The incomparable Brick Testament's take on this story. Brilliant!

Leviticus 10.

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.

WTF!  Holy seared siblings, Batman! God is such a badass! Yeah, because… well… he, uh…  Burned them to death for… Um…  What exactly?  Sacrificing without a permit? Making offering inappropriately?  Maybe they messed up the magic words like Ash in Army of Darkness.  “Klaatu Barada N… Necktie… Neckturn… Nickel… It’s an “N” word, it’s definitely an “N” word!“  Oh, You gotta love Army of Darkenss, but, seriously,  WTF?  Does God insist that he give a command before we pray to him?  Which, seemingly, would be my problem.  Apparently, I’m still waiting for the command.  I’m a sleeper cell closet Christian just waiting for some goddamned word.

So the Lord of Genocide kills people for worshipping him without his direct orders and that does have some interesting corollaries.  For instance, if that’s the case then the whole school prayer issue should be a moot point. C’mon people, knowing what we now know, it’s obvious that allowing prayer in schools would be a disaster. For their own protection schools would have to forbid any mention of God within their bounds.  Well, at least any to the Judeo-Christian God, anyway.

Oh, the horror of children spontaneously bursting into flames whenever they whispered a prayer to the Lord.  Holy shit!  Think about it!  The days leading up to the final exams would be an veritable fiery apocalypse. The burned and charred corpses of penitent students would litter the classrooms and hallways amid smoldering texts and  seared backpacks.  Just imagine the scene!  A small whispered prayer, a popping sound, and then the screaming would start.  Oh the screaming again.  And the smell!  Oh my God! The smell!  !  When will we ever learn people?  Obviously our education system would rapidly collapse in an righteous inferno all brought about by prayer in school.  Not to mention the prohibitive cost of fire insurance…

No.  It is clear that prayer in school must be forever forbidden.  Will someone, for the love of G… Um…  Just think of the children!

Seriously though, why did God kill them?  Was it because they “offered a strange fire before the Lord.”  Is that really so bad?  What in the sacred shit of Jesus is a “strange fire” anyway?  Well, I don’t know about the rest of you but that sure sounds like euphemism for pot.   Not that I am terribly familiar with the whole concept, good beer or wine being my drug of choice, but I was young once.  I know strange fires!  Were the sons of Aaron simply stoners, laying around all day offering strange fires to the Lord then trying to round up some manna and quail when the munchies hit?

Dude!  I mean, like, duuude!  Has anyone, like, seen my bird?  Fuck man, I put him right there!

Or is this something else.  We have already discussed (Yeah, a long time ago.  I know!) that if there is any truth at all to the statement “fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering” it was very likely some kind of accelerant, the bronze age equivalent of gasoline used to awe the people into submission.  Did these two boneheads somehow manage use a little too much?  Did they spill it on themselves?  We’re they “playing with fire?”  Were they the ancient equivalent of the jackass who thinks that grilling requires one part charcoal and three parts lighter fluid and then sits around bitching about having no eyebrows and a reddish puffy look “tan”?

Or maybe it was a combination.  Like guns and alcohol, I’d imagine that “strange fire” and real fire would have to be a bad combo.  Truly, I’m not sure how long I’d last smokin’ a few joints, chewing a shroom or two and then playing with gasoline and matches.  Beautiful as I am, I too could earn the fury of the Lord.

Or… Or were these two the victims of something worse, something more sinister.  Remember that there has been quite a bit of tension between Moses and Aaron.  Aaron, the jackwipe, had already proved his untrustworthiness by sacrificing to the Golden Calf.  Were his sons part of the earlier rebellion and still pushing the limits?  Remember that Moses wasn’t exactly shy about killing several thousand people to regain control then.  Why would he stop at killing Aaron’s sons now?  Anyone who thinks that violence never solves anything really needs to look at Moses and his lackey, the Lord Genocide. Their motto has forever been, “Why do something peacefully and decent when you can kill dozens of  people and get the same result?”  Violence solved all of Moses’ problems.

Pure speculation, I know, but it’s intriguing.  Look at the next few lines.

Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 
’By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, 
And before all the people I will be honored.’” 
So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.  Moses called also to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp.” So they came forward and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said. Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the LORD has brought about.

Moses won’t even allow any mourning to be done for them.  He and he alone knows how the Lord Death demands his sacrifices and that is bloody, burnt and with Moses at the center.  Those trying to curry favor with the Lord without Moses in the loop are begging for trouble.

Honestly, doesn’t this sound like just another of Moses power plays?  Trickery and  murder to stay on top of “his” people.  Smoke and mirrors and blood and no one doubts his power.  Those who did are dead.  Those on the edge are terrified.

Regardless in how you interpret this, there is little here to understand.

The chapter goes on in nearly incomprehensible detail, but the most interesting thing about the entire page is in the note at the bottom regarding these deaths. Here is the modern interpretation of this passage.  “Their death was tragic and at first seems harsh, but no more than Ananias and Sapphira in Acts.  In both cases a new era was being inaugurated.  The new community had to be made aware that it existed for God, not ice versa.”

God does not exist for us, we exist for God, and of course, the implication that he can do any damned thing he desires to us.  If this book has anything more insidious within its pages I am yet unaware of it.  I know there will be many Christians out there who will jump to God’s defense.  Just do a search of “Nadab and Abihu” and read some of the amusingly twisted results.  This disgusting example of theistic apologetics is among the worst. But all of them seem to orbit around the old and worn bone of  “Of course we exist for him. He created us.”  But that’s like saying that my son exists for me and not me for him, and that is bullshit!

To my mind this expresses exactly the opposite sentiment that we all really need to believe.  We exist to protect our children.  They do not exist to serve our every whim.  Our overall purpose is to raise them to be fully functional adults.  Men and women who are complete on their own, independent of even us.  We want our children to love us. Sure. But we don’t cripple them with such a dependency on us that they are unable to function on their own, loving us out of a sick fear that we’ll harm them or cut them out of the will.  What kind of “Father” actually does that?

A shitty, psychotic father, that’s who.

The entire goal of parenthood is to take a newborn being who is so utterly dependent on you and your decisions and teach them to be utterly independent and able flourish on their own and without help.  Breeding pathological dependency into the beings you create is evil.  They deserve far better.

To put it another way, the ambition of parenthood is to make our children better than we are.  The goal of godhood, on the other hand, is to cripple them to assure yourself that they will never even approach that level.  He’s #1 and will always remain that way.  Yay God!

What a dick!

God. File photo. Circa... always.

Well, here I am again after a long absence.  No excuses.  I’m a lazy moron crushed by divergent responsibilities.  I apologize.  Onward.

Leviticus  1-9

When we last looked, Aaron, knife in hand,  had slashed his way through a  multitude of bloody sacrifices, seemingly one for every occasion.  Feel guilty about a particular sin in your past?  Amazingly, Aaron always has an animal that can be butchered and toasted to carry away your guilt.  Shocking isn’t it?  Offend God by some small sin?  Offer him a burned and bloody mess, and he’ll forgive you.  Offend him with a greater sin?  Give him an even bigger bloody and charred mess, and things’ll be fine.  There’s little doubt that God does get a bit of a woody from charred flesh, but it’s a wonder that there were any animals left.  Was there anything left for mere people to eat?  Remember that this was the same time that the Hebrews were starving and had to be fed by bread falling from the sky and quail stumbling into the camps and spontaneously combusting.  Yet here they are throwing animals on the  fire to be uselessly burned, all to appease some idea of a vengeful God.  This is just senseless like much else in religion.

Let’s think about this.  Does it make sense in the overall scheme of things?  Could your sins be carried away by the death and barbequing of some animal flesh?    Perfectly logical, right??  Um… Sure, that is if you’re a bronze-age animal-herding tribes-person who is desperately seeking any explanation on how their world works.  Today???  After a trip through modern public education??? Not so much.

The very idea that I could atone for cheating on my wife by taking one of our animals out and ceremonially slaughtering it is ludicrous.  Let me be clear.  Although I’m an atheist, I like the concept of sin.  Bear with me here; I know I’m in dangerous territory. Don’t we all harm people in our day to day lives?  Simply in being human, we create havoc in this world with our unnecessary cruelties  and heartless actions.  People are constantly destroying the things they love through callousness and stupidity, ignorance and fear, through… just being human.  I have no difficulty in calling these persistent human atrocities sin. In addition, I want to live in a world where some sort of atonement is required.  We can’t just say, “Oops.” and go on with our lives.  We should all try to atone for the pain we have caused. Whether it sins against our brother or crimes against our planet, we should try our damnedest to make it better.

The concept of justice has always burned rather fiercely in me.  Even as a child, the thought of someone getting away with injustice kept me awake far into the night.  I stand by this moral system.  Atoning for our sins and crimes is essential for becoming a better society. We need to attempt to fix the damage we have done.  We need an internal sense of self justice.  I understand that this may sound like an archaic idea for an atheistic progressive, yet it was this concept that became central to my fleeing my fundamentalist background.  It was the sheer unfairness of the Bible that drove me forth and made me both atheistic and liberal.

Therefore, the concept of sin doesn’t bother me.  My problem lies with the idea that when we sin, we sin against a god.  How can this be?  Our sins are against our fellow humans and the world we live in.  Against God??? Never!  To atone for our sins or wrongs we must attempt to rectify what we have done with the people harmed and not with some invisible, space-dwelling superman.  God has nothing to do with this!  If I harm my child, it is not to God that I must atone, it is my son.  If I harm my wife, not only must it be to her that I will atone, but God is a jackass for even trying to intrude on that debt.  God deserves nothing in this transaction.  Nothing!  Even allowing for his existence, which I do not, he is simply not part of the equation.  It is between the harmed and the harmer, not some giant, invisible, butt-plug constantly lurking overhead!!

Only if I could possibly harm an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-seeing deity, a perfect being, could he ever deserve some form of atonement.  Doesn’t the very definition of perfection proclaim that anything I do cannot harm him?  Isn’t that what all powerful means.  How religions insist that their gods are all powerful and yet have the sensitivity and temperament of an infant is beyond me.  But let’s allow this too. I seem to be in the mood for allowing illogical impossibilities so let’s give him the exalted position of omnipotent fucking baby.  Think about this.  If my sins against my fellows really does make baby Jesus cry, shouldn’t my atonement to my injured brothers and sisters be the reparation he requires?  Why must I kiss his deified ass too?   What could this possibly accomplish?

If we think about the entire concept, it’s really like a tax on sin.  God, like any overbearing bureaucratic government, demands his cut of the atonement, a pain tax.  Like some Mafia boss, the God of godfathers, if someone’s going to be paying for a sin, he demands his share and fuck anyone who doesn’t like it.

This is an idea so absurd that I am continually appalled that there are still modern, educated people who still believe it.  I know I’ve said this before, but to me the single biggest proof that we are not intelligently designed is the utter nonsense that we insist is true in spite of the world of evidence refuting it.  We are simply too stupid to have been designed by anything other than evolution.

What I do find quite ironic in this entire section, particularly as an American in the midst of the great tax debate, is that this sin tax was a graduated one.  A Hebrew was only required to bring and burn what he could afford.  The poor paid considerably less than the rich for the same service.  Even then the wealthy were held more accountable for their errors than the poor.  The sacred idea of a flat tax which the right wing in this country hold onto as a fifth gospel just doesn’t seem to jive with this part of the Bible.  Not that the Bible has any validity when it might possibly conflict with greed, but… well… that’s a topic for a different discussion.

But can anyone refute that even God believed in taxing the rich more.

I’m just sayin’

Our signs went on a theme protesting the fear the right has used to justify their insane tax policy which in a nutshell is the old give-all-your money,-political-power-and-hope-of-ever-getting-either-back-and-everything-will-be-fine-trust-us-approach. They are as follows.

My bride with the first of our signs.

My long time friend Jeremy, hold our other themed sign.

Alas, I took the pictures so there is none of me.  Damned selfish atheist wife, always thinking of herself.  Sigh.  My sign said the same but substituted immigrants instead.  These are just some of the little balls of hate the right tosses out trying to convince the nation that they know the real problems.  If you are interested in a bit of ugliness and can tolerate a nasally and annoying voice, the video for an interview that the Tribune did with me can be found here.  Sorry, I shouldn’t force this upon anyone.  Forgive me.

And last but not least this letter to the editor was in the paper last week.

Naturally, I had to respond to such idiocy, alas with a bit less mockery than I have grown accustomed to.  It was hard, very hard. The comment section is rife with morons who hide behind anonymity and hate.  Feel free to join in.  Nicely though, or they turn commenting off.

Allow me to do a brief rundown.  The first speaker was Richard Carrier, a Ph.D in Greco-Roman history.

His talk was on “How the Jews Kept Failing to Predict Doomsday and Caused Christianity Instead.” a view of Jewish apocalypticism and how trying to fulfill failed prophecy led to the rise of several versions of Jesus.  This was fascinating, and I certainly will have to grab a few of his books for study.  I believe it will help in thew future.

After this we had Robert Price, a skeptical theologian and expert on the Bible.

Although his talk was very good, my need to pay rigid attention to his prose kept me from taking many notes.  He definitely didn’t speak down to his audience and I liked that.  He is a great wordsmith, but I think he may have lost a few people with his complex structure and vocabulary.  Let me tell you people, I would give my left testicle for half the knowledge this man has in his head.  Wow!

Third, we had Brother Richard, a former associate pastor of a scandalous megachurch who lost his faith and now is a leader in the Atheist Nexus community.

His story was mostly about how he got to where he is including belonging to a church involved with massive sex scandals and death threats for leaving.  This touched me as I went through a similar but quicker theological debridement, painful but oh so necessary.

After lunch, the infamous PZ Myers to the stage to lay out the foundations of evolution of cooperation, or why it is not always, or even mostly “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”  For those of you who have never heard him, PZ is a great instructional speaker.  Soft spoken and clear, he has a way of relating dense subject matter in a way that few others could.  I invariably find his talks full of new and wonderful information.  I’d love to move to Morris, MN and take a few classes.

From left to right. Waylon Hedegaard, My nephew Tanner, PZ ,and my son Reilly.

I had to go up and talk to him, of course.

The last speaker was none other than Michael Shermer.  He had a great talk on his new book “The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies– We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.”  Shermer is a marvelous and funny speaker and knows how to relate to an audience.  I have to read some of his books.  Yes, I am ashamed to say that I have not.  Again, I rail against how I have wasted my life.  But this is fascinating stuff.

The evening finished with a debate between August Berkshire, the president of the Minnesota Atheists and his pastor friend, Ron Johnson.  Now I may be a bit biased here, but Mr. Berkshire pretty much mopped the floor with his buddy.  Although I admire Pastor Johnson for the courage it would take to stand up in front of a group of atheists to defend his position, his arguments were very soft, fuzzy and weak.  Berkshire had great arguments for evolution and morality, but Johnson’s counters were always evasive beatings around the bush, a bit of a desperate struggle to maintain hold on a slipping faith.  He was honest to himself though and refused to say things he didn’t believe.

Personally, our carpool was unanimous in our prediction that he would soon be joining our ranks.

Pastor Johnson (seated) and August Berkshire (at the podium)

And that was it.  I didn’t have time to stay for today’s panel discussion which will be happening… right about now.  Sigh. Overall, I loved it and would happily go to one of these events every month.  I feel invigorated in my skepticism and, in addition, have a list of about ten books.

Now if I only had time to read.

PS.  My current reading list has been drastically affected by my responsibilities.  Those dastardly things I can’t say no to.  This week I was selected to be the Parliamentarian (Expert on parliamentary procedure) for the North Dakota AFL-CIO convention so I have been madly reading through Robert’s Rules of Order, Robert’s Rules of Order for Dummies, Parliamentary Procedure at a Glance trying to make sense of the mass of dense.  Wish me luck.

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.

The dark side of safety warnings.

At long last I have returned from my long pilgrimage to the Occupational, Safety and Health mecca in Kansas City.  I am knowledgeable, competent and qualified in all things safety!  I am become Safety!  Savior of worlds!  Bow before me or be buried in red tape.

At any rate, I have finished my 12 day ordeal and am now home.  My stay in KC was quite nice actually.  The hotel was excellent, the conference, while long, was worth it and this should further my career somewhat.  The more I know the better I am and let me tell you, the shit that I have learned the last year and a half… Sigh.  As much as I have always read science and history and kept informed I still  feel I have been wasting my life up until now.  Sometimes, I want to time travel beck to my young irresponsible self and kick him/me in the balls for not taking advantage of everything I could have.

Yeah.  I have been a dumb shit.  You knew it!

As an added bonus, a reader of this site contacted me while U was down there.  Jason of KC came and picked me up from my hotel and took me to one of the daily  (daily!!!) atheist/freethinker meet ups there.  It was great meeting some of the others and see how they managed their groups.  We also picked another evening to hit supper, Thai!  Bismarck has no Thai food and I really feel the lack.  It was wonderful.

I keep telling everyone that I took off with some guy I met on the internet.  Wow!  The looks that’ll get you.

At any rate, here is a sincere thank you to Jason of Kansas City.  I am glad to have met you and appreciate what you did.  You ever come back up this way, Jason, stop in.  We have extra beds.

Atheists are wonderful people.

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.

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.

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.

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.