simply not wrong, the science books were. It’s not like I was lying to them to soften the blow of a bad grade. This is how I truly felt.

Socially, I was a pretty athletic guy who played sports and went to parties and drank beer and was very interested in girls. I was a typical high school teenage boy of the times. My parents never were the wiser until a group of us was kicked off the swim team for drinking on an overnight trip with the team.

It’s interesting that the biblical thought patterns I had for certain academic subjects were seldom found in my social life. It reminds me of a lot of “christians” who regularly attend church nowadays.

Through all of this I wasn’t into church as much as I once had been. It was more like making an appearance and sitting in the back pew in the corner with a hangover from partying the night before. But there, nonetheless. One of my parent’s house rules was that I attended whether I wanted to or not.

Oh, and for those of you have never been to a conservative Lutheran church service it consists of a lot of Stand Up, Sit Down, Fight! Fight! Fight! I guess it’s good to be in somewhat constant motion for the mere weekly repetition and boredom of the service alone is enough to put anyone face first into the awful circa 1970′s era avocado green carpet in a bore induced coma. Oh, and let’s not forget the worship! Five pipe organ led hymns strategically placed in between gospel, Old Testament readings, the sermon, communion and the benediction done by my old man, the minister. Catholics and ex-catholics, I feel ya! Our services were basically, from what I hear from you, “Mass-lite”.
We were such a conservative bunch that the mere thought of drums or a guitar might be enough to bring the wrath of god through the roof in a form of a very well aimed lightning bolt, striking down the “bombastic rocker” musicians. Although, in all fairness, I must point out that an occasional trumpet or flute would make an appearance on random Sundays accompanying a “soloist” singer. God must have been worn down from a week of not answering prayers and wreaking havoc that maybe he couldn’t muster up enough energy for said lightning bolt. Or maybe he was just watching the football pre-game shows and wasn’t paying attention.
As I got older, I eventually moved out of my parent’s house and re-located to Flagstaff, Az. for college with one of my brothers and best friends. That experience only lasted three months for me. Technology is great and all but when most of my classes were broadcast on TV via the Northern Arizona University Television Network AND I could record them on my trusty VCR certain that I would watch them at a later time to “get caught up”, one tends to…should I say…. slack. And by slack I mean party my ass off.
Upon my move back home around Christmas I did not return to church. There was too much to do other than going to services every Sunday and being told how I should be feeling and acting. I was finished with it. I could finally sit my hiney down on my couch and watch the football pre-game shows just like god was doing. But my biblical mindset of the world around me was still lurking in the background.
Fast-forward five years or so.
I’m now married to my wife and have three kids. Although she was raised as a christian we rarely attended church. I was still drinking and partying too much but with thoughts of slowing down. Then, I had a sudden slap across the head the morning after my son’s first birthday party. I had made a drunken fool of myself in front of my wife and family the night before. As I was dry heaving through my hang-over, there was a moment where I thought I was “touched by god” and convinced myself that he was sending me a personal message to quit drinking. I told my wife I was quitting and she gave me a, “yeah right.” She had heard it before. Numerous times. Needless to say, because of this imaginary magical anointing, I eventually became a bible-thumping, on fire for christ, music and youth leader in my new evangelical non-denominational church that I began to attend. Being a life-long musician and fan of music I really got into it because the services had drums, electric guitars, keyboards, mixing boards, stages and lights. Hell, even a smoke machine would make an appearance every now and then. It was freaking rock and roll bee-yatches!! But for god, of course. My wife was convinced that I had changed and there could only be one reason. She started attending with me with the kids in tow.
During this time, I believed god was telling me to bring other sheeple to him. I had all the answers for any question and I let anyone who would listen to me know. They were all in the bible, dummy! The prodigal son had finally returned! My parents were happy to see their son turn back his rebellious ways and were glad I was so happy to spread the good news! However, they were not crazy about the church I attended because of the over the top music and “un-biblical” communion practices. How dare they say the bread and grape juice (“real” christians use wine, dammit) only symbolizes the body and blood of Christ instead of partaking in actual transformed Jesus sushi. They could over-look this, though, because I was finally back on the damn team instead of sitting on the proverbial bench for so long!! This was me for a good three years. Eating, sleeping, breathing, preaching, sharing, getting tattooed and indoctrinating into my children the infallible word of god! Praise the lord and pass the sushi sauce!

Reality has a funny way of introducing itself to certain people. I consider myself one of those lucky few. About two years ago I was looking for a way to make my faith in the good ship lollipop even stronger. I could feel my connection to god slipping a little but was told over and over by people in the church that, “it happens to all of us.” I just needed to pray about it more and maybe give more gifts (money) to god and after a while I’d be right back in the swing of things. I did. Nothing happened. I thought crazy thoughts like the devil was starting to really have his way with me and it drove me to actual diagnosed depression which led to medication. How could god use me to reach so many people and then abandon me like this? I kept thinking it was all a test and that god would reward me in the near future with wisdom and chocolate covered peanut butter cups.

I then had a great idea that I thought came from god and here it is. I thought god wanted me to go to the library and get a book in the evil atheist section called, “50 reasons People Give for Believing in a God”, by Guy P. Harrison. I had seen it in passing while quickly cutting through (damn near sprinting, actually) the section on a previous visit to get to where the safe religious books were. My plan was simple. Read each reason and back it up with biblical reasoning to bust the false ideas Harrison gave to lead so many people away from the one true god. This book and author had no chance against me. Dinosaurs, astronomy, evolution, earth science, geology…Bull Feathers!!

Yeah, um, hmm…turns out, after the first chapter I had so many questions that could only be answered by taking an honest approach to actually finding the truth. I stopped reading after the first chapter for a whole day to think and realized something. The truth might have been hidden from me right under my nose for my entire life. The truth might have been hidden from me from the time I could think on my own as a toddler. The brainwashing that was instilled in me, my brothers, my parents by their parents, their parents ad-nausea might have been no fault of our own. I feel we were the product of our mental environment. It’s that simple.

I told myself I was going to approach this over-whelming project with a completely un-biased, take the blinders off way of thinking and if I finished the book and still felt all the answers were still in the bible then god wins. Yeah, I would be happy with that. The next day I read chapters 2-50 in one sitting and for the next month studied them more than I have ever studied anything in my life. One by one, questions were answered and opinions changed that I never believed possible. Above all, science was not the devil’s work thrown together by people who thought they knew better than god. The more I studied and actually used my evolved brain to actually THINK for myself and using the overwhelming evidence that is out there for ANYONE to discover I steadily felt a peace come over me that I had never thought possible. As I realized more and more the horse hockey that I had believed my whole life was wrong and that religion, at its very fucking core, was the root of all my troubled feelings throughout my life the cloud finally lifted and complete freedom has come over me that is almost un-explainable to my family, friends and co-workers. They all know of my transformation but can’t understand it because they won’t LET themselves understand it.

The thing that buggers me the most about all of this is not the family and friends I have lost during my de-programming (which has happened). It is not the feeling of being duped into believing the way I did (which I do feel). Above all, it is the years of knowledge that I have been cheated out of in the field of science solely because of religion. When I first realized that I had no more than a third grader’s education in the sciences is what gave me the drive to learn everything possible about them. It’s a wonderful journey and I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever go back.

Looking back now with a clear, skeptical mind I know that when I imagined I was “touched by god” it was merely my body reacting to years of alcohol and a party lifestyle and it just needed a break. But at the time, the engraved childhood fantasies of god took over and I turned to the only thing that my brain could process that might have been able to offer some sort of comfort and help.

The human brain is such a wonderfully strange and powerful thing, isn’t it?

PK (preachers kid) Timmy Dee.

2011
08/24
CATEGORY
Atheism
Religion
Thoughts
Young Earth Creationism
21 comments

Toto, We’re Not In Kansas Anymore! Oh, Wait… Shit I Am.


Why?? Because I can.

Hey all.  just a quick note to let you know that the Blessed Atheist/KKBundy/Waylon (Damn, I’m getting too many names) is presently in Kansas City and will be for the next ten days.  I’ll be sitting through ten straight days of OSHA law classes. Ugh!  I imagine my days won’t exactly be riveting but hey, after Exodus and Leviticus I am well versed in useless legal bullshit.  But still pity me. Please!

And if any reader happens to live nearby I’d love to hear from them.  I know the chance is slim, but hey, you never know.  Drop me a comment here and maybe we can have a couple of beers and commiserate over the fate of humanity.

If not I’ll work on writing more.  That should be great.  Days filled with modern senseless legalese followed by nights filled with ancient senseless legalese.

I hope I survive.

 

And because I still can here are a couple more Jesus related Demotivational Posters.

 

2011
08/21
CATEGORY
Atheism
Religion
Thoughts
Young Earth Creationism
8 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

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

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

The Battle Yet Rages


For those of you interested, Daz has taken up the mantle of fighting the scientific infidel at his own site.  He and Mr. Hubbo have started a regular series of conversations on the existence of God.  Now, I know many here got pretty sick of that fight, but I salute Daz for taking this on.  It is a battle that should be fought, and thus far they have been excellent to read and well-reasoned in approach.   I have also enjoyed the more orderly arrangement.  Admittedly, we tend to get a little chaotic here with the  intertwining comments and replies, and the argument can get hard to follow.  In truth, Daz’s is a better method for this debate and I urge you to go there.  He has the power to arrange the arguments in a logical order and hit the high points one by one.

It’s difficult to comment on his site so I open this post up to comments you may want to make, but I also recommend dropping Daz a note to let him know what you think.  He’s doing a great job and needs to be commended.  En garde, Mr. Hubbo.  You’re in for a drubbing.

Damn.  And then I forget to link to it.  What an idiot I am.  Go here.

2011
03/27
CATEGORY
Atheism
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
7 comments
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