Faith, Fire, and Facebook

I recently moved to Colorado, from the scenic, sweltering pressure cooker of the Texas Hill Country and it's endemic Good-Ole-Boyism, non-existent educational standards, and rampant superstition, bigotry and out-group hostility.

Colorado immediately burst into flames.

So the next time someone posts "Please pray for the people of Colorado," on your Facebook wall, instead of replying "Prayers sent!" or whatever inane, unhelpful mindless happy talk you're about to post to give yourself the feeling of a job well done without actually doing anything, check out this list of things you can do to help that don't rely on sitting on your ass and feeling good about yourself for no damn reason.

1. Educate Yourself

By cutting down all of the forests!

This isn't even the hard kind of education, like molecular biology or quantum physics or (for my Texas friends,) 5th Grade reading comprehension.

Fire, as many know, is spread by the devils of temptation in their rampant march through our children, corrupting them into tiny anti-christs engaging in all manner of evil behavior, including dresses shorter than floor length, sassing their elders, premarital kissing and, in extreme cases, concern for the well-being of those less fortunate than themselves.

In order to protect ourselves from our glorious and vengeful God, He has commanded us to remove all flammable materials within a five mile radius of any habitable structure. Just imagine how ordered and and simple and Godly a world would be without any unsightly trees or grass between you and Sunday School!

Donate To Firefighters

Fighting fires takes money. Instead of donating directly to the firefighters, who are always sad, disappointing humans wandering through traffic asking for handouts like common liberals, and nothing like the chiseled, homosexual models that adorn their PR calenders, give it to your favorite politician.

Assuming you're not a deviant sinner swayed by socialist lies, you'll realize that the best way to keep your fire department funded is by privatization.

That's right, Romney is an anagram of "R money" which is Texan for "Our money"! How could we possibly fail to succeed with a name like that attached to a rich, white guy, even if he is a filthy Mormon and will burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity for having slightly different silly, made-up beliefs than everyone else's silly, made-up beliefs?

Just think! Like our wonderful healthcare system, which ranks first in North American countries that aren't Canada, Mexico, or too small to care about, and only 37th in the world in terms of overall quality, a privatized fire department would be a positive money tree!

Just in case you were wondering, the United States Healthcare system IS number one in overall cost per capita! That's why you don't see doctors asking for handouts or having fundraisers: they know that God truly wants us to flourish as individuals at the expense of society at large!

And don't worry about the cost! As a good Christian, your house will be immune to God's righteous fire. Why, you could even have a barbeque on the charred remains of your neighbors, laughing at the idea of them hanging from meat-hooks being lowered into a lake of molten sulfur for all eternity for their sins of  questioning authority and constantly trying to use logic and facts to win arguments!

Make Yourself Available!

While some well-meaning but misguided secularists have been posting ads on Craigslist making their spare bedrooms and houses available to those unfortunate (wicked and deserving of punishment,) enough to be displaced by the fires, their efforts to help will ultimately be fruitless. They, having not heard our LORDS warning against the evils of the Internet, do not realize that, among other things, Craigslist allows homosexuals to post ads looking for other homosexuals for purposes of companionship. Just as a bad tree cannot produce good fruit, anything involving gays will ultimately be fruitless!


No, what a true Christian can and must do is visit these poor, lost souls in their government sanctioned holding pens and spread the Good News! They may be hungry, tired, angry, or sick from smoke inhalation or burns, but the important thing is that they should all have access to Scripture!

Toilet paper and bathroom reading in one!

The Holy Bible can serve so many purposes for these people! Provided it's a good, solid KJV with annotations, it can be used to club to death the rats they rely on for nutrition, and THEN used to cook the rats, and THEN used to cleanse themselves when they defecate the rat back out into a bucket! How good is our God to provide us with such a multi-purpose book?!

4. As a Last Resort

Seriously, making a Facebook prayer request is about the most fucking useless thing a human being could possibly do to help another human being. I've seen dozens of the fucking things on my wall and you know what? Not one of those people has called to ask if I need anything or if I'm okay.

I said it was almost the most useless thing one could do because responding to one of them is definitely the most useless thing ever. If you seriously believe that clicking the 'like' button, or posting 'healing vibes headed your way' could possibly affect anything in the real world, and then allow yourself a warm, fuzzy feeling for making that much of an effort then you're even worse than the internet slacktivists that spread that damn Kony 2012 video around for a week and then forgot about it forever.

You want to pray for someone? Fine. Go ahead. But don't make a big spectacle of it and attempt to emotionally blackmail your friends into joining you, you pretentious dick-knuckle. Pray, for whatever good it does (hint: none,) and then go do something fucking useful.

Faithless

I had to take a break from the Good Book. Far too much genocide and child torture for me to indulge in on a daily basis. Not if I intend to remain somewhat civil.

 I wanted instead to address a problem I've been struggling with expressing for quite a while now. The problem of faith. I had a conversation in which a friend told me  they felt sad for me because I didn't have faith.

Their argument was that while thoughts can be wrong and feelings can be wrong, faith can't be wrong.

My stance is that all three can be wrong. That's why I try to surround myself with people that help keep me honest and challenge my beliefs. Not religious beliefs in my case, obviously, but beliefs about politics and video games  and music and sex.

See, as a freethinker or secular humanist or skeptic or whatever, I don't, or can't, just accept the dictates of authority unthinkingly. I don't know that other people can, or if they do that they'd be aware of it, but they certainly seem to. 

Now I'm not going to sit here and pretend as if I NEVER accept a statement without carefully evaluating it. Not that I have the best bullshit detector, but just because I'm kinda lazy and most of the shit I hear on a day to day basis doesn't matter in the big picture.

For the things that do matter, or that I consider as mattering, there are certain sources I'm more inclined to believe than others. If The Blaze makes a potentially slanderous claim against a Democratic Congressman then I'm more inclined to approach it skeptically than I would be if Alternet made a similar claim against a Republican Congressman. Nobody is immune to some level of cognitive bias.

Which is the awesome thing about the scientific method, incidentally: It filters out bias as much as possible.

Going along with that, there have been some things that I REAAAAAAAAALLY wanted to believe that just weren't true. And conceding that they weren't is not always fun. Metallica was not that groundbreaking and original. Obama is another war President. M. Night Shyamalan only made one good movie. Two Worlds 2 is a shit game. There is a personal, loving, sentient entity out there that wants the best for me, and I can't understand it because it's too big for me to understand. That girl from the coffee shop wasn't really into me. Adam Sandler was never that funny. Ouch.

Faith now, where does faith figure into things? I can argue from a scientific perspective, a philosophical perspective, I can cite research, I can do whatever to assert my stance or reject a claim, but what seems to be the fundamental difference between the friend that feels sad for me, and me, who feels sad for my friend, is faith. 

Here are some of the arguments I've heard.

"Faith is the opposite of fear." 

I make no secret about my past as a seemingly hopeless drug addict. And one thing that I have in common with most addicts is a predisposition for fear-based decision making. Jumping to the worst possible conclusion, instead of the most likely. Constantly making back up plans for when things inevitably don't work out. Choosing the security of monotony over the risk of adventure. Things like that.

Faith isn't the opposite of fear, though. Hope is the opposite of fear, and reason is the opposite of faith. That's my stance. 

Faith can get someone through fear, of course. But so can courage, and reason, and emotional support. But faith is not the opposite. Hope is. Well, inasmuch as emotions have opposites, which they don't really, but for the purpose of the argument...

They even, when unfounded, have diametric outcomes. Fear, if what is feared doesn't come to pass, leads to relief: A positive emotion. Hope, if it doesn't pan out, leads to disappointment: a negative emotion.

Faith is a tool used to deal with fear. But as I've stated above, there are other tools that can be used to deal with it.

"Everyone has faith, even you." 

I'd agree that almost everyone has the capacity for faith, even a tendency towards it. Most people are uncomfortable with uncertainty, and faith fills that need for answers nicely. But just because most people HAVE it, doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing.

We also all have a skeleton not particularly suited for a bipedal lifestyle, but no one's claiming lower back problems are a good thing. Something similar can be said about self-pity, overconfidence, scientific ignorance, the appendix, and so on.

Faith isn't necessary, in other words. And while I'm not claiming I'm completely devoid of faith, I am claiming that I would like to be. Which is the point where the argument usually devolves into some kind of "You have faith in science/electricity/yourself" thing. Which doesn't work as it relies on conflated terminology and false equivalency.

I don't have faith in electricity, I have expectations based on past experience corroborated with a mountain of evidence. If I pay the bill, and there are no wiring problems or blown fuses or shorts or burnt out bulbs, then when I flip the switch on my lamp, my lamp will turn on. That doesn't require faith. Even if I didn't understand HOW electrons flow and interact with tungsten; and even though I don't understand WHY electrons flow (which assumes there has to be a reason, which there isn't, but that's usually part of the argument,) the lamp will still work. 

On the other hand, faith in God has NEVER worked as reliably as electricity. In any test or study that I'm aware of, the efficacy of faith has always been statistically within the margin of error for no discernible effect, other than as an emotional security blanket.  And there are more practical and functional options than that.

"Faith keeps us humble." 

Humility is a tricky concept to define. The definition I use is "a sense of one's relative importance in a given situation."

The reasoning behind this argument, inasmuch as I understand it, is that so long as God is at the top of the ladder, the believer will be at the bottom, effectively inoculating the believer from grandiosity, self-righteousness, selfishness, and so on.

Which fails miserably as a hypothesis. Assuming there were a personal, all powerful God, why would placing God at the top of one's priorities ensure that anything below God wouldn't be just as fucked up as having one's self at the top? And why are we looking at life as a chain instead of a sphere or tree?

Yes, I'm really high on my list of things I care about. But that doesn't automatically mean I'm a self-centered egomaniac. While I certainly used to be (and still can be on occasion,) I have a completely different relationship with myself than I did four years ago.

Today I realize that I have to be important to myself because if I'm not I won't be any good to others.   Now, having said that, I realize that everyone else is just as important to themselves as I am to me. And assuming there's NOT a personal, loving God making sure everyone is interacting properly in accordance with some impossibly complex plan, as I do, I have to keep this in mind. I can miss a meal if someone hasn't eaten in two days. I can make myself available to someone I know is going through a rough patch, even if it means missing out on something I really wanted to do. Why? Because I know what those things are like.

That's just empathy and compassion, our evolved herd instincts, and, as far as I'm concerned, the most beautiful and powerful thing about humanity. 

"Without faith I wouldn't be where I am today."  

Without faith you might be somewhere much nicer. 

The problem with this kind of argument is that we don't have extra lives. We can't go back a year, make different choices with different motivations and check.

I suspect that if I hadn't been waiting on some kind of sign that I might have taken the initiative to move out of Texas long before I did. And it may have worked out poorly. Or spectacularly. There is no way of checking.

To claim that by merely having faith led to the current favorable outcome is puerile. It's superstition at it's worst. I know lots of people that are rancid with faith that never catch lucky breaks.

Every day trillions of choices are made. Not to say it's luck, but the web of human interaction, factored in with all of the non-human variables, is so complex that it might as well be. Saying that faith is the most important factor at play is like saying your lucky shirt did it. 

My life, whether judged from quality of lifestyle, to overall happiness, to general satisfaction, has improved a ton since I abandoned faith. That alone is enough to disqualify faith as the most important factor. And in my case I suspect that it was one of the primary factors in keeping me stuck in a life I was unhappy with while desperately trying to convince myself that it was the best possible life I could have.

"I know by faith."

Is usually the justification given for the really big questions. Or a variation on it.

Why do you believe in God despite the lack of evidence? Why do you think there's an afterlife? How can you claim your moral compass is powered by the same God that Fred Phelps has?

The undercurrent with this argument is always that there's something wrong with my worldview because I choose to know things that are real. The Big Bang theory doesn't give a shit about me. Evolution doesn't want to give me a big hug if I can't pay my electric bill. Christopher Hitchens won't comfort me in my hour of need. So I'm the one missing out, right? 

No. I'm not. While the certainty of faith can be appealing at times, I know where it leads. It leads to a rigid, inflexible worldview with no more mystery in it beyond burrowing deeper into the delusion. Faith is so small. I'm an ape that's just clever enough to know that I'm an ape made of particles too small to see, living on a wet rock orbiting an unremarkable star in an unremarkable galaxy. I have so much left to learn and see and do. What compares to that? Your claim that the creator of the universe is your personal buddy? Fine. Next time you talk to him ask him why he waited 14 and a half billion years to make you think we're so damn important.

I'd prefer a truth I can verify, or that at least can be verified. And I can live with honestly not having the big answers much more soundly than by dishonestly claiming I do. And the best thing about that? I can withhold judgement on things I'm unsure about. I don't have any commandments to follow. I don't have to have answers. And that concept gets conflated with faith quite a bit.

If I hear something and can't decide whether or not to believe it, and can't do the work to verify it, I can just say "I don't know yet." What caused the Big Bang? I don't know. Maybe nothing. May be the wrong question. Why is everything the way it is? I don't know. What's the purpose of life? I don't know. May be there isn't one.

I love that concept. When I first got clean I didn't think I could stay clean, because I had never been able to before. And that was what helped. and I wish someone would have explained it to me then. I didn't think anything would work for me, but I was told to 'believe that I believe,' and 'to be willing to be willing' and inane garbage like that. So I withheld judgement long enough to try some new things, and found some things that worked, like emotional honesty, self-appraisal, willingness, allowing my beliefs about myself to be challenged, forgiveness, making amends for my past transgressions. And I tried some things that didn't work, like prayer, faith, belief in the supernatural, and reading alleged holy books.

So no, I don't have faith. Not in any kind of God that's relieved my obsession to use drugs or is helping me get through the rough parts of life. If I could say that I had faith in anything then it would be in humanity in general. I think humans will eventually get their act together. I have no real evidence for this, as class struggles and poverty and war and cruelty don't seem to be going anywhere, so by that definition it would be faith. For anything else: I can withold judgement, I can have reasonable   expectations, or I can just say, in all honesty, "I don't know," and be done with it. 

Of course, saying "I don't know" starts a whole new argument.

"How can you claim you're an atheist when you don't KNOW there isn't a God?" "How can you say you don't believe in an afterlife if you don't KNOW that there isn't life after death that just can't be measured by modern science?" And the answer is: honestly.

Believe me, I would really like it if there was a God out there, or that I'd get to see my father again. But looking at it realistically, probably not. I don't believe in God because I have no reason to. When I did it didn't make me any happier or more successful than I would have been anyway, not that we can check, and I haven't encountered or experienced anything, ever, that needed God as an explanation. Maybe part of us survives after death. I doubt it, but maybe. But it won't be the heaven or hell that religion claims. We know consciousness is a product of the brain, so that won't survive. And the ideas of eternal pleasure or pain are out as our nerve endings die with our body. So whatever survives won't be US as individual, unique entities. Some kind of chi or force or life essence that can't be measured or tested? Sure, that's possible, but if it exists there's no reason to believe in it as believing in it serves no practical use or purpose. It might make for great science fiction and karate movies, but I have never fucking yet seen someone shoot Force Lightning or harness mystical Chinese secret energies to do anything more than swindle gullible hippies out of money.

Genesis, Chapters 11-26

Chapter 11.

    1: Everyone speaks the same language, despite being divided according to their tongue.

    2-4:Man begins building a tower to reach Heaven, which is only like 5 miles up as everyone knows.

    5-9: God came down to earth, which used to happen a lot, and confounded Men's language and scattered them, as they were getting way too close to building a functioning and progressive society of technological advancement for the Judeo-Christian God's liking.

    10-26: More fucking genealogies. People are still living well past the 900 year mark.

    27-28: Terah sires Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran begats Lot.

    29: Abram marries Sarai, Nahor marries Milcah.

    30: Sarai is barren.

    31-32: Terah takes his son Abram, Sarai, and Lot and went into Canaan. The place, not the person. There they came unto Haran the Place, not Haran the Person.

Chapter 12.

    1-3: God tells Abram to leave Haran the Place for somewhere else where God will build a great nation with Abram as its leader. God will bless those that bless Abram and curse those that curse Abram, so, yknow, be nice to that guy.

    4-6: Abram, Lot and Sarai and all their people (slaves,) go forth to Canaan the Place.

    7: God grants the land to Abram, because that's how property rights work, and Abram built an altar to God who appeared to Abram.

Again, God had no problem with just showing up.

    8-9: More traveling and altar building.

    10-13: They come to Egypt, where there is a famine. Abram, brave leader that he is, tells his wife Sarai to tell the Egyptians that she is his sister so that they don't kill Abram to take her as a sex slave.

Of course, they may take Sarai anyway, but at least the fella gets to go free, since he's just her brother. Right? "Hey, you're probably gonna get raped to death, so instead of dying trying to defend you, I'll just lie and save my own ass. We cool?"

    14-16: Sarai was taken by no less than the Pharaoh, giving Abram sheep, oxen, asses, servants, and camels for her.

So yeah, if you're ever destitute in a foreign land, sell your hot wife to the local king.

    17-20: God plagues Pharaoh and his house with plagues because of Sarai. Pharaoh asks Abram 'What the fuck? Why didn't you tell me she was your wife? Get the fuck out of here!' Abram, Sarai and their stuff gets the fuck out.

Chapter 13.

    1-4: Abram, having grown quite wealthy in cattle, silver and gold, presumably from whoring out his wife, went back to his alter and called on God.

    5-7: Lot, also wealthy in flocks, herds and tents, and Abram had too much stuff to stay on the same land without fighting, since God's prophets are all about worldly accumulation of wealth.

    8-9: Abram proposes they split the land down the middle.

    10-13: Abram stayed in Canaan, while Lot went down to the cities of the plains. The cities being Sodom and Gomorrah.

    14-18: After Lot left to enjoy the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah, God promised Abram all the land that he could see in every direction until the end of time, and that his descendants would outnumber the grains of sand on the earth.

Anyone else think this is kind of a dick move? Hey, guy who sold his wife, You're gonna get everything you could ever possibly desire. Hey, tag-along nephew, you get to go live in a shithole so shitty their hobbies include Angel Rape.

Chapter 14.

    1-12: There was a big war between a bunch of places that probably never existed. Or at least never existed as described, the end of which led to Lot and his good being taken by deserters from Sodom and Gomorrah.

    13-16: Abram, learning of his nephews capture, armed his slaves and attacked them under cover of darkness and rescued Lot, his goods, the women and the regular people (men).

    17-20: The king of Sodom and the king/high-priest of Salem met with Abram to sing praises. Abram offers the first tithe.

The King of Sodom.

    21-24: King Sodom offers to let Abram keep the goods in exchange for the prisoners. Abram says no dice, I'm not taking a bribe from you so you can say you made me rich. Abram accepted only the food that his men and confederates had eaten.

Which is the kind of noble and self-sacrificing and humble gesture one can make if one is already so rich that half a country can't hold all your stuff.

Chapter 15.

    1: God appears to Abram in a vision claiming to be his shield and reward.

    2-6: Abram asks why he doesn't have a proper heir. God promises Abrams descendants will outnumber the stars in the sky.

    7-11: God asks for a creepily specific blood sacrifice.

Seriously, if you ever want to know how to properly butcher animals for the purposes of appeasing your mad desert god, this is the goods.

    12-21: In a nightmare, God explains how, even though Abram will die peacefully of old age, his people will be enslaved for hundreds of years, but after that it'll be awesome.

Which would be an awesome prophecy if there was any possible way of proving it hadn't been retro-fitted into the narrative.

Chapter 16.

    1-4: Sarai, who is barren and baby-crazy, tells Abram to knock up their handmaiden, the Egyptian Hagar. Hagar then gets uppity with Sarai.

Sarai gets mad butthurt about things happening exactly as she wanted them to, proving we really are made in God's image as he's constantly doing that.

    5-6: Sarai 'dealt hardly' with Hagar, who flees.

    7-10: An angel, upon finding Hagar, orders Hagar to return to Sarai and accept her punishment, and that Hagar's offspring will not be innumerable.

    11-16: The angel informs Hagar that her child will be a 'wild man' with 'every man's hand against him' before she returns and gives birth to Ishmael.

Chapter 17.

    1-5: Years later, God appears to Abram seeking to make covenant. Abram becomes Abraham, as he will be the father of many nations.

    6-11: God explains the covenant, which is more 'innumerable descendants,' 'great kingdoms,' 'more powerful than kings' schtick. The sign of the covenant? Genital mutilation of infants. What else.

    12-14: God explains the ettiquite for cutting part of a baby's dick off, even if that child is bought as a slave.

Weird how we consider this barbaric ritual 'normal.'

Also, if God doesn't want people to have foreskin then WHY DID HE DESIGN US WITH IT?   

    15-17: Sarai becomes Sarah, and God promises she will bear a child. Abraham has trouble believing this, as he is 90 years old. Although that's only like 8 in Genesis years.

    18-22: God promises that, while Ishmael will be fruitful, the covenant will pass to the unborn Isaac.

Because let's not get crazy with handing out blessings and covenants, it's not like he's all-powerful and totally capable of passing the covenant to both with no real effort on his part.

    23-27: Abraham takes Ishmael, all of his slaves, bought and born, and circumcises them, as well as himself.

Which sounds like it would have been the best Youtube video and worst day at work ever.

Chapter 18.

    1: God appears to Abraham on the plains of Mamre one day.

    2-8: It seems God took the form of three travelers, for some reason. Luckily Abraham is almost comically eager to please any wandering travelers who happen upon his tent. Abraham and Sarah personally prepare a feast for the guests.

I'm genuinely curious whether or not Abraham knew the trinity were really God, or if this is just how he acts around strangers. I mean he has lots of servants with freshly mutilated cocks, couldn't they prepare the feast?

    9-11: The travelers tell Abraham (and Sarah, who was eavesdropping,) that they will have a son, despite being really old.

Now, just as a reminder, while Abraham and Sarah are freaking out about being too old to have children, Abraham's father was 70 when he sired children and lived to be 205 (11:26,32). So as far as I'm concerned, people breeding decades past the expiration of their historical life expectancy (around 30 it they were lucky,) is totally normal for this fiction.

    12-15: Sarah laughs at the absurdity of the news. God asks why she was laughing, because he can totally do it, you'll see, God's really powerful.

    16-20: God, turning his attention to Sodom and debates whether or not to tell Abraham what he is about to do. God decides to take Abraham with him. Only him is still them at this point.

    21-33: God and the trinity travel towards Sodom, which God intends to destroy. Abraham, for once not behaving like a greedy, venal coward with a dick mutilation fetish, bargains God down to sparing the city if ten righteous men can be found.

If God is the source of morality, then why is the human the one trying to prevent needless slaughter at the hand of God here? I refuse to believe that Sodom was irredeemable, as the amount of irredeemable people in the world is a tiny fraction, and those belong to tragic cases of untreatable mental illness or severe psychological/emotional damage. For the rest, surely the 'right' thing to do would be to, I don't know, establish law and schools and to implement preventative education and better parenting techniques.This is God we're talking about, so money and time would not be an issue.

Chapter 19.

    1-3: Two angels appear to Lot in Sodom. Lot begs them to stay at his house to eat and wash up, which angels need to do, apparently, and despite the angels desire to sleep in the streets, eventually enter Lot's home and feast.

    4-8: A mob surrounds Lot's house demanding that the angels be released for raping purposes. Lot goes out and OFFERS HIS VIRGIN DAUGHTERS TO THE RAPE MOB IN THEIR PLACE.

I'll admit I'm not a parent, but I can say, as a person, I would never, ever, ever, ever offer a defenseless young woman to an angry mob in place of a grown man (which is how the angels are described). To any religious parents out there, I sincerely hope that if push comes to shove you will choose your child's well-being over the dictates of your insane god.

    9-11: The mob surges, and the angels pull Lot into the house and strike the mob blind.

And no one was raped. Although Lot certainly deserved it after throwing his daughters to the mob like that.

    12-14: The angels warn Lot that they are about to destroy the city, so that Lot can gather his family. His sons-in-law-to-be thought he was joking.

I wonder how hilarious they'd find Lot knowing he offered their fiancees up for gang rape.

    15-17: The angels order Lot to take his wife and daughters and flee the city. When he doesn't, the angels forcibly remove him for his own safety. They then order him to flee to the hills to avoid the coming destruction.

    18-22: Lot bargains the angels down to fleeing to the much closer village of Zoar.

    23-26: With the dawn, God rained fire. All of the men, all of the children, all of the women, infants, elderly and unborn, all of the pets and animals of Sodom and Gomorrah burned. And Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for the crime of watching the atrocity of God's handiwork.

   27-30: The next morning Lot went out to see the smoking crater that used to be the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot, fearing to dwell in Zoar, went into the mountains to live with his daughters.

   31-38: The daughters (of course it's the daughters' idea, this is the Bible,) decide to get their father drunk and have sex with him to get pregnant. They then give birth to Moab of the Moabites and Benammi of the Ammonites. The daughters don't get names.

Assuming the situation happened as written (which is questionable, given what we know of Lot's parenting skills,) that Lot's daughters got him black-out drunk and took advantage of him, as so often happens, surely when they became noticeably pregnant he would work out what had happened, right? Of course, maybe Lot was totally okay with it.

Chapter 20.

    1-3: While sojourning in Gerar, Abraham again tells the king that Sarah is his sister when they come to take her. God, ever one to defend the worthless pile of shit Abraham, appears to the king in a dream to tell him that Sarah is married and that the king is a dead man.

    4-7: The king, who had not slept with Sarah, claims innocence as both Abraham and Sarah stated that they were siblings. God claims to have know this and to have been the reason the king hadn't touched Sarah, and orders the king to return Sarah or fucking else.

Which is interesting, in that God clearly has and is willing to forcibly prevent people from partaking in actions he considers wicked. Yet, instead of exercising this faculty on the people of pre-Flood earth or at Sodom and Gomorrah, he found it preferable to drown and burn men, women, and children.

    8-10: Upon awakening, the king informs his servants of what has transpired, then calls Abraham and gives him a similar 'what the fuck, dude?!' speech that Pharaoh gave Abraham the last time he pulled this stunt.

    11-13: Abraham informs the king that, despite being an abject coward unwilling to defend his wife, she was his half-sister: therefore he wasn't technically lying. He also tells the king that he ordered Sarah to corroborate the story.

    14-16: to set matters right, the king gives Abraham sheep, oxen, slaves and a thousand silver pieces and offers to let Abraham stay anywhere in his kingdom.

Because again, if you're a man of God, the best way to make a living is by whoring your wife out while claiming she's your sister.

    17-18: Abraham prays, and God heals the king, the kings wife and their female slaves so that they could bear children. Because God had stricken all the wombs of the kings house barren because of Sarah...

First, Abraham has been begging God to fix Sarah's baby-maker for decades, but God decides female slaves that have nothing to do with Abraham in any way are a higher priority. Second, magically healing people of afflictions you magically gave them sort of cancels the use of magic out.

Chapter 21.

    1-8: God finally makes good on his promise to give Abraham and Sarah a son, much to the rejoicing of all.

    9-13: During a feast in honor of Isaac, Sarah notices Hagar, Abraham's other baby-mama playing with Isaac, and orders Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael out, much to the displeasure of Abraham. God tells Abraham to cast his other son's mother and his other son out, as Isaac is the only son that really counts.

    14-16: Abraham casts out Hagar and Ishmael to wander in the wilderness. After running out of water, Hagar placed Ishmael under a bush, wandered a ways of, and wept at the prospect of having to watch her child die.

Just so we're clear: Sarah ordered this, God confirmed it, and Abraham did this. A woman is watching her child die of thirst in the wilderness because the child, son of a wealthy landowner, wasn't the legitimate heir.

    17-21: God, again taking his sweet-ass time fulfilling his contracts, intervenes and the boy grows up in the wilderness and became a great archer and married a nice Egyptian girl.

    22-24: The king of Gerar and the commander of his men told Abraham that God was with Abraham in all that he did, and asked him to swear by God that he would not deal falsely with the king or his descendants, as the king had always dealt honestly with Abraham. Abraham agreed.

    25-32: Abraham complains to the king that the king's men had seized a well which was on Abraham's land. The king claimed ignorance of this. The two then took sheep and oxen and struck a deal in which the land of the Philistines was returned.

    33-34: Abraham planted a tamarisk tree where the deal was struck, called on God and sojourned in the land of the Philistines.

It's weird how randomly specific some things are, such as their being seven ewes, or the tree being a tamarisk, whatever that is, yet Lot's daughters don't even receive names and time frames are marked only by births and deaths.

Chapter 22.

Fuck, I really hope we're done with the torture and murder of women and children for a while. The last few chapters were nauseating.

    1-2: God commands Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering.

Fuck.

    3-5: Abraham takes Isaac and two men, along with wood and asses, and set forth for the place where he will kill his son for the glory of God. Drawing close, Abraham tells his servants to wait with the ass while he and his son go off to worship where there aren't any witnesses.

    6-10: This is one of the most monstrous things I have ever read, in a book chock full of monstrous things.

    11-14: At the last second God calls the execution off, as it was only a test. Abraham finds a ram to sacrifice instead.

As tests go, as far as I'm concerned, Abraham failed miserably. Abraham has, so far, repeatedly lied about his relationship with his wife to save his own hide, repeatedly whored out his wife in a foreign land, impregnated his slave girl, cast the slave girl and his first-born son into the wilderness, mutilated the genitals of both of his children and all of his slaves, and almost murdered his other son. This is the man viewed as the founder of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

    15-19: God again promises Abraham the innumerable seed, all nations being blessed thing for his obedience. Abraham and his party return and dwell in Beer-sheba.

And that's the price, isn't it? Unquestioning obedience. Land, wealth, power, prosperity: what is that worth? Murdering a child? No. Hell is preferable to that.

    20-24: After this Abraham is informed that his brother Nahor and his wife Milcah also bore children: Huz, Buz, and Kemuel father of Aram, Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel. Bethuel begat Rebekah. His concubine Reumah bore him Tebah, Gaham, Thahash, and Maachah.

And hopefully none of those children had any dealings with the mad desert god of Abraham.

 Chapter 23.

This entire chapter concerns itself solely with the death of Sarah, Abraham's grief, and the purchase of a burial place.

Chapter 24.

    1-9: Abraham, now an old man, makes his servant swear to find Isaac a wife from the country of Abraham's kindred and not a Canaanite woman. And also to bring the woman to Canaan and under no circumstances take Isaac to the land of his fathers.

    10-14: After loading up on swag and traveling to Nahor the Place, the servant posts up at a well to creep on the women drawing water. He offered up a really specific prayer to find a suitable wife.

    15-20: At this point Rebekah, granddaughter of Nahor the Person shows up and fulfills the servants prayer request.

Now, I'm not an expert on the culture here, but the servant prayed that the right maiden would offer to water his camels as well if the servant asked her for water for himself, which Rebekah did. But that probably could have been any unmarried woman that responded in that way to an apparently wealthy traveler in a patriarchal society. Seems a bit like only praying for rain when it's already thundering.

     21-28: The servant procures lodging at Rebekah's place and praises God. Because a normal person wouldn't rent out a room to a man offering gold jewelry in exchange for it.

    29-48: Rebekah's brother returns to fetch the servant, who refuses to eat or wash up until he has told his story. He then repeats almost verbatim the first 28 verses of this chapter.

    49-61: After agreeing to the marriage and showering everyone with gifts the servant and Rebekah depart immediately.

    62-67: Isaac, meditating in a field, saw the camels and walked toward them, the servant told Rebekah that it was Isaac approaching, so she veiled herself. The servant then told Isaac what had happened, and Isaac took Rebekah into his tent, married her, loved her, was comforted after the loss of his mother.

I'm starting to worry, as nothing notably insane has happened in a couple of chapters.

Chapter 25.

    1-6: Abraham remarried and had several more children, but gave all he had, minus gifts, to Isaac because fuck the other kids.

    7-10: Abraham died aged 175 and was buried with his first wife by Isaac and Ishmael.

    11: After Abraham's death God blesses Isaac, who dwelt by the well Lahai-roi.

    12-18: Genealogy and dwellings of Ishmael.

    19-26: Rebekah, who was also barren, eventually conceived after Isaac intreated God on her behalf, which always works out well. She gave birth to twins: Esau, born covered in fur, and Jacob, who came out grabbing Esau's heel.

Esau and Jacob

    27-28: Esau, whom Isaac preferred, was a hunter of the field. Jacob, whom Rebekah preferred, was a tent dweller.

    29-34: Esau, returning from the field half-starved, begs Jacob for some food (pottage, whatever the fuck that is,) and Jacob convinces Esau to sell Jacob his birthright in exchange for a meal.

First, if Esau was short-sighted enough to sell his half of the kingdom for a meal, then he probably wouldn't have made a very good leader. Second, if Jacob is conniving enough to trick his dimwitted brother into selling his birthright for a meal and ruthless enough to let him starve if he doesn't, then he probably won't make a very good leader either. So I imagine things will soon get extremely cruel, bloody, and inhumane again very shortly.

Genesis, Chapter 1-10

So an otherwise sane friend of mine, a country musician and former Marine that lives in Texas, suggested we all imitate God, just as Christ had. And that we, like Christ, offer ourselves as sacrifices to God, a creature who, as we will soon learn, is absolutely fucking in love with blood sacrifice.

I asked if he meant I should allow myself to be sacrificed to myself to appease myself for the sin of being born as myself, a creation of myself, and would then, having atoned with myself, go forth with a clear conscience or something. Which sounds like a lot of work, and crazy, and that I'd stick to just trying to be a good person every day.

I was being irreverent. This is not a positive character trait for some people, I am learning.

He later posted this, presumably directed at me:

"Dear Athiest, I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus. I have heard you mock my faith, I thank you for your existence. I have never felt the persecution my savior endured, nor have I had to endure many of the things Christians before me had to endure. I thank you for teaching me.personal humility and pride in my faith. I thank you for posting your comments on my wall to make my friends curious enough to read for themselves and not accept recycled sermons as Gospel. I now challenge you to read for yourself from cover to cover, with an open mind. I truly enjoy how much energy you spend trying to convince me that you live a good life and are a nice person, all the while talking down my faith. That my friend is neither good nor nice. By the way, are you trying to convince me or yourself that my savior didn't exist?"

I've read the Bible. Several times. All of it. Starting at age 4 in a fundamentalist church school.

First, a few clarifications:

1. I don't expend a bunch of energy trying to convince anyone that I live a good life or am a good person. Unless I think it'll help me get laid. Which just proves I don't and I'm not. I'm just trying to be less of a cunt than the people that raised me.

2. Maybe talking down your faith isn't good or nice, but I don't think death threats being sent to teenagers, homosexuals, atheists, and Planned Parenthood doctors is nice either. If the worst thing I do with my life is poke fun at what I view as one of the most corrosive and vile institutions in the history of the world, an institution that can only propagate by indoctrinating children, preying on the bereaved, indignant, and vulnerable, threatening doubters with eternal torture and shunning/attacking/demonizing anyone audacious enough to question the sense and utility of the entire thing, then yes, I can call myself a good person in that regard. Because I have pride in my ability to reason more than I have pride in my ability to accept easy answers from 'nice' people.

3. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I don't give a fuck what you believe so long as you aren't hurting anyone and are make an effort to stay informed about the larger community. I side with the evidence as I see it, and the experts if I don't fully understand it. And as I see it, there is no evidence for any supernatural force or intelligence at work in the life of Man, and there are no experts on religion because there's no consensus in religion. If you have different evidence I'd be happy to take a look, but it's incredibly hard to slot Islam and Hinduism together the same way biology and chemistry slot together.

4. Unlike faith-based belief systems, if new evidence runs contrary to what I believe about reality, I realize it's my beliefs that need to change to fit the evidence no matter how upsetting it is, not the evidence that needs to conform to my beliefs so I can continue to be a 'nice' person.

But then again, I'm not humble, am I?

5. I'm going to be as open-minded (receptive and unbiased,) as possible during this read-through. But I refuse to turn my brain off. If by some chance there is a God that designed the human brain I certainly wouldn't want to disappoint him/her/it/them by letting it go to waste by, say, believing things on faith that turn out to be harmful for society. For this purpose I will be holding God, his prophets, and all other key characters in the Bible to what I consider a reasonable standard of moral/ethical behavior as I would the characters in any other book.

6. As far as I'm concerned, if it's wrong it's wrong, scientifically speaking. We can argue moral high ground and soft sciences all day, but the Biblical creation myth has been systematically dis-proven. So any kind of young earth creation, global flood, etc. will be treated as any other tribal myth: a failed science attempting to explain why thunder happens, often containing valuable and poetic insights into the human condition.

7. I'll try to use outside sources as little as possible. This is a recommendation from a friend, and I don't grill my friends over the Wikipedia coals. Especially if they're definitionally unwilling to extend the same due diligence effort in return.
9. Finally, I'll be reading from the King James Version. In case of any linguistic confusion I'll also refer to the ASV and NIV to try to find the most accurate representation of what the book is trying to say.

Genesis: God Creates Everything, Fucks It Up, Starts Over, and Fucks It Up Again.

Chapter 1.

    1-5: God creates day and night.

Now, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure darkness doesn't need to be created. Also: Light needs a source. The sun will not be created for a few days.

     6-8: Outer space is made of water.

There's no clear definition on what the 'firmament' is, but as near as I can tell the author believed that the sky was a solid dome about 5-10 miles up with water on the other side, and land and air in between.

The entire universe looked something like this.

     9-13: God creates land and plant life.

But didn't mention creating an atmosphere. Because it's only the story of how everything happened according to God, why bother the reader with confusing concepts like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and oxygen.

     14-19: God THEN creates the rest of the universe (Sun, moon, all other stars, planets, satellites, etc.).

I'm going to assume that the plants survived the 24 hours of vacuum at near absolute zero by magic as well.

     20-23: God creates fish and birds.

No mention of insects. Which is odd since insects are really fucking important. You can have plants and insects without birds, but birds and plants won't get very far without insects.

     24-25: God creates mammals, reptiles.

Make a note of this, because he creates mammals AFTER man in the next chapter.

     26-27: God creates man and woman, and gives them dominion over the earth.

Because top-down hierarchy always works out in the long run.

Chapter 2.

     1-3: God takes a day off, and blesses it.

Because even a being of infinite power capable of creating 100 billion galaxies in a day needs a day off to worship himself.

     4-7: God creates rain and man.

Again.

    8-15: God creates the Garden of Eden.

It sounds really fucking nice if you lived your entire life in a desert. In fact it sounds EXACTLY like what a desert dwelling savage would come up with if asked to describe paradise. Personally, I prefer my trailer. Which is a dump by American standards, but pretty fucking sweet from a global perspective and historically is beyond the wildest dreams of people living 300 years ago.

    16-17: God's first commandment to the only man on the planet: do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It's not exactly made clear why, but most divine commandments don't rely on reasonable justifications such as 'it's poisonous' or 'it will jack up your immune system.' It's implied that God doesn't want man to become TOO much like God.

    18-20: God creates all of the animals again to try to make a friend for Adam.

God must have created sex, right? So he would know that monkeys pair with monkeys and wolves pair with wolves. A man doesn't pair off with a horse. Well, not as like a normal thing, and certainly not for intellectual engagement.

    21-25: God creates woman again. Out of a rib from Adam. Himself made from dirt.

God, who created everything from nothing, ran out of nothing, I guess, and had to use dirt to create man, and part of man to make woman, like an evil wizard building flesh golems in D&D. Tell me again about evolution being a ridiculous hoax, please.

Chapter 3.

    1-5: The serpent tempts the woman who will become Eve.

Where did the serpent come from? It clearly says the serpent is 'more subtle than anything God had made.'

If God created everything, then he created the serpent, knowing full well the consequences of doing so: the fall of man. If God did not create the serpent, then God did not create everything. If God created the serpent and the serpent rebelled, leading to the fall of man, and God did not foresee this, then God is not all-knowing. There is no way that situation could have happened as described, EVEN ALLOWING FOR DIVINE CREATION.

    6-8: After eating the fruit Adam and the woman that will be known as Eve hear "the voice of God walking in the Garden."

God is bipedal and has a voice, he is also the right size for a human-sized garden. Put a pin in that, because it gets contradicted a lot in later books.

    9-13: After getting caught, Adam, honorable motherfucker that he is, blames Eve, who hasn't even been dignified with a name at this point. Eve blames the serpent.

There is no mention of who the serpent blames. There's only one other player on this particular stage, so take a guess.

    14-15: God curses the serpent to go on its belly.

Implies snakes used to have legs. Which, oddly enough, is true, as snakes have vestigial limbs under their skin as they evolved from quadrupeds. Over hundreds of thousands of years. I hate when people are right for the wrong reasons.

    16: God condemns all women to the pain of childbirth and subjugation to men.

For the mistake of ONE woman. That God designed. Forgiveness and mercy, amirite? And just so we're clear, the woman doesn't even receive a name until AFTER being cursed.

    17-18: God curses the ground that men must work, again, because ONE man, that God designed, didn't behave the way God expected.

Personally, if I built something and it went this badly wrong this early in the game I think I might wonder if I had done something wrong. If your SimCity sucks because you built an airport in the middle of a residential neighborhood, who's fault is that?

    19-20: God condemns man to a mortal life, Eve finally gets a name like a big girl.

    21: God, in his infinite kindness, gives them some animal hides to protect them from the elements, which are now shit since God cursed the earth.

    22-24: Man, having become 'as God,' is banished from Eden and the Tree of Life on pain of flaming fucking sword.

Weird that God would get territorial about Man being more like God, since Man was created in God's image. I'll have to remember how insanely insecure God is so I don't accidentally try to imitate him after reading some dude's Facebook status.

Chapter 4.

    1-2: Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd are born.

    3-5: First sacrifices. God prefers dead sheep.

Put a pin in that, sheep are a recurring theme in this book.

    6-8: God warns Cain, who is pissed that Abel's sacrifice was chosen, about the nature of sin. Cain kills Abel in a jealous rage.

    9-12: God, again, speaking directly to Cain like God's just a big human, asks Cain a trick question about Abel's whereabouts, then curses Cain to be a fugitive and vagabond.

    13-15: God forbids anyone from killing Cain to release him from his punishment.

Fair enough. A bit harsh, but not what I'd call unreasonable given the nature of the crime. I'd personally like to know why God doesn't handle all criminal trials in this fashion. I mean, he COULD and there's no reason why he doesn't, right?

    16-18: Cain travels to Nod, where he finds a wife, presumably one not made by God, and starts a family. Cain begat Enoch, who begat Irad, who begat Mehujael, who begat Methusael, who begat Lamech.

First, where is Nod and why are there people there? God very clearly named the woman Eve because she was the 'mother of all.' But Cain, as a fugitive and vagabond, found another settlement of humans and started a family of, presumably, wildly successful vagabonds.

Second, the fugitive vagabond thing seemed to work out pretty well for Cain.

    19-22: Lamech, Cain's great-great-great grandson had two wives and sired Jabal, the first cowboy, Jubal, the first musician, Tubal-cain, the first smith, and Naamah, who did nothing noteworthy as she was a female.

Again, Cain's curse seems to have worked out well in the long run, as it gave the world music, cattle ranching and metalwork. Although this is all presumably wiped out in the Flood.

    23-24: Lamech confesses to his wives that he murdered a man and a young man. This does not seem to be in any way connected to the rest of the plot.

    25-26: Adam begat Seth, who begat Enos. At this time people first begin to pray.
   
Presumably God wasn't just walking around, asking trick questions, and passing out insane curses anymore.

Chapter 5.

    1-5: Lineage of Adam. Adam lived to be 930.

    6-27: More lineage with nothing much of note other than Enoch (no relation,) being "taken up" by God at the spry young age of 365.

    28-31: Lamech begats Noah, saying he (Noah,) would 'comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.' Slowly drowning to death with no hope of rescue does seem comforting.

Unless my math is badly off, Noah's father died shortly before the Flood and his grandfather may have died IN the Flood. "Hey Pop-Pop! Sorry you can't go with us, but you know how God is! Say hi to my unnamed grandma when you get to the afterlife!"

    32: Noah sires Shem, Ham, and Japeth.

Chapter 6.

    1-2: 'Sons of God' take human brides. This is presumably a bad thing.

Again, if the 'Sons of God' are angels, then that seems to be a management problem on God's part. If they're demi-gods like Jesus, then Jesus was nothing special. If, and I've heard this explanation, they're demons, what the fuck, God? Yet again he created something that rebelled against his tyranny leading to results he disliked yet seems unable to either predict or prevent.

    3: God limits human life span to 120 years.

Only they keep living for multiple centuries if the genealogies are to be believed. They can't both be true and the Bible is allegedly infallible.

    4: 'Sons of God' breed with women to create a race of giants.

Which would be awesome if it had happened.

    5: Man is totally wicked and evil.

Well, now, who would be responsible for that happening Mr. Eternal Punishment of the Entire Species for First Offenses? Don't fucking blame people for acting exactly like you designed them to.

    6-7: God grieves the mistake he made in creating man, and vows to kill fucking everything.

There is no explanation for this that is acceptable. If God is good and man became evil independent of God, why did God not intercede in the centuries before this point? Why would God kill the animals? Surely muskrats, otters, marmosets and koala bears did nothing extinction-worthy. If God knew man would become evil, why did he create them so? If God didn't know it would happen then he is not all- knowing. If God is capable of creating trillions of stars in an afternoon, surely he could just speak life painlessly out of existence. Why the slow, painful drowning of all life on earth other than sado-masochism?

    8: Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord.

    9-10: Noah was just, perfect in his generation, and walked with God.

Don't say 'metaphorically' walked with God. They went for strolls together.

    11-12: The entire earth is corrupted and violent.

I'm sure God, as all-powerful and all-knowing creator of everything was powerless to prevent this outcome.

    13: God tells Noah that the END OF ALL FLESH is at hand.

Once again: God tells Noah that the END OF ALL FLESH is at hand. The Good Guy is going to kill the world.

    14-22: Ark preparations.
   
I'll spare most of the mechanics of the Flood story, as they have already been thoroughly and extensively debunked by more scientifically literate people than I. If anyone is interested I'd refer them to www.talkorigins.com

Chapter 7.

    1-4: God's time frame for the Flood.

    6-10: For real, it's gonna Flood like a motherfucker.

    11-12: The fountains of the deep and the windows of Heaven open.

Which explains all the water. Or would, if either of those things were really things and didn't rely on the world being a flat disk in a dome surrounded by water.

    13-20: More Flood.

    21-24: ALL living creatures on earth die, save the ones on the Ark.

Again, I don't claim to be a good person or an expert on moral behavior, but killing ONE animal 'just because' seems like a pretty bad thing to do. Killing EVERY animal for crimes that no animal is capable of committing is an unequivocally evil thing to do. Put it like this: Think of your worst enemy on the planet, say he's a child-rapist that gave your mother AIDS while robbing the children's hospital she volunteers at, walked free because of a technicality, and then ran over your child after burning your house down with your wife inside. Okay, now, if that guy had a dog that had puppies that were given up for adoption, would you kill those puppies? Because God sure would.

Chapter 8.

    1-10: Waters slowly abating. Not sure where too, as there is nowhere for them to abate TO.

    11: A dove Noah sent out returns with an olive branch. Not sure what condition it would be in at this point.

    12-19: Finally we leave the Ark.

Again, why did God choose such a fucking cruel and inelegant method of cleansing the earth of life? Surely he could just speak it so instantly, not that such an action could ever be justified. And why let the water hang around for half a year? Shit would be thoroughly dead after a couple of hours. It certainly wasn't because it had to run-off naturally, as that amount of water doesn't exist on Earth.

 And What the fuck are the animals supposed to eat, anyway? Plants certainly couldn't have survived. There aren't enough animals to eat each other. Fish? There would probably be a lot of dead fish around. Fish doesn't last though. Did God re-create the plants? That would certainly be more pertinent to the narrative than the fucking genealogies.

    20-22: Noah sacrifices a fuck-ton of animals to God, who enjoys the smell and vows to no longer curse the ground or kill the planet.

Because God is a textbook abusive husband and this is the honeymoon cycle.

Chapter 9.

    1-7: God re-grants dominion over the earth and allows man to eat any living creature, provided there are lots and lots of blood sacrifices.

 Because God is fucking coo-coo for blood.

    8-17: God establishes covenant with Noah, which involves no more global flooding. God places the rainbow (God's actual bow. For hunting...giant Heaven deer?) in the sky as a sign.

Only God invented rain back in Gen 2:4. Did water vapor not get suspended in the atmosphere back then?

This is how rainbows work. It's not God's Bow any more than it's a bridge to Asgard.

    18: Ham Sires Canaan.

    19-23: Noah gets drunk and naked and is found by his sons, who cover him while backing in and not looking.

    24-27: Noah is pissed and curses Canaan, for some reason, to be Shem's servant.

Bear in mind, Noah was just and perfect by God's standards.

    28-29: Noah lives 950 years total.

Because God didn't really mean it about the 120 years thing.

Chapter 10.

    1-2: Japeth sired Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Jubal, Meshech, Tiras.

    3: Gomer sired Askenaz, Riphath, Togarmah.

    4: Javan sired Elishah, Tashish, Kittim, Dodanim.

    5: By these the lands of the Gentiles were divided, each after his tongue, his families, in their nations.

Note: "By their tongue" would imply differentiated language at this point.

    6: Ham sired Cush, Mizrain, Phut, Canaan (Shem's slave).

    7: Cush sired Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, Sabtecha. Ramaah sired Sheba, Dedan.

    8: Cush begat Nimrod, a mighty one upon the earth.

    9: Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord.

    10: Nimrod founds the kingdoms of Babel, Erech, Accad, Calneh in Shinar.

    11: From there Asshur went forth and built Nenevah, Rehoboth, and Calah.

    12: Also Resen, between Nenevah and Calah.

    13-20: More genealogy, which gets further confusing as the author seems to switch from names of people to names of places without warning.

    21-31: Genealogy and settlements of Shem.

Not to be critical, well, fuck that, to be critical: if this is a text nspired by almighty God, did God at this point think it more wise to let readers know that Joktan begat Almodad and Sheleph than, I don't know, the germ theory of disease, basic hygiene, geometry, crop rotation, or the foundations of common law?

 Anyway, I'll leave off there for now. Up next: God hates ambitious creativity. Plus: Father Abraham had many sons. And he mutilated the dicks of all of them after selling his wife as a sex slave and knocking up his wife's handmaiden.