Posts Tagged ‘ Myth ’

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

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

Moses and Yahweh, Lost In Translation.


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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m just sayin’.

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

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

Any volunteers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translations can be a bitch.

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

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

Email From the Edge.


I wonder how much they are asking?

I get email.  Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone does so there’s nothing usual in that, but every so often, my email gets well… interesting. Yeah, interesting, that’s the word.  Most times, it’s from people who agree whole heartedly with what I have to say. Sometimes, it’s someone who disagrees even more passionately, and then every now and then I’m not really sure what the writer believes but the mere fact that he “believes” comes through strongly, and his creative use of ALLCAPS, incoherent platitudes and white space usually offers something amusing. But every so often it’s completely different. Is this one of those different ones? Well… I’ll let you judge. This letter was in my inbox last weekend. I left the document completely unedited save for leaving out the last name.

Name: Lee *********

hey! im a 16 year old guy trying to figure out the meaning of life….i really just want to make my own life and have no one else control it….i used to be super SUPER relgious and now im still having probelms with it….i cant find any error in the Bible i do know alot about it and every contradiction out of the some 500 in there has an intepration that makes total sense

i want to be an atheist because i want control of my own life…all my desires and my own brain

ive been a conservative CHristian up to this point but now i just dont know

i tried looking into evolution but there is so many wholes as there is in everything else

im starting not to care about religious boundaries anymore i really just want to be a humanist and live the life that makes me happy

problem is that good ole Bible nothing has been proven wrong in it(from my opinion)

i dream of a life like yours

please give some advice if you dont mind

sorry i dont type correctly haha but i would love a free thinkers insight

i just dont want to live for nothing

Hmm.  I read it and alarms began to blare through my head. Part of me, a large part, screamed that this must be a set up. People, particularly Christians on the edge losing their faith, simply don’t think like this. And if I’m wrong and some actually do, I’d bet much that they don’t talk like this. What this echoes most strongly is the Fundamentalist viewpoint of why people become atheists.  This isn’t some boy on the verge of reason.  It’s an Evangelical interpretation of what they think that someone who throws away their faith must go through.

Allow me to paraphrase what the cynic in me is hearing.  ”I want to have the life of a freethinker, to decide what’s right or wrong on my own, to be a selfish master of my own fate, Alas, the Bible just keeps proving accurate no matter how many times I have tried to prove it otherwise. In the face of all this evidence proving Christianity true, what’s a budding freethinker to do?”

I feel this is an accurate interpretation of what’s happening here. In fact, I’d bet on it, but if I close my eyes and assume it’s true — a feat I am becoming quite adept at with this study — what should I tell 16 year-old Lee? What insight does one free thinker have to offer another budding but likely fictional freethinker?

First, read what we have written so far. I have tried to do my best to point out the Biblical absurdities and the commenters here have been amazing at pointing out all that I have missed. As a team, we have nailed the Christian God thoroughly and will continue to do so for many years to come.  I didn’t realized what entertainment value the Bible had.

Second, Lee, comes the natural counter to this idea “i cant find any error in the Bible i do know alot about it and every contradiction out of the some 500 in there has an intepration that makes total sense.” This glossing over the vast number of idiosyncrasies is done using several techniques.  The first is usually placed under the concept of hermeneutics. Thank you to Mr. Hubbo for introducing that word into my vocabulary.  I knew the definition long before I knew what it was called.  Hermeneutics is a concept I have argued against in these posts and in running battles in the comments, and I will continue to fight as my last breath leaves my body.  Hopefully not soon with some Christian pitchfork stuck through my chest as they’re burning down my house.  What?  You people don’t wake up in the dead of night screaming about horses of cross bearing psychopaths roaming the streets?   Um… Yeah, me neither…

Anyway, let’s do with some definitions first. Hermeneutics, in regard to Biblical interpretation, is taking the Bible as a whole and not as a collection of parts. On the surface, this sounds like a fine idea, and overall, I would support viewing any human document hermeneutically, but when it comes to how the Biblical literalist uses it, I must make an exception. Their work in this area is simple apologetics, a defending of a position already taken using whatever sleight of hand one can use. When a literalist finds a contradiction or anything that makes them feel uncomfortable such as God slaughtering thousands of Egyptian children or destroying a civilization for becoming too great and threatening his own power, he or she only needs to pick through that vast repository of phrases to find one that tempers it or counters it or allows them to ignore it completely.  Bingo!  Contradiction alleviated.

This is what allows the fundamentalist to condemn homosexuality with vigor but ignore many of the other verses in the same chapter. You just get to pick and choose what you want to hear and ignore the rest.  For example, “He who lies with an animal shall surely be put to death,” is followed soon after by “If you lend money to my people, the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to him; you are not to charge him interest.”   How come we never hear about that anymore. It was big in the middle ages but not now. With all the raging homophobes screaming from every pulpit about the dangers of homosexuality, someone has to explain to me why aren’t banks being burnt to the ground. We have Christians lending money at interest all the time.  But of course, this lack of economic freedom would go against what we want to believe so we just ignore it.  Homosexuality outlawed.  Banking good.  See how easy that was?

This same verse condemning gays is preceded by this little gem. “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken for he is his property.” Beating slaves to death is fine as long as you don’t do it too quickly.  Yeah… Now this one was big prior to the civil war but isn’t used much today. Why?  Is morality relative?  These are just two of thousands of instances of God either being a bastard or out right contradicting his own teachings.

The reason that an advanced use of hermeneutics is so useful in plastering over the vast gaps in sheer Biblical decency is that it allows anyone to pick and choose the parts that they want to follow and ignore that parts they would rather forget. If you start with the firm conviction that God is perfect and the Bible is inerrant combined with your own preconceived notions, it is a simple matter to come up with an interpretation to suit what you already “know” is true.  You don’t change yourself as much as you change the Bible to suit you.  In the brilliant words of George Bernard Shaw,  ”No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”  (Thank you to Daz for that.)

Hermeneutics is often accompanied by the whole “That was the old covenant. Jesus sacrifice brought a new covenant to us.” So God changed the covenant from a harsher on to a nicer one? Why? Did the perfect God make a mistake with all the evil he did with the first one? And if so why do we still pick and choose only the parts of the Old Testament that we want to follow and not the whole thing? Who chooses those parts? Why do we swear by one verse and ignore the whole next page?

These two Biblical polishing techniques are then followed with the only available option to Christians when confronted with the idea of a wicked God: they make excuses for him. He killed all the children of Sodom and Gomorrah and Egypt because the parents were evil (evil here simply means not following God’s arbitrary commands) and therefore the children would be evil.  This has been pointed out on more that one occasion that this is why God punishes to the third and fourth generation.  God punishes children for the sins of their parents.  But ask yourself Lee, if we followed the same technique and butchered the children of our enemies on purpose, would we be doing the right thing or the wrong? If we purposefully tortured and killed children in our wars and conflicts would we be honorable or despicable?  WWJD?  Isn’t this the ideal Christians strive for?  But alter it slightly and make it “What would Jehovah do?”    Should we be butchering the Iraqi children as we speak?  Should we take the babies of criminals and butcher them on the court house steps all in the name of justice?  No?  Are we not following his example?  Why can God do anything he wants and name it good simply because he’s the one who did it?  Might doesn’t make right, yet here he is committing genocide and his apologists smile and tell me about perfect justice and perfect love and how those flawless concepts necessitate genocide.  Perfect justice involving the slaughter of innocents?  Perfect love?  Perfect bullshit!

And ask yourself this, Lee, if the Bible is so consistent, why are there so many different interpretations of it. Why are there so many Protestant sects in the United States and around the world — 30,000 by one estimate — that have a radically different outlook on what that book really says? Why has the interpretation of this book changed dramatically through history? Every sect whether present or historic uses a different approach to hermeneutics to get that book to say what ever they want it to say. Then they claim to be one of the few groups of people on the planet who really knows the truth and then often try to convince all the other people of the validity of their claim…  Usually at the point of a sword,   This infallible book has been the inspiration for the crusades, the inquisition, the conquest of other lands and vast religious wars that have left entire regions decimated. The Bible was used extensively to justify both sides of the American civil war or for that matter, most any civil wars. How can so many people get so many different meanings out of a single book that is supposedly perfect?  And why do those meanings usually reflect what the people really want to do anyway?

Think about it Lee. It’s because of those very contradictions. It’s because of those flaws.  Those terrible differences in tone and decency have given people all the tools they need to give divine justification to whatever the hell they desire. Even a brief but honest reading of history of the western world demonstrates the truth of these statements.  The cross has been at the forefront of atrocity after atrocity.  God strides hand in hand with every tyrant for every despicable and depraved act. Virtually every call to war, genocide and massacre that the western world has been responsible for has held the cross high and asked for their God’s blessing while crushing any resistance underfoot.

So, Lee, I ask you to do one thing. Read the Bible, but not as they, the preachers and bishops ask you to. Don’t be praying for “God’s” guidance while you read.  Don’t make excuses for the evil contained there in.  Read it with an open mind.  Or even better, read it how you would read the Koran, that is looking for the brutality and evil.  Read it how you would read the nonsense in the book of Mormon.  Then ask yourself if the behavior exhibited by your God  is rational and decent. Ask yourself that if any human ruler emulated this behavior and actions that you would think as highly of him as of your God.  Or would we be going to war just to stop him?

Then ask yourself this, Lee: what evidence is there for a God aside from the Bible, a book that shows it’s inadequacies with every page?

And Lee?  We don’t live for nothing.  We live for what we choose: our wives, our children, our friends and our life.  Life is too beautiful to be wasted following what someone else says is God’s will.  Free thinkers think! First! Foremost! Primarily!

2011
03/11
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Myth
Religion
Thoughts
31 comments

The Screwtape Letters — An Inside Review.


Ah!  The play is over and a small part of my life has returned.  Will I be able to handle coming home and actually having to make decisions on what to do for the evening?  Will I be able to survive the stress of sitting in my favorite chair and actually reading a book?  Will my daydreams consist of something other than crawling into bed and drifting off?  I sure as hell hope so.  Those neural circuits are a bit rusty but I’m looking forward to dusting them off and allowing them some freedom of action. That said, I must admit it’s sad when thoughts of sex or love or fellowship have been shoved to the ground by the simple overwhelming desire to lie down.   Have you ever noticed that maturity strongly resembles simply being too damned tired to do anything naughty.  Sigh! If I ever again talk about auditioning for two plays in a row while working, please just come over to my house and kick me square in the groin.  I’m sure I won’t appreciate it at the time, but I’m equally certain that in the long run, I’ll realize it was for the best.

Truly, it has been very entertaining and fulfilling month, these volunteer actors have proved themselves a wonderful people whether atheist, agnostic or Christian. My chosen family, the family I have hand picked, has expanded greatly and that is always a good thing.  A new world opened up and let me in.  Watching these plays for years has left me with a deep appreciation for the quality of the talent pool in this town.  I have watched as ordinary people have given a couple hundred hours of their time to put on a performance that often left me either emotionally shaken or sore from laughing so hard.  And now I have worked with them, the very same people.  It’s fascinating doing a scene onstage with a young woman who just the year before put on an emotional performance that left me unable to sleep that night.  Too cool! Really!

I also love how the shows are made up of about half veterans and half acting virgins and how everyone just blended right together.  There were few egos or personality disturbances and no cliques.  It was an ideal situation.  And as a small bit of personal swagger, I must say that I didn’t totally suck.  Though I’m quite certain that Pacino remains safe in his career as yet,  I didn’t embarrass myself.  Whew!

Ah, now we must discuss the actual play and its content.  Based on the Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, it more or less consisted of three demons conspiring to get a young man into the pit.  Yes, it was religious through and through, but it was also funny, very very funny.  The three people who were cast as the demons were a brilliant choice.  The interactions and bumbling between Screwtape — an elder statesman of the demon world, Wormwood — his young nephew, and Slumtrimpet — Slut for short — the ever present temptress, were hilarious.  Whether I was in the play or not, I’m quite certain I would have loved these performances.  But…

But… Then there’s the religion.  Sigh.  Amber Bernhardt, the brilliant young director of Dakota Stage and the actress who played the part of Slut has been working hard at expanding the theater in Bismarck.  Among her ideas to encourage people was to open both Friday performances to a discussion period afterward.  This involved having three experts in drama, literature and religion take the stage after the play and initiate discussion in their specialities.  I, of course, felt compelled to stay for both events, but in the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that I did not partake in the discussion more that rolling my eyes at every absurdity.  Why not you ask?  Well, I love Dakota Stage and feel it brings something to Bismarck that would be sorely missed, and I live in one of the most conservative cities in the United States.  What people think of me is irrelevant, but I couldn’t risk harming Dakota Stage with my thoughts on the religious elements of this tale. So aside from a couple of muffled snorts and banging my head repeatably on the seat in front of me, I kept quiet.

But not here.  Never here!  Ok.  The play focuses on personal demons who whisper in people’s ears trying to convince them go against God’s plan in order to drag them into hell to be devoured… as food. Yeah.  Well, that’s the play’s version. The fundamentalist version is a bit more sinister involving personally adapted torture for each individual for all eternity.  Hmmm. Does anyone else find this idea just a little bit absurd?  There are invisible and, of course, undetectable and unprovable demons dashing about influencing your day to day decisions trying to lead you away from God?  Then these same demons are going to delight in torturing you for the rest of your existence which we are assured will be forever?  Um. If this isn’t a WTF moment, I don’t know what is.  Can you say WTF?  I knew you could.

In this hallucinogenic view, God creates a world that he knows will turn into a vast war involving creatures he created and whose job it is to get you into hell.  These creatures then find some kind of reward in torturing everyone for all time.  Why would they do this?  What could be their motivation?  Do they get some kind of sustenance, some nutritional value out of pain?  If anyone truly believes that then please explain to me the mechanism involved.  I’d love to hear it. If we are food and this is how demons are nourished, this hardly seems like a sustainable food system, and if the demons have another motivation, I’d love to hear it.  Please!  And please tell me how this is according to some kind of divine plan?  Did he really mean for all this to happen or did his plan go awry?  Perfection, anyone?

At these discussions many were arguing about the minutia of the theology involved such as whether it is possible to redeem a demon (Trust me!  This was brought up more than once).  The entire time I kept wanting to yell out that it’s not these tiny little points that are wrong but the entire damned idea.  Instead of arguing about the  number of angels on the head of a pin, back up and look at the absurdity of angels altogether.  Not only are they losing sight of the forest for the trees, they have lost sight of the trees for the twigs.  For a lack of Christ’s sake, does evil and good really consist of supernatural intelligences battling for supremacy?  Shit no!  Back the hell up and actually look at what is being discussed.

One of the Priests, an otherwise seemingly intelligent man, explained the fiend’s objective thus, “The devil’s job is not to get you to sin.  Their job is to get you to think about anything but God.  It doesn’t matter what you are thinking about; as long as it’s not God you’re doomed.”  Yeah, right… Because everything great about this world has been accomplished by those who always thought about God… Like the crusades or the witch burnings or the pogroms against the Jews or the conquest of aboriginal peoples around the world.  History firmly proves that holding the image of God in your mind makes you incapable of screwing up.

And all that useless stuff humanity comes up with when not thinking about God?  Trivial!  Goddamned trivial!  Mere distractions.  In today’s world, who in the shit actually uses the Germ Theory of Disease?  Atomic Theory?  A heliocentric view of the world?  Quantum Theory? Electromagnetism? The double helix? Gravity? Nuclear fission?  No one! Useless!   What good has any of this stuff ever done us?   All we need is to keep God topmost in our minds and shake our prayer sticks, ring our spirit bells, sacrifice animals on a bloody altar and eat our sacred crackers, and if we just do these things, then God will take care of us.  Just like he always has.

That’s why bad things never happen to good people.

Oh… Wait…  Oh shit!

2011
02/13
CATEGORY
Atheism
Myth
Religion
Reviews
60 comments

The Promised Land: I Give You This Land, All You Have To Do Is Steal It.


From the never dull Brick Testament.

 

Exodus 23/20-33.

Ah, look.  Who would have thought?  Yet another Biblical genocide.  Well, more of a preview for one really, a promise of ass-kickings to come, a movie trailer of a minor apocalypse.  Here the Lord Genocide promises his chosen ones that he will give them land, Hence the term “promised land”.  Unfortunately that land is already under the ownership of several other tribes of humanity so God’s promise is really an offer of aid in the extermination or expulsion of said peoples in exchange for complete and absolute obedience.  There’s always a price to be paid even with Yahweh as your best friend forever.  Hell, especially with Yahweh as your buddy.  That guy’s like a giant vampire extracting a price for shit he just pretends to do.  But we’ll get into that later.

Here he lays out a plan where the Hebrews will conquer the land of Canaan, not only conquer but completely destroy the inhabitants dwelling therein. People may be ignorant of this but they call it the land of Canaan for a reason — the Canaanites dwelt there.  Now God’s wants other people to have it. So many questions arise! Why does God give them someone else’s property?  Can’t he make more land? Will this vastness of death and suffering eventually work out in some kind of plan?  Are there oxymoronic limits on omnipotence?  Mysterious ways? I do not know.  But merely to ask these questions demands that Yahweh really exists.  Although this site loves to assume that he does and poke holes through the very idea, it would be more illustrative to occasionally take another tack, namely to be blunt about the fact that he doesn’t exist and simply state the dangers of passages like these. We certainly can and should ask the preceding questions to believers, though.  In fact, we could ask so many more.  But I find it enlightening to look at why this section was written.  What other reason could it be than a justification, perhaps even after the fact, of the Hebrew’s “right” to possess the land. God gave it to then after all. Who can argue with the will of God?

The Ancient Hebrews were a legal minded people.  Anyone one who has read just a bit of the vast amounts of Law within this book can hardly doubt that legality was paramount, and these verses give a justification to their claim, a reason why they deserve the land more than the people already dwelling there.  Here, their Manifest Destiny is more firmly stated than the Monroe Doctrine, a bold plan for their future expansion.  This was both the carrot and the stick offering great riches but demanding strict obedience. This was their rationalization for genocide.  They needed the land.  Someone else had it.  Excuses could be invented.  It was likely no worse than many of their contemporary’s or our contemporaries justifications for their own personal massacres, but it is no better either. People are people and they have been for a very long time.  So I’m not saying the Canaanites and their kin were better than the Hebrews, and I’m not saying they were worse.  Please keep in mind that by all evidence most ancient contemporaries were jackoffs. Like anywhere in history, those that were too decent didn’t last long against their more aggressive neighbors.  A fact the many of us are unwilling to face is that if other people have what we want or need, we will often invent some reason to take it from them.  An honest look at history shows that every group and tribe on earth is Machiavellian to the core.  We don’t remember Machiavelli because he was good and just.  He strikes a chord with us because we see ourselves in his writings. Face it people, evolution on a harsh planet has trained us well to be bastards.  Would our creation by a loving God have done it nearly so completely?  Does that even make sense?

Exodus 23/20. “Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him. But if you truly obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them.”

Obey me and I will destroy your enemies!  My angel will bring you into the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them.  What else other than a complete genocide could this mean?  Do not question! Do not rebel! Do not think for yourselves! And if you remain loyal I’ll help you kill your neighbors and take their lands.  Sweet deal, eh?  In essence, this is a great device to ensure the retention of power by the  ruler, Moses, and the ruling class, the priests.  The only way to get the land is complete and utter obedience to God.  The only way to obey God is to obey the only one who God will speak to, Moses.  Cunning, don’t you think? Do you still doubt that Moses was the greatest cult leader of all time?  Truth is, he’s damned good at his job and knows exactly what to tell his people to keep them from straying. One almost has to admire him… Almost.

Let’s continue with Exodus 23/27

“You shall not worship their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds; but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces. But you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst. There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you.”

Obey God and he will even break out the hornets on you enemies.  Hornets?  Really?  What’s next?  Barrels of Monkeys?  Angry cats? Sexually depraved rhinos? Again you can see the carrot and stick here.  Destroy their god’s temples and Yahweh will stop your women from miscarrying.  He will remove sickness. Women will be fertile. Your enemies will turn and run, and… Don’t forget the hornets!  Aside from those blasted hornets and enemies fleeing, I don’t see why any god who even claims a passing familiarity with benevolence wouldn’t do these thing anyway.  Stopping sicknesses and infertility? What kind of buttplug would withhold these essentials from people you claim to adore?  If you’re the creator of everything, why did you make them in the first place?  You create diseases then demand complete obedience to get rid of the very creations you inflicted on humanity.

Ow!  Brain filling up. Must purge!  Purge!  To use a term I just heard, by the bowels of Christ, how do believers actually hold all this shit in their head simultaneously?  Every time I try to do this I feel as if I have some kind of mental dysentery.  I shove biblical ideas in at one end while watery and poorly digested shit is forced out the other.  It has to come out.  No matter how hard my mental sphincter tries, it just can’t hold it.  Ugh! I think I’m going to have to lie down.

But first onto Exodus 23/29

“I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. “I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land.

Um. OK. You’re going to drive them out but not all at once because every one knows that beasts in the fields pose a far greater danger than those mere tribes of people whose lives and land you’re stealing. Yeah!  For your information the land was truly taken little by little.  It took centuries and was often retaken by other empires.  What this statement does is make the promise non-falsifiable.  With only a vague idea of a timeline, priests could always claim that the time was not ripe, and with the demand for obedience, they could always claim that the people were not loyal enough.  We’ve seen both of these used far too many times in our history to not interpret it this way.  Prophets or priests make some vague open-ended prediction and then continually make excuses for it not happening or blame their acolytes for a lack of faith.

In fact, already the offer of help is clarified to exclude any forceful help from God, other than the hornets, of course.
“I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.”

Well,… I’m not going to drive them out.  I’ll let you do it.  Looking forward, one sees that the promise is only fulfilled at the end of the Exodus and even then poorly. Deuteronomy 1:8 says: See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land that the LORD swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them. In other words, “Here is the land I have given you.  Now go take it from those already living there.  Yeah I’ll be… Right behind you… Yeah, that’s the ticket!”  That’s like me taking my son into a store, pointing out an ipod and telling him that the ipod is his for I have given it to him, all he must do is steal it.  That plan could save me some money on birthday presents just like it saves God from having to really do anything… or exist.

The whole section ends with this grim proclamation.

“You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

This is the most frightening statement here.  It allows no compromise and no mercy.  They are the enemy and must be driven out at all costs.  Their very presence will bring doom. Even though I know that history is rife with such proclamations and events,  this send chills through me.  That they did it is one thing.  Mini-cides like this happened on a yearly basis in the ancient world.  But that there is a vast group of people right here and right now who use this book as the one inerrant guide to life, the one source of all morality, terrifies me.  In spite of the progress we’ve made, a sizable minority of people still look to this book as an error-free moral blueprint. And this blueprint actively condones the extermination of those different from you.  Scary, huh?  Next Halloween, I’m going as a Bible.

The single comforting bit of knowledge is that most biblical archeologists don’t believe there was much of a conquest merely a slow growth of the Hebrews in a sparsely populated land.  There is little evidence for any kind of sudden devastating warfare and in spite of what the Biblical sources tell us, little reason to believe this genocide took place.  But what really happened isn’t my concern as much as what Biblical literalists think is right and wrong, and this clearly puts genocide in a God-endorsed category, an endorsement that can hardly be looked with anything other than revulsion in today’s light.

Have you ever noticed that God’s help as predicted by prophecy or prayer is always proclaimed as some grand and glorious thing, angels leading the charge to war, God throwing thunderbolts from above, amputees being healed, but when later preachers go back to see if the prophecies or prayers have been answered, the criteria used to judge the efficacy is hardly consistent with the original bold predictions.  Listening to how today’s preachers proclaim the end is near and bring out their list of fulfilled prophecies is a joke.  Most are so vaguely interpreted as to render all of it meaningless.  In the thirty years since I started listening to this shit, there is always a new claim for a new antichrist (usually a Democrat) or event that only roughly corresponds to what the Bible really says.  Ten years later, the same group of preachers have a different set. God doesn’t work in mysterious ways.  He works in undetectable and nonexistent ways.

Great prayers ask for God’s help, whether in war or sickness or disaster.  When the hardship is over, believers will sift through the wreckage of their lives to find anything proving that their God still loves them.  Their communities are in ruins and their families lie in graves at their feet, yet they continue to grasp on to the slightest silver lining as proof God is real.  To disbelieve at that point is horrifying and unthinkable.  That their loss was meaningless and eternal can’t be borne. The only way they can hold on to what they have lost is to desperately believe… in anything!  They cling to an imaginary promise that they will get it all back.  They won’t.

God’s promises aren’t real, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have power.  Religion is a force in the world, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil.  When God promises great things while demanding complete obedience, frightening things can result.  And since it’s in the realm of magic, many of the promises become gifts in an unprovable afterlife, a payment plan using Monopoly money.  Denying proof and relying solely on faith removes any checks and balances from the system.  At that point the system is too often controlled by the mob, and the mob is too often controlled by just a few men.  The balance between good and evil swings on the character of human beings, never the most trustworthy of linchpins.

Whether it’s a promised land or 72 virgins, the promises of a fictional God, an infallible ideal, or any other magical thinking give us the rationalizations we require to become true barbarians.

And as products of a vicious evolution, we never need much.

We’re just bastards in the hands of a non-existent God!

 

2010
12/22
CATEGORY
Atheism
Bible study
Exodus
Religion
Young Earth Creationism
33 comments
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