No Bullshit Bible Lesson #6: God Makes a Promise

Genesis, Chapters 14-15:

Abram and Lot went their separate ways. Abram to the plain of Mamre in Hebron and Lot to Sodom. And shortly after, a huge war started in the vale of Siddim between just about every nation in the area, including Gomorrah and Sodom, where Lot lived. Why they were fighting doesn’t matter. Seriously. So don’t ask. All that matters was that they were fighting, and that there were slime pits in the Vale of Siddim.

So, the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah fell into these slime pits, and some of the people that were with them managed not to, and took off for the mountains. Then they looted Sodom and Gomorrah for anything they could carry, including Lot and all his stuff. But someone survived and went and told Abram what had happened.

When Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his bred-in-captivity force of 318 ninjas and went after them. Which was odd, really, because his brother had died long before and it was his nephew that had been taken captive. There is no doubt, however, that it was his brother he received word of, because these words were written by an infallible God.

So he and his Ninja squad killed all the captors under cover of night (which is the ninja way) and retrieved all the stuff that was taken, as well as Lot, all the people that were taken, and all the women that were taken, who do not count as “people”, clearly. The King of Sodom somehow got word of this and, apparently having escaped the slime pits, went out to meet Abram, bringing Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God with him. And Melchizedek blessed Abram who, being good pals with God, thought was nice but wasn’t too impressed by.

The king of Sodom said to Abram:
         “Turn my people over to me, and you can keep all their stuff as reward.”
        “Thanks, but I told God I wouldn’t take anything he didn’t say I could take. Just let my ninja squad take their fair share, eh?”

Later, God came to Abram in a vision, now too busy for a face-to-face, and said to him,
        “Hey, you didn’t need that stuff. I’m your reward!”
        “That’s dandy, God, really. Here’s the thing though...you keep saying that my kids are going to inherit this land but you haven’t deigned to un-barren my wife’s womb. Now, I named one of my servants my heir, but it’s not the same, you know?”
        “Dude, that kid is not gonna be your heir. You heir will come forth from your own bowels.”
        “ ... ”
        “Look to the stars,” the teleconferencing God continued, “that is how many kids you’ll have.”

And Abram believed him, but he had to ask, “How do I know?”
        “Okay,” God said, “Go get me a cow, a female goat and a ram -- all three years old. Oh, and a young pigeon and a turtledove.”

Abram did as he was asked, chopping up big-ass animals and lying their bits in a pile, waving away carrion birds all the while. The turtledove and pigeon, however, he didn’t bother chopping up. By the time the sun set, he was mighty tired and weary from a day spend chopping up livestock, and he fell into a deep sleep. In his sleep, he had terrible nightmares, and God came to him and said,
        “Okay, about your kids, they will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and they will be made to serve the people of that land and be oppressed by them for 400 years. But then I’ll judge that nation and then your kids will come out ahead, so it’ll be okay. Oh, and you’ll die in peace, a nice old man. And then, the fourth generation of your kids will come and inherit this land, because right about that time, I expect to be just about fed up with the Amorites who currently live here. And I am sure that there won’t be hundreds of years of bloody wars well into the 21st century over who has a rightful claim to this land. Never happen, seriously.”

When Abram woke, God said,
        “So, to recap: your descendants will, eventually, get everything from the Nile to the Euphrates? Good? Good.”

The New Design (is it intelligent?)

So, I was up until 4:30 last night working on the new design for the Resurrecting Reason blog and tweaking it. I was able to do that because, of course, I didn’t have to be at church first thing in the morning.

Actually, that brings up something I’ve been wondering: If Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest in honor of the “Lord”, why in the hell do Christians get up early to go to church? You’d think church services would start at two, so people could do what the “Lord” demanded of them; sleep in. It’s sad that even such a simple task as that is twisted into an illogical knot by the religious.

Anyway, back to the new design: The skulls in the background are from a picture of various hominid skulls lain out in chronological order which could almost make a time lapse flip-book of human evolution. In with that, I’ve thrown some random physics equations. So, my question to anyone reading: does the science come across, or do the skulls just make the blog seem like some Satanist’s anti-god site?

Also, the new design has been tested to display properly in the following browsers/platforms: Safari (OS X, iPhone & XP), Opera (OS X & XP), Firefox (OS X & XP) and IE (XP only). These test were all done with the latest versions available. If anyone is using a different browser and/or platform, can you please drop a line and let me know if it’s displaying correctly and, if not, what issue you’re getting?

The Blasphemy Challenge

It’s been around for a while, but I was recently pointed to www.BlasphemyChallenge.com and find it to be pretty uplifting. As atheists, we often feel like we’re all alone in the world. I’m lucky to have a girlfriend who is a viciously critical thinker and atheist, along with a select few friends. But I’m sure a lot of others are, within their day-to-day lives, devoid of people who understand and share their views. That’s why I find it comforting to see the over 1,400 people who have posted their denial of God on YouTube. They may not be able to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me but they’re out there, thinking for themselves and accepting reality over fairy tales.

Oh, and of course I also posted a response.

An Atheist Worshipped

See here.

Apparently, when Richard Dawkins walks on to the set of Doctor Who in the UK, the cast and crew fall all over him, practically worship at his feet. He’s revered: a hero.

There’s a lot more than that to the article above, only the beginning has much of anything to do with Dawkins, but I found it uplifting that such a celebrity of atheism can be so celebrated and loved. Of course, I also find it depressing. Because, of course, that worship happens in another country. Here, we can barely scrape together enough atheists to fill a coffee shop. It seems unlikely that the majority of any group of people who were not assembled because they were atheists would be very happy to see Professor Dawkins. I lament the fanatical religious atmosphere of these United states.

At least an atheist can get some respect somewhere.

No Bullshit Bible Lesson #5: The First Pimp

Genesis, Chapters 12-13:

After tearing down the Tower of Babel, God became a sugar-daddy for a guy named Abram. Abram was picked by the Lord, seemingly at random, and told to leave from Haran and that God would help him start a great nation, where people who blessed Abram would be blessed and people who cursed him would, in turn, be cursed. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Abram, his wife and his nephew, Lot, left Haran to start a new and glorious nation.

Abram and his family just kept on going, until the reached the plain of Moreh, and God appeared to them:
        “I will give this land to your children,” said God, probably having a little fun with the fact that Abram’s wife couldn’t bear children. But Abram built him an altar on that spot anyway and God re-appeared before him, though apparently didn’t have much to say. Abram then went and made camp at a mountain, where he built another alter to the Lord and called upon His name. It seems he was unavailable at this time, however.

So Abram journeyed further south, to Egypt, because there was a terrible famine in the lands he was passing through. And he said to his wife:
        “Sarai, my wife, you are one smokin’-hot fox. Now, when the Egyptians see you, they’re gonna know you’re my wife, and they’ll kill me so they can have sex with you. Well, I figure, if you’re gonna get screwed by other guys anyway, let’s at least say you’re my sister so they don’t kill me.” And Sarai, apparently, didn’t think this was a total dick thing to say.

But, as it turned out, Abram was right (still a dick, though) and the Egyptians saw his totally hot wife and took her to Pharaoh, who confirmed: this lady is totally hot. And both her and Abram were lavished with camels and stuff. Of course, God didn’t think it was cool that Pharaoh was schtupping another man’s wife, so He sent great Plagues upon Pharaoh (which would later become a hobby of His).

And Pharaoh went to Abram and said “Dude! What the hell?! She’s your wife?! How sick do you have to tell me she was your sister and just let me have sex with her? Now I’m being plagued and shit, because of your deviant ass! Take your damn wife and get out of my country. The sign says ‘Welcome to Egypt,’ not ‘welcome to sick swingers’ Paradise.’”

So Abram, Sarai and Lot went further south, out of Egypt. At this point, of course, Abram was quite rich. He had silver gold and livestock. It’s hard for a Pimp? Abram might disagree.

So they traveled south and decided at some point to head back north, to where they had previously built an altar to the Lord. and they called again upon the Lord. Who, it seems, was again in a meeting.

Now, at this point, Abram and co. were so rich, with so many cattle and servants, that the land couldn’t support them all. And Abram’s herdsmen hated Lot’s herdsmen...it was all just a big thing. So Abram said to Lot, “Okay, man. We’re family, and there’s a lot of squabbling going on. So that we don’t hate each other, maybe we should just part ways here. You go east, I’ll go west.”

So Lot journeyed east and lived in Sodom (the denizens of which God hated) and Abram went west and lived in the land of Canaan. And God came to Abram and said, “Look around, bro. All around. All that is yours. Everything you can see belongs to you and will belong to your heirs.”

Abram ignored the fact that God was undoubtedly making fun of his wife’s barren womb again and built Him an altar.

Illinois State legislator says Atheism is dangerous

See here.

This is the kind of wrong-headed ignorance that made me feel that the creation of this blog was necessary. Here, we have a woman...a state congresswoman, no less, saying things like this:
        
        “What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous...It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!”

I find it absolutely appalling that an elected official should purport herself in such a manner. Especially a moment later, when she tells the atheist target of her vitriol to “get out of that seat” because he didn’t “belong” there. “There” being amongst righteous Christians, I would assume. Not “there” meaning being amongst the House State Government Administration Committee, surely.

The purpose of the hearing, by the way, was some very shady dealings in giving $1M in state funds to a Baptist church, via a private school. More here.

I think it’s about time that we held our legislators, at every level, to respect atheists as much as theists. No legislator would dare say that Jewish beliefs were dangerous. Even Muslim beliefs, as wrongly vilified as they are in this post-9/11 environment of fear, would never be called dangerous by a public official. Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist...none are treated the way the lack of any religion is treated. In this regard, our country has only moved backwards.

Our third President, and author of the Declaration of Independence once said “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.”
Conversely, our 41st President and Father of our current President had this to say on the subject: “No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

By an interesting coincidence, Mr. Bush said that to Robert Sherman, the very same man to whom Illinois State Rep. Monique Davis spewed the vitriol that caused this post.

No Bullshit Bible Lesson #4: The Tower of Babel

Genesis, Chapters 9-11:


After God was done flooding the Earth, he told Noah and his family to get to work repopulating the Earth:

        “Noah (and family),” God said, “You guys need to get started on some serious begetting. Oh, and all those animals you toiled for over a year to save? You are now allowed to eat them. But not their blood. You have to drain that out first, because that’s just for me. But you can’t be cruel to them. Or each other. Oh, and super-important...if you kill someone, then you forfeit your own life. I think maybe protecting Cain because he was a murderer probably led to all the shit I had to flood the Earth for. Am I rambling? Anyway: Go, multiply. Oh, and not to worry, your tedious begetting will not go to waste, I’m not gonna flood the place again. Here, I’ll invent rainbows to remind me, in case I forget.”

So, They started their begetting, one of the noteworthy begotten sons, was Canaan, son of Noah’s youngest, Ham.

Meanwhile, Noah started a vineyard and began making (and drinking) wine. One day, he got so drunk that he passed out naked in his tent. Ham saw him splayed out drunk in his tent and went and told his brothers, who went and covered him up, making sure not to look at his shriveled, 600-year-old begetting stick.

In the morning, Noah woke and saw that someone had covered him up. Using what can only be described as the best detective skills ever, he surmised that Ham had seen him naked and he got super-pissed.
        “Because my son saw me naked, I will put a curse on his son! Yeah, that’s it. Canaan’s brethren will be servants of servants! And my other two sons will be blessed by the Lord. In fact, God will enlarge Japheth and Canaan will be a servant to them both. So suck on that, Ham, you douchebag.”

Later, at the age of 950, Noah died.

In the meantime, though, his sons got to “know” their wives an awful lot. They begat and begat and begat. And the begotten began to beget. Ham had a grandson, who was given the unfortunate name of Nimrod, and he founded the city of Babel. And other of these begotten founded other cities, such as Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma, Zeboim, Lasha, etc. In the aforementioned Babel, they decided to build a tower to heaven. They made it of brick, with slime for mortar.

God came and saw this tower and did not approve of a tower to heaven, even if its use of slime for mortar made it a filed endeavor from the start.
        “Look at them, all talking to one another and sharing knowledge. That simply won’t do,” God said to himself.
So he cast the people all around the world and gave them all separate languages, so they would not be able to collaborate until someone invented the internet (or at least the telegraph).

Then, of course, more begetting. And everyone lives several hundred years, despite God’s previous declaration that people would only live to the age of 120. One of these, a descendant of Shem, was called Terah, and he had a son named Abram and one named Haran (who died) who had a son named Lot.

Terah took Abram and his wife and Lot and moved them to the land of Canaan, in a city that, coincidentally, had the same name as Lot’s deceased father: Haran.