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