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.

Vitriolics Anonymous

"Nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with God." - Capt. Reynolds

I'm an atheist. Not sure if anyone's picked up on that yet. It's taken me quite a while to get comfortable with being comfortable about it. Living in a small, mostly Christian, functionally illiterate and rabidly Republican-conservative-dominionist Texas town is not the most desirable environment to be radically, or even marginally, unusual. In Texas, by the way, it is illegal for an atheist to hold public office (article 1. Sec. 4.)

Before anyone tags me as an intellectual snob or close-minded elitist I would first like to point out that I spent three solid years doing my level best to believe in any kind of supernatural supreme being. I just cannot buy into it. I see absolutely no evidence of any kind of loving and/or personal Higher Power at work in the lives of mankind. Having one day of rain after a record drought doesn't qualify as an answered prayer to me. Sorry. I think it would have happened even if you hadn't been praying for it since March. Fuck, why did it take your god seven months to make it rain anyway? Was he punishing us for something? Did we stop doing it? Or start or whatever? See? That's so, so, so much less likely than a high pressure front crossed the gulf stream or whatever. I'm not good at meteorology. You think it's a miracle, and I don't even see it as a coincidence. It's just rain! Why are you praising Jesus? That's fucking crazy!

I tried is what I'm saying here. I tried to believe in god way harder than any capital B Believer I know tried to not believe in him. And I'm not going to go into why or how I came to this conclusion. You all have the same internet and libraries I do.

The reactions I've received since I first began opening up about this have fallen into four broad categories. The first, and by far the most preferable, has been the clumsy but endearing acceptance and attempted identification I use when a male friend opens up about being gay. "Okay Adam, so I feel about Eve and Mary the way you feel about Steve and Joseph, boobs notwithstanding?" Only Eve and Mary are replaced with God and Church while Steve and Joseph are replaced with cell division and astrophysics. It's cute and clumsy but it works.

 The second kind of reaction is the purple elephant one. Entire relationships suddenly have this big awkward silence in the middle of them that we aren't going to talk about. We're not even going to talk about how we're not talking about it. If one of us, God forbid, says something even vaguely religious we'll just clam up and start staring at the ceiling and... Holy shit! I said 'God forbid!' Change the subject!

I understand this. Belief is a huge deal. Even among loved ones it's very easy to get defensive, to feel like something one cherishes is being threatened. People kill, riot and go to war over these things. We're a xenophobic species. Suddenly I'm a member of a different tribe, even if only in this one area. I appreciate that most people are at least willing to make an effort to be inclusive. I only wish they would go a little further with it and see that things like belief in certain religions or god or politics or whatever aren't binary, yes/no, good/evil systems. Saying someone is a Republican doesn't automatically mean they are also a white, Christian capitalist any more than a Democrat is automatically a liberal, chronically dissenting socialist. I am a liberal, a socialist and also a chronic dissenter, for example, but if John Huntsman or Buddy Roemer win the primary (unlikely,) I would probably vote for them over Obama because, from where I'm standing, they're the least bad options available as the others are either irredeemably corrupt, insane, incompetent or all three.

Anders Breivick and Martin Luther King Jr. are/were both Christian. This doesn't mean Breivick is a 'bad Christian' and Dr. King was a 'good Christian.' They're just people. Breivick is, conventionally speaking, a 'bad' person, while King was a 'good' person. I believe either of them would have behaved comparably regardless of personal religious beliefs if, for example, King had been a Muslim or Breivick had been a Buddhist.

Anyway, people feel strongly about their beliefs. Try disagreeing with a Birther or a 9/11 conspiracy theorist for ten minutes and you'll see what I mean. So it often seems easier to ignore this kind of ideological conflict than to get into a debate that could degenerate into a fistfight and a grudge.

The third kind of reaction really bothers me on a deeper level because it's the kind of closeted-bigot, nudge-nudge wink-wink response I grew up around. The kind of mentality that leads people to say things like "Obama did really well in life considering." The implied end of that statement being "his racial handicap," although they would be horrified if someone actually said that. It's a weird breed of arrogant doublethink that seems to occur a lot in Christianity. At least in the Christians I meet.

These people use the Shame and Guilt approach. "Jesus loves you and wants what's best for you and don't you just feel horrible for not believing in him?" No, bitch, I don't. I have zero give-a-shit for what some Jewish holy man that may have existed 2,000 years ago thinks of me. Especially since I've read your Bible more than you have, know what Jesus really taught better than you and know enough history to trace where that went wrong starting with Paul and proceeding through the Holy Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, Puritanism and the current rot of American Dominionism. I don't care how well-dressed, well-spoken or well-off you are because of your invisible father figure. I don't even care if you're objectively a 'good' person. You've aligned yourself with a nonsensical belief system that promotes ignorance, unquestioning obedience and the ostracism and demonization of anyone critical of the herd. That shit doesn't impress me. And even if it did, in my mind it's no different than wishing on a star or writing letters to Santa Claus.

This may work when you're indoctrinating your children, taking emotional advantage of the bereaved or brainwashing simpletons, but to me you look like a predator. Worse, it's a predatory tactic that turns people into more predators.

Don't approach me like I'm some idiot child throwing a tantrum, and don't try to put words in my mouth. I didn't mean "I'm agnostic," I didn't mean "I believe in God, just not the Bible," I didn't mean "I'm angry at God, and that's why I'm doing this." I meant "I've examined the evidence with an open mind, I've heard many different arguments for and against and have decided that I don't believe in god, gods, goddesses, demi-gods, ghosts, draculas, mummies, demons or any other supernatural explanations for natural phenomena." And please, please, for fuck's sake please don't Testify at me. Do you know how many times I've heard the "I was a hopeless, violent drug addict until Jay-zus saved me and washed my sins away!" story? I'll give you a hint: Lots. And you know what? Of those lots, lots minus a couple relapse and either die or go to prison. All that shows me is that either A) religious belief hinders recovery in drug addicts by attempting to bypass the work necessary to bring about the desired internal personality change required to keep from returning to active addiction or B) your god is a capricious asshat with terrible PR.

Look, I know I'm a self-righteous blowhard. I know I have shitty, hateful opinions about, like, everything. And I know how that alienates people, and that I would probably have a richer, more fulfilling life if I didn't loudly proclaim things like "95% of the music on the radio is shit, and that's being generous," or "most parents are shitty parents because reproduction isn't regulated." But, and this is important: I can admit when I'm wrong, on the very rare occasions when I am. Religious people don't. Or can't. Or won't. "I'm always right," is built into religion. If you succeed you get to be a saint, if you fail you get to be a martyr. Either way you get to feel superior to the non-religious or to members of different religions without having to do anything to justify the feeling of superiority.

As bad as the Holier Than Thou Brigade is, they're nothing compared to the, thankfully, smallest group of reactionaries: Unreasonable Lunatic Fundamentalists.

These people are the reason for separation of church and state. They're the reason we had the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Fox News and the Salem Witch Trials. They're the reason Galileo was imprisoned for heresy and Darwin is held, at least in some circles, at the same level as Hitler and Castro.

Here, try to watch this dumbass:

Since you probably didn't finish that whatever-that-was, I'll sum up: the most punchable kid in the world thinks evolution (EVILution!) isn't real because the spork is the missing link for horses+Jesus. I think. I'm not even certain it isn't just Poe's Law in action, but it's not any more insane than any other fundamentalist bullshit out there. 

Point is, he doesn't know anything about evolution. Natural selection is not blind chance. Since he thinks it is, then he's basing his 'thesis' on something he heard from the preacher that molests him in the broom closet.

Science deniers shouldn't be allowed to have the benefits of science. Such as computers. They do shit like this with them. If you buy a computer designed by (probably,) evolutionists and make a video using a webcam and video editing software (probably,) designed by evolutionists to put on the internet to hopefully convince anyone bored enough to watch it that the book of Genesis is a factual, step by step account of the origin of the universe then you're not just a failure, but, I don't know, some kind of demi-human super-failure prototype designed by the government to wreck emergent civilizations as some kind of almost-sentient anchor baby dropped off to destroy any progress they've made like some kind of creepy, bipedal Dark Age.

And, like all creationists, he cherry picks his own sacred storybook and ignores anything that disagrees with his own theory. Like how, in Genesis, God creates plants before the sun. Wouldn't they instantly die? Or how, in Genesis, Cain, after murdering his brother, went to the land of Nod, where there were also people, that presumably weren't created by God. Or how, in Genesis, the Sons of God took human women for their brides, meaning Jesus isn't an only child (he does claim that the 'sons of God' in the story are really demons and fallen angels, but again, why would a loving and magnanimous deity allow that?) Or how, in Genesis, God destroys almost all life on Earth, which would mean God is fallible, since God created it in the first place. Was God displeased with his own work? Then he makes mistakes. Did he not know what man would do with free will? Then he's not all-knowing. Why did God destroy the animals for Man's wrongdoing? Because he's a vengeful asshole that overreacts to everything or because he was invented by vengeful assholes that overreacted to everything? Or, in Genesis, when Noah gathers two of every species of animal life onto a boat. There are over 2 million known species on the planet, and scientists think the total number could be between 5 and 10 million total. So, four million different animals on one boat being cared for by one family for six months? Evolution isn't a thing, so it had to be every species that's around today plus every species that has gone extinct since. And how did Noah get the penguins back to Antarctica and the lions back to Africa and the bears back to America and the lemurs back to Madagascar and the kangaroos back to Australia? Don't even get me started on dinosaurs or early mammals like the sabretooth tiger or mastodon.

I could of course go on, but I'm not here to point out that a 3,000 year old book is made almost entirely out of plot holes. I'm here to point out that there are people like Boy Wonder up there that think the God of that book wants them to kill people like me for questioning it. And they wouldn't even feel bad about it, because it's what God wants. I feel bad when I run over a cat that's already been ran over. I cry during Humane Society commercials. I volunteer at a homeless shelter. And they claim that I'm going to be on fire for eternity because I don't believe their crackers and cheap wine are really the body of someone that died 2,000 years ago? I know how fermentation works so I'm going to Hell?

I know this may be painful,  but imagine that weird kid up there again. Now, imagine he's a 250 pound meth-addled construction worker. Or a police officer. Or a judge. Or a governor. Or, well, anyone, really. He's not insane, if he didn't talk he wouldn't appear abnormal enough to shun. He'll probably grow up and be one of those things. And I have no doubt in my mind that he would be totally okay with me dieing a slow, painful death and then being thrown into a lake of fire for eternity. In his mind that's what I deserve. That's why I don't talk about it to most people, because some people may not be content to just tell me about Hell.

Fuck, I'm not trying to turn anyone's kids into whatever it is people like that think atheists are trying to do to other people's children. Believe me, I'm far more polite and respectful of others religious beliefs than they tend to be about mine in my day to day life. I'm only venting here because I have almost no one to talk to about this in the real world.