Best Friends with God

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

The below contains some straw man arguments; it is not because I am intentionally doing so, it is more because as soon as a Christian hears an atheist speak of their religion, the conversation ends. I would like to speak with someone about my concerns below; I am not irreligious because I want to be, I am irreligious because no one seems to want to answer my questions and religion has left me adrift–but atheism took me in with open arms.

I have many Christian friends of various faiths, some nondenominational, some Anglican, some Catholic… I have one Muslim friend, and several atheist friends. I have one friend whose own personal religion would be impossible to describe without at least three textbooks, some art supplies, and a team of interpretive dancers. I am not going in the direction you might think I am going in with this; what I am saying is that, despite the fact that we may disagree on questions of ultimate meaning, we all have personalities that are otherwise very compatible. If my Christian friends were of the intolerant kind, I would be deprived of great friendships for my latent atheism (and, if they would permit me to say so, I think they would be deprived of a very eccentric friend in me).

So, let’s talk about our relationship with God; I don’t care whether or not you believe in Him, I don’t, but even then my nonbelief could be framed in terms of my relationship with the idea of God.

My relationship with God, my not believing in His existence (or, at the very minimum, my not believing in the existence of the Christian God) could be seen in a fairly negative light. If He exists, I suppose it could be said that I have a fairly dim view of him. But let’s talk about your relationship with Him, theoretical straw man who doesn’t like to talk to me!

How would you describe your relationship with God? Do you love Him? Does He love you? Before you answer “Yes, and yes!” I would like you to step back and think very hard about the reason you are answering the way you do. I would like for you to give me examples from the Bible that show God’s love for you. I will not permit things such as God saying I love you, as words are fickle and can mean many things. God says He is Just and slow to anger, but it was very, very, very shortly before saying this very thing that He said “They built a golden calf. I have chosen my people poorly. I will kill them all.” (Exodus 32:9-10, 34:6)

So please, let us let God’s actions speak for Him, and tell me why you think He loves you. I am going to disqualify a couple of things that I know you will mention, and if you manage to requalify them by evidence that’s ok–but it had better be pretty good.

First, sending His only begotten Son to redeem our Sins. This seems great, as I have been told many times “Sins must be punished,” but you are using this as a “Get out of Jail Free” card; ‘I don’t have to go to hell because Jesus died for my sins.’ This is odd to me, as Jesus did not die (or rather, it was a temporary condition) and then, if Jesus did, how do you justify this? God can forgive your sins now, because Jesus died? Is that the condition for your God’s love? That something dies? Is that love?

“I am sorry, dear wife, that I have cheated on you.”

“Oh, well, if you kill our son I will forgive you.”

No, this does not indicate love. If our God was a God of “boundless” love, of “unconditional” love, of “unconditional” forgiveness, as I’ve been told colloquially, where is the evidence of that? It sounds to me like the bound of His love is “sinning even one time,” like the condition of His love is “kill something in my name, and make it good,” like the condition of His forgiveness is “recognizing that I killed something awesome.” The things i have just mentioned are bounds and conditions that completely and logically prove that God has conditions and bounds.

So how would we describe this relationship, then? I would say we have, or rather you have, a friendship with God. Not just a friendship, but a best friendship. You can tell Him anything, because He already knows your secrets.But you can disagree with His views on the universe and still be friends with Him; Moses did, and Abraham did. “What what what?” you say, “Moses and Abraham disagreed with God? But I must take His will in the most literal and binding sense!”

In Exodus 32, God says “I am going to smite the Israelites and start over.”

Moses replies “No, don’t do that. How could you even think of doing that? No, let’s go and work with them, maybe only kill a few of them.” (Well, 3000 of them ended up being the death toll of Moses’ judgement of the Israelites, which admittedly is far more merciful than God tends to be. Exodus 32:27-28)

“But Jesus blotted all of that out! He preached love and tolerance and acceptance!” Yes, he did, to a degree… But he certainly did not blot out the Old Testament’s draconian rules and commandments of sacrifice (Matthew 5:17-20). Jesus may have preached a more tolerant version of the Old Testament, he still thought that sacrificing lambs and doves was a requirement for the forgiveness of sin. If you want to use Jesus as an example of God’s love, I fear you are teaching not Jesus but Paul. I am perfectly willing to admit that Paul taught a doctrine of love, but Paul was but a man writing letters to people containing his version of morality, and I fear that using him as an example of God’s love gives my column more points than it does yours. Paul became a force for love and tolerance, though prior to his conversion to Christianity, he was a draconian acolyte, killing Christians wherever he found them.

“But Paul is a story of redemption, of a man who realized he was in the wrong and came back to the light of Christ!” What you have to remember is that Paul was preaching Paul’s own brand of Christianity; the gospels were not formalized back then, it was mostly oral, and until the second and third centuries there were so many different views of Christianity, so many different gospels, that the two biggest forces in the history of the young Christian Church, Paul (Saul of Tarsus) and James, the brother of Jesus, whom they call the Christ (Quoted from the Jewish historian Josephus), may have engaged in fisticuffs on the temple stairs (Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth)

So again, show me something that indicates God’s unbounded love through action, not through Paul’s letters, or God himself saying “I totally love you in an unbounded way. Now turn around while I annihilate this city. Also, I am slow to anger, but please forget that I wanted to wipe out the Israelites (again) two chapters ago, and that it was a human who had to remind me of the covenant I made with Abraham.”

The good thing about being friends with God is that you can disagree with Him but still like Him. I think that would be a much healthier religion, personally. I know that isn’t what your current relationship with Him is, but consider it.

I do not want you and God to break up, I just want you to communicate and work through your problems. This teenaged crush you have on Him (OH EM GEE He is like… SO PERFECT! I can’t even tell you how perfect He is! YOU HAVE TO LOVE HIM TOO!) is not helping anyone. So figure some things out between the two of you, because it makes me sad that you let God emotionally abuse you so much, and yet you still come to His defense.

Let Him defend Himself. Let God’s actions defend God. If God is all that, why should you have to defend Him at all? A perfect, timeless God should have been able to make an unambiguous book that speaks through the ages and across languages, and if that is what the Bible is, let me read it and come to my own conclusions. If the Bible is perfect, I’m sure we’ll all agree in the end… Right?

A Personal Kind of Excuse

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

Edit: Happy 100th post everyone!!!

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians — they are so unlike your Christ.” -Mahatma Ghandi

“With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, you need religion.” -Steven Weinberg

“I’d like to think that, thanks to my intelligence, I make very few mistakes… But when I do make mistakes, they tend to be legendary.” -Me

The above three quotes tie together so well that it almost seems some kind of magic, even some kind of miracle. I don’t think that is an accident; the quote I gave from myself is one I tend to use as a talisman to ensure I retain some level of humbleness; it is when I think I am right most often that I make the worst mistakes (I once made a mistake so legendary it made the news, though thankfully my name was removed from the story). This is not anything to do with religion, this is to do with being a human, but it ties back so often to religion and to war that I felt it important to include it as a counterbalance to the Weinberg and Ghandi quotes.

Carl Jung, a great psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the early 20th century, has been quoted (and the quote slightly varies, but the idea is always the same) as having said “I do not need to believe [in God], I know [God exists]!” This is the type of knowledge that leads to mistakes that can end up being legendary. “In the fullness of time,” writes Sam Harris, “One side of this debate will really win and one side will really lose.” It is in this vein that I try, as best as I am able, to never make an absolute statement with regards to religion.

I will fully admit, of course, that my own brand of intelligence has led me to lose my belief in God, but I would never say “there is no God.” That being said, I am comfortable saying the following: “There is probably no God, and if there is, he/she/it is probably not of the Christian variety.” If I am wrong, and both of those statements turn out wrong (and I am comfortable saying I cannot know the truth until I die), then I am comfortable admitting that I have made a mistake that was, in fact, more grand in scope than I could ever imagine in this life. Perhaps, I am open to thinking, there is something to the Christian religion, and to the fact that I may burn in hell for the things I have come to believe about the world and nature.

That being said, many of my beliefs in nature align with Christian beliefs, though that word was chosen carefully and advisedly. Belief and practice are often two very different things, as any public atheist tends to learn in the fullness of time. It is very few, the number of atheists that have not been told they will burn in hell, or that they should die, or that they are (quoting a letter sent to Richard Dawkins) “Only alive because my God commands me not to kill.”

Perhaps it is my naive reading of the Bible that has made me come to this conclusion, but I would think that wishing a person dead is in direct breach of Matthew 5:27-28, which states that, in part, “Any man who has looked at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” It is in my own naivete that I believe this is a broader commandment, one that charges Christians to keep a pure mind, not only with respect to adultery but with respect to all of the core commandments. This is, again in my mind, bore out by the fact that one of the core commandments states that thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods; this is not just saying “thou shalt not steal,” but is further saying “thou shalt not think about stealing.”

I think the Golden Rule really needs to be more prominently on display in the Bible, and in the hearts of its readers. I really think that sending hate mail, no matter how justified you feel, is in breach of this rule. I think hating, or in any way persecuting homosexuals, is in direct breach of this rule. I think there are greater moral teachings than the Golden Rule, though it is very good, but like an artist with a block of clay, I work with what I am given. Much in the same way, now that I think about it, an apologist or Christian works with their own block of clay. There are parts of the Bible that no person can say are moral (or if you do, you are looking through some heavily tinted sunglasses), but they are there, so we work through them, all of us, even non-Christians.

Oh, but how do non-Christians deal with the Bible? I would ask the “witches” of Salem, whose belief or nonbelief in God did not matter. I would ask the “heretics” in the middle east for the hundreds of years that the Crusades lasted. I would ask the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, whose delicate flesh got in the way of the Inquisitor’s hammer (That’s how that worked, right? The Inquisitors were Godly men, and thus never meant to hurt anyone, these people just happened to get in the way. By accident.).

If these examples are too archaic, then how about the Scopes trial of 1925, where science was denied in the very name of God? Or the more recent Vashti McCollum trial of 1948, where her family was ostracized, her children bullied, her name sullied for years. Is that recent enough?

I am not here to bash religion, but I am certainly not above bashing things that are done in the name of Christianity.

If we want to go even more recent, even today Teach the Controversy is being forced (or, at the very least pushed) upon a barely aware populace. The numbers from Gallup and Pew as to the scientific literacy of the United States of America are almost stunning to those outside of the country, and they seem to correlate with increasingy fundamental beliefs in certain areas of the country, rather than more progressive beliefs and education.

There is no “controversy” among the scientific populace, except perhaps between proponents of kin selection versus proponents of group selection, but even then it is a debate that is being solved by evidence and ideas.

The Scopes Trial, or the Vashti McCollum incident could have been gentle non issues; if you would treat an atheist like you would treat any other brother or sister in Christ, history would barely remember her. She would be referenced in court cases, and would certainly have a place in constitutional history, but who remembers the names of the people who pressed for constitutional amendments? No, I doubt seriously that I would be accutely familiar with (or even have heard) the name Vashti McCollum in a truly Christian world, where people practiced truly Christian beliefs.

But in a human world? Perhaps, perhaps I would have, and indeed, I have.

This is the point where you may say “AHA! You admit that being human is the problem! Well, Christianity allows us to transcend our baser instincts!” I am sorry for using a Straw Man in this case; very few people will speak to me of religion face-to-face, so I am forced to use hypothetical readers. I would like to think I am not an obnoxious atheist, but I am passionate where it comes to eliminating human suffering, so I may get more heated than I would like whenever someone defends their bigotry with the Bible… That being said, I must reiterate, I am not here to take religion away, I am here to take away the evil/bad parts of religion, and I will stay the course to that end. Worded another way, I do not want to debate, I want to discuss.

Now, off of that tangent, we are back to speaking about humans and their base instincts. I do not think it is a prevalent belief that women should be murdered wholesale, but why do you think the people of Salem held the witch trials? I do not believe they were evil people, I believe they were good people who did evil things out of fear and superstition–and they used their Bible as the justification.

It is not humanity that is evil, and it is not Christianity that is evil, but this is a case of chemistry taking two things, putting them together in a beaker, and the result is often ugly. To parallel that with something in the real world, I like mentos, and I like Diet Coke (get off my lawn, it still tastes good!!!), but I know that taking a mentos followed by a shot of diet coke is going to end poorly.

This goes back to a point I’ve made before; if we separate religion from our personal image of ourselves, we can transcend this negative interaction. If I say to you “The Bible preaches many evil things, among the good things,” your first reaction should not be one of indignation or hurt; that is a sure sign that the chemical reaction of religion/humanity is curdling your soul. If you ever defend bigotry using the Bible, that is a sure sign that the chemical reaction of religion/humanity is curdling your soul.

If, however, you admit that the Bible has a dark side, and that we can transcend it, but that religion is ultimately a force that allows you to surpass your own baser nature? I will be on your side. I will help you find Bible verses that support you. I will celebrate and trumpet your religion, but you have your humanity in one beaker and your religion in another, and you understand that they can compliment each other, but should perhaps not be directly mixed.

A moralist who takes the good of the Bible and throws out the bad has an incredibly sturdy foundation. That being said, a moralist is perfectly capable of being moral without using the Bible as their foundation, and that should be recognized, too.

We all have different ways of transcending our own personal flaws. Some use religion, though many in different ways. Some use the love of Jesus as a guide to loving thy neighbor; some use the fear of hell. These are two very different things, and I should hope that even the most die-hard Christian can see that. Some do not use religion; for me, it is my empathy. I do not believe in your God, but even so I believe in being moral and loving to those around us. I believe this should extend to the planet we live on, to those who do not share our beliefs, to those who do not share our opinions, to the animals around us. An issue I have taken with many Christians is that their Bible (and their personal beliefs) often do not extend to the protection of animals–but that, I will admit, is only a minor complaint in the big picture.

To summarize, perhaps, using the same example I’ve used before of the pastor who said he’d be a murderer if not for Jesus… You know what? If that is what it takes for you to be moral, ok, I’ll accept. The issue I take with that pastor is that he takes the Bible wholesale; he has the superiority complex that comes of one of the Chosen, he believes all people must be Christian, he believes that Muslims are the height of evil. Those are not moral beliefs, and I have a problem with his religion. His personal religion.

Do I have a problem with all Christians? Certainly not. I have a problem with the immoral Christians.

If you are Christian, I am going to ask you to take a look into yourself and ask not “What does the Bible tell me,” but “Am I doing unto others as I would have them do unto me?”

To bring out a tired example, if homosexuality were the norm and being heterosexual were punishable by ostracism (in progressive places) or death (in less progressive places), would you think anyone should have the right to decide what you do in the privacy of your own home when both parties are completely consenting? No one is harmed by your heterosexuality, you reason, and yea; no one even needs to know you are heterosexual. It has no bearing on anything outside of your love of your husband or your love of your wife.

“Hey Jim, have you finished your homosexual accounting?”

“No, Charles, I did heterosexual accounting.”

“Why’d you tell me that? Now we have to fire you.”

I should hope we all find the above conversation, regardless of our religious views, ridiculous. And that’s the whole point.

So, to beat home what I have said many times on this blog, let’s all be moral, regardless of our background. If only 10% of us would choose to live that way, the world would be a better place within the week.

Everything You Ever Wanted

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

I know I’ve spoken about morality and religion frequently, but each time my understanding moves forward a notch, I feel like I should post something that helps me consolidate my own knowledge.

The Old Testament is a moral mess, almost no one will argue against that. Whether you are a literalist or a moderate, the apologia you must construct for the Old Testament is a mine field of carefully constructed defense and the slightest misstep can end with your argument blown up and out. “Well, the book of Leviticus is just a set of rules for the Levites, so we can ignore that part.” That kind of thing.

But Exodus! That is a good book; it contains the Ten Commandments, and a wonderful story of redemption from slavery and a kind God who saves His people–but that’s the whole point; He saves His people. He goes out of his way to torture an entire nation (as I’ve written about before). His rules for morality and being Good in the eyes of God are a bit of a mess, too; there is specification of when it is OK to kill, there are commandments directly from God to steal from people, and the real ten commandments are odd to the modern reader, to say the least.

But let’s go back even further, to Genesis, and take an internal look at the beginning of the three Abrahamic faiths. Abraham, after whom the faiths were named.

What you have to remember about the story of Abraham is that there was no religion of God before him, whether God interacted with others; it was never formal.

So now we have a guy who heard a voice in his head that he attributed to God telling him to kill his first born son. Whether you believe that having faith in God is the highest calling, you have to admit; if your closest relative, your mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister, came up to you and said “I’m sorry, the voice in my head that claims to be Jesus said I have to kill you,” your first reaction would generally not be “This is a reasonable statement, and I support you.”

But even then, God stopped him! To steal an example that Richard Dawkins has used in the past, what of the Judge of the people, Jephthah? He vowed to God that if he won in an upcoming battle, he would “sacrifice whatever first came out of his door when he arrived home.” That just seems to be a wildly unintelligent thing, though, because what did he expect would come out of his door? Probably not a cow or a sheep, unless he had pets of that kind, so he was left with only two options… Either it would be his wife or his only child. In the fullness of time, his own daughter comes out, and he rents his shirt in despair–but “Did to her as he vowed to do.” The whole story is recounted in the Book of Judges (11:31-39).

Whether you believe this literally happened or did not, a general Christian will accept that it is in the Bible for a reason. I am no scholar of theology, I could not tell you why this is in the Bible, but to me it indicates that “the God of Life” does not shy from death. A man sacrificed his daughter as the price for having killed hundreds of people, maybe thousands! And yet, as per the Arithmetic of Souls, we are not allowed to experiment on Blastocysts, as they may have souls? Jephthah killed without any reason to believe he was protecting lives; yea, the war he was fighting was to protect God, not people. The scientists who perform stem cell research have strong reason to believe that this may be the biggest medical breakthrough of a generation, of several generations.

To quote Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, “A blastocyst is a collection of some 150 cells. To contrast, the brain of a fly has roughly 100,000 cells… But the rights of this blastocyst has the same rights as a seven year old girl with third degree burns over 80% of her body?”

That seven year old girl will likely die, but not before spending days or months in excruciating pain. Obviously, as per Christianity, we cannot just let her die, perhaps even if we know she has no chance of surviving. But stem cells? There is promising research to show we could regrow her skin. There is promising research that we could give quadriplegics the use of their arms and legs back, the horizon for the benefits of stem cell research is so far off we cannot even begin to imagine what this medical breakthrough could do for the good of the world–and all it would cost is a bundle of cells so small a fly would not even notice them.

One would think, as per the morality (if you can call it that) of the God of the Old Testament, we should be in full support of the death of the blastocysts to improve the lives of His acolytes. Using blastocysts to save lives and reduce suffering surely must count as a lesser evil than Moses’ slaughter of the Jews (Exodus 32:25-29), or the countless slaughters and rapes in the book of Numbers or Judges, that God is a direct party to?

How about God’s own chosen righteous? Lot, who said “Oh, you want to rape my guests? No, they’re men. Rape my daughters instead.” (Genesis 19:6-9) Or the Levite priest who was visiting Gibeah. An old man took him and his concubine in (Oh yes, the priest had a concubine), and people came to the house; “Send out your guest so we can have sex with him!”

The owner shouts back “No, this man is a guest, but my daughter is a virgin, do what you want with her. Also, he has a concubine, go nuts with that too.”

So the daughter and concubine are sent out. On the morning, the priest gets up and prepares to leave. When he opens the door to his host’s house, his concubine is laying on the doorstep. “Get up, time to go.” She does not move, for she was dead.

For good measure, the Levite cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends the parts to the 12 tribes of Israel because… Wait, what the hell? What the ACTUAL F***?! What is going on here? What am I supposed to learn?! (Judges 19:22-29) I think, at least in context, that they are supposed to be angry that the woman was killed by the rapists (that, it should be said, had full permission) when they receive the body parts… But killing someone by accident is not really grounds for serious punishment according to God, for He lets accidental killings happen (Exodus 21:12-13).

Now, all of this has been working up to a point. Most people say we can safely ignore the Old Testament, or take from it symbolic lessons — but the thing is, I do not know what I am supposed to learn. What do I learn from God wrestling Joshua, losing, then dislocating Joshua’s hip? (Genesis 32:22-30)

I think I know why Christians are so bitter towards Muslims. Muslims have had the good sense to call the Bible a holy book, but not make it binding, per se. Muhammad (PBUH, for the purposes of cultural sensitivity) cites the Bible frequently in the Qur’an and Hadith, but cites it as lessons–not as binding. I think Christians are bitter that the Muslims had foresight, and the ability to designate canonical readings of their holy books. The Hadith is a sort of magnifying glass through which you are to read the Qur’an.

I think everything the Christian has ever wanted is the ability to feel superior (something that comes directly from the Old Testament) while not opening themselves to moral criticism. So maybe take a page (ehehehehe) from Islam and designate the Old Testament a book of great origin, but which is not part of the True Gospel. Make the Bible contain only the New Testament, then designate the entirety of the Old Testament as the Tanakh; important reading, but nonbinding. Then you could cherry pick to your heart’s content, and close those gaping holes in your theology that let people like me read through the Old Testament and think with pure horror that people believe the Bible is a book of morality. BAM! So many problems solved.

It would seriously be everything you ever wanted.

A War of Gentlemen

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

This is a debate between Christopher Hitchens (one of the most prominent atheists in the world until, and indeed after, his death in 2011) and Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1997-2007. The audience was polled as they entered as to their opinion of the resolution at hand (Be it hereby resolved that religion is a force for good in the world), and polled after as to whether their opinion was changed, and to vote on the winner. Whether one side won or not, the true metric of the debate was whose side had the greater sway over the audience.

During the debate, Mr Blair and Mr Hitchens respectfully spoke with each other, had a cross examination and rebuttal, and fielded equal questions from the audience. Not only that, but their rebuttals directly touched upon the points of the other, this is an important distinction.

This debate was hosted in Canada in formal style with formal debate rules.

This is a debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy (who needs no introduction) and Ken Ham, who I believe is one of the most negative forces in the world as far as scientific advancement goes, creator of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, the largest of its kind, as well as the Arc Encounter, a project spending multiple millions of dollars creating a 1:1 scale Noah’s Arc.

During the debate, there are hangups on the most trivial things and the debate ended up devolving into two men giving semi-related speeches trying, almost desperately to make their points, regardless of what the other said.

This debate was hosted in the States, and had rules, but was in no way done in formal style. Who won? Both sides will tell you their side won because they “made their points.” Well of course you can make your points if you completely ignore the presence of the other side.

To be fair, there was some lip service to rebutting the other side–but when the rebuttal stage includes a prepared set of slides, you obviously knew what you were going to say before the other side made their point. That isn’t debate, that is speeches, and while similar on the surface, it doesn’t work like it is supposed to.

The point of rebuttal is your ability to think on your feet, to counter the points of the other. The points you choose to counter say as much as your counter argument itself, and the points you choose to ignore (if not purely for time constraints) say more still. There was no point to the Ham/Nye debate, no resolution was reached, the root question was barely stated.

The Hitchens/Blair debate made points, suggested outcomes, and each man clearly worked with the other instead of ignoring their point.

This reminds me of a 2 hour joke I watched two days ago. It basically starts out “A Theist, an Atheist, and Eric Hovind walk into a bar…” It was supposed to be a debate, but the whole thing was a mess. It was a mess because the theist and atheist both ended up fighting Hovind, who clearly has no idea how to argue against someone who believes in God and Science at the same time. Like, Hovind came right off the rails several times, because how can you believe in God, but not that the Earth is 6000 years old?! That being said, it is a unique person who can be both charismatic (to a degree) and yet get an atheist and a theist to gang up on him. Hovind in this debate was asked to do something he is not used to, and yet he still used his script (his “questions” were from a direct script he has read verbatim, alone, on two of his various shows (Creation Today and Creation Minute) which basically showed that he is unable to think on his feet; if he goes off script, it’s all over). The problem came about one third of the way into the debate where Hovind could no longer break any new ground, and kept trying to bring the debate back to the formal definition of the word “know” against a man who has a DOCTORATE DEGREE in Linguistics. To the theist’s credit, Pastor Bob was incredibly patient with Eric.. Almost like he was trying to teach a lesson to a child who simply could not get it.

I think that goes to the core of what people *think* a debate is in popular culture; to them, it is just people arguing. No, “debate” is a formal thing, it has rules, it has outcomes, there are metrics to judging them… But I have seen far too many “debates” between theists and atheists that added up to two people seeing who could speak more loudly.

We need more Hitchens/Blair debates and fewer Nye/Ham debates. The former helps expand understanding, the latter is an entertainm… Oh shit, I just figured out why people in the US debate that way.

I’ll show myself out.

Ramble ramble ramble

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

Warning: The below set of paragraphs (which is about all the cohesion I can assign to this post) are rambling, barely coherent, and full of wildly wandering ideas and thoughts. I decided to post it because I wrote it, but I have no better reason than that, really…

A common thread that pops up in atheist/theist debates is the idea of faith, and most specifically it is cited by the theist that “You have as much faith in science as I have in religion! So why is faith bad?”

The question is an interesting one, and one that I had pondered for a long time as I could not come up with an answer that satisfied myself. Sure, science is something that, with the right expertise, I could go and verify myself… But how would I know that the answers were correct?

It becomes, I finally discovered, a question of axioms. And, after years of pondering, I finally managed to solve the question to my own satisfaction. Obviously, the strongly religious out there will see things differently than I do, but I feel like I have finally something akin to the difference between faith in God and faith in science.

A question has been posed numerous times by numerous different people, but I think I heard it first from Sam Harris. If something happened in the world that caused us all to forget our language and forget our skills, what would the order be in which we relearned them? Well, if we were to survive, hunting and gathering would come first, then maybe agriculture. Obviously we would need to find and build shelter. These are important. In this new world where we can’t read, though, when will we discover that Jesus died for our sins? That God hates homosexuality? That the Sabbath Day is Holy? At what point will those things matter to our survival?

The point of the above illustration is how to define the lowest common denominator, the thing from which all other things come, the axioms of our personal universe. If the above example came to pass, and God was not the first thing we found, then we can safely assume “God Exists” is not an axiom. But how about another example?

You are born, open your eyes, gasp your first breath. What is the first thing that defines your existence? Senses. Your sight, your hearing, your sense of touch, these define your universe. You have these, and are forced to trust these, before your parents can even take you to baptism.

A frequent citation is Roman 1:18-20 (18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.) It is an odd thing, to accept that verse as literal truth; I would imagine, if you find an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon, they will not be Christians. It is merely a thought to me, but I feel like they have an excuse. To accept these set of verses requires a previous axiom, though; that you can trust what you are reading. How do you know that Paul was speaking exactly what God wanted? It is historically proven that James, Brother of Jesus, was the first leader of the Christian church until his death, and he did not agree with Paul. In fact, he said Paul was leading the people astray. So why does this set of verses constitute an axiom of God’s existence?

A supplemental verse is from the book of proverbs, 1:7 and 9:10, which state that the fear of God is the beginning of all knowledge. I do not know how to start into this one, as a fear of God teaches you nothing. Also, the fact that we have Bibles today of different translations seems to prove that the Bible is open to translation errors… So how can we assume that the Bible is completely unedited. The King James Bible is said, by many YECs, to be the perfect Bible, based on the original documents… But that assumes there were no copyist errors in the originals, as we do not have “the originals”. We have copies of the originals.

So now we get closer to the point; in several YEC pieces of media, they state that because we don’t know everything we can’t know anything, based on the fact that if we only know 1×10^-20% of all knowledge, that God could easily exist in the 99.9999999…% of things we don’t know. They then give themselves a “get out of jail free” card by stating that “since God is the only thing in the universe that knows everything, and he has told us things he knows, nothing outside of our knowledge could prove us wrong. QED: God exists, and we are better than you.”

The number of assumptions that goes into that stream of logic is stunning, but to them it boils down only to the axiom that God exists… But not even that, it is that their God is the God that exists. But then you have to go further, their God exists, and knows everything. Not only that, then, but that this God is capable of delivering that knowledge to us. Not only that, but that we are capable of understanding the true nature of that knowledge. Not only that, but that this knowledge has not in any way been corrupted from its pure, God delivered form. The legendary Bible passage goes “For the prophets spake as the spirit moved them since the beginning,” not “God said that we should write down these exact words.”

Now we come to my so-called faith in science. I will grant that there is a certain level of faith, but the world you live in seems to have the dichotomy that there are only two states: 100% knowledge and 0% faith, or 100% faith and 0% knowledge. Given what I have experienced, I would say that I have a very high degree of trust in my senses, I’d say at least 85%. There is a wide opening there for hallucinations, for the mind to make translation errors from reality to perception… So how do we work around that?

Well, if there are two people in the room, both of whom have 85% trust in their senses, they can use each other as confirmation. “Do you see that dancing chicken?” The other can reply “No, there is no dancing chicken.”

What if there are three people, again all of whom have 85% trust. One asks the other two about said dancing chicken, and they reply “Dude, there is no dancing chicken.” Well, since they have a combined 2% chance of being incorrect (15% chance of being incorrect, squared for the two of them), there is a significant chance you are the one who is wrong. That is the principle of how science works; 1 person makes an observation, then has x number of peer reviewers, we’ll say 10. Now we have a (5.7×10^-7)% chance of all of them hallucinating that. Probabilities calculated this way can never be 100% certain, but you eventually (and fairly quickly) get to absurd probabilities that people of various backgrounds, places, ages, races are all hallucinating the same thing.

Is the above example perfect? No. But it goes to show the easy way I could even have 50% trust in my senses, but if I ask 10 people if they say the same thing I do, there is then a 0.1% chance that we are all hallucinating the same thing, given all other things being equal (Group Psychology will throw those numbers out the window, but they are their own probabilistic entity).

So even taking the above as clearly imperfect, we can demonstrate that knowledge is not (as the YEC would claim) an all or nothing kind of thing. God could exist in the 99.99….% of things we don’t know yet, maybe, but even that isn’t an all or nothing. Richard Dawkins put it best, really; Christians try to make the debate all or nothing. They say science should not speak about it because they would be forced to say that God existing or not existing is equally as probable due to not being able to disprove anything… But one can shade the probabilities, and what we can say, by using science, is that the version of Christianity espoused by YECs is improbable enough that the only way it can exist is to make several assumptions. They would claim that Occam’s Razor states that God exists, because it is the simplest explanation, but that is not how Occam’s Razor works. Occam’s Razor isn’t about the simplest explanation, it is about the explanation that makes the least number of unfounded assumptions.

Evolution makes assumptions, several of them, but we reduce the number of assumptions by evidence. The Bible causes people to make assumptions that, by definition, cannot be touched by evidence.

God exists; assumption. The Bible is inerrant; assumption. The Earth is 6000 years old and geology has just managed to get it monumentally incorrect; assumption. The universe is the same age as the Earth, and cosmology has just managed to get it monumentally incorrect; assumption.

All of the above are things that science has evidence against, but because of the assumption that the Bible is inerrant the Christian will feel comfortable throwing it out. The Big Bang, it is said, is the Devil’s way of beguiling us, and is a result of the assumption that evolution is correct, and that hurts my soul. Science tries, as much as is possible, to start with no assumptions and go where the evidence points us… And you call it an issue of assumptions?

The YEC will approach science with the assumption that the Earth is 6000 years old, and attempt to interpret the evidence through those glasses, and scientists are the ones with a “presuppositional issue”? It was said explicitly by Eric Hovind, scientists approach all issues with a presuppositional bias, then he turns and says “But the scientists who start from the Earth being 6000 years old are the only real scientists because they don’t have presupposition.” WHAT?!

I won’t lie, I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how one can so confidently reject these ideas, calling them assumptions, then turn to the Bible and go “That. That is what has all the knowledge.”

Sorry about this post. I really am.

Worldviews: My Manifesto

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

I’ve mentioned it before, but many religious evangelists and apologists cite “the atheist worldview” as something to be scared of, worried about, and blotted out. It has never really bothered me, as my world view is in no way colored by religious leanings unless perhaps subconsciously; thing is, I hadn’t considered it from enough angles.

On Creation Today, they posted a story from a Christian who was “re-saved” after becoming “bored with atheism”. Those were his words, “I became bored with atheism.” That opened a whole new avenue of research for me, and I realized that reading books by exceptional atheists with whom I share a great deal of common thought really doesn’t capture the breadth of beliefs in the atheist culture. So I went digging down another rabbit hole, and came out knowing more–and that is the greatest compliment I can pay to any venture.

I had paid lip service, in the past, to the different kinds of atheism, but I can honestly say that I understand it now much more clearly than I did even a week ago. I watched the documentary “The Case for Christ,” which many people (for reasons unclear to me) have said is a convincing argument for becoming Christian. It also opened my eyes to the views of certain atheists, and I feel like I finally understand the vitriol one sees on the legendary reddit sub-site (subreddit, to those who reddit) /r/atheism.

The type of atheist that Lee Strobel (Case for Christ) and Mark Sebert (linked Creation today de-re-conversion story) are is that of what I am going to term (and perhaps there is a better term used by more learned people) a religious atheist. They believe atheism as a dogma, and while they don’t really strive to understand the underlying ideas, they believe (often with far more overt conviction) that there is no God. This is not a lack of belief in God, this is a group of people believing there is no God simply because very smart people told them so, much as a congregation believes in God because someone very smart wrote the Bible.

A primary reasoned cited by Lee Strobel for his conversion to Christianity, for example, is something I have written about sarcastically in the past; that of the mathematical chances of Jesus fulfilling prophecy (See my earlier post, The Mathematics of Prophecy). If you are an atheist and are able to take the idea of Jesus as a historical construct in the Gospels, you are not an atheist for what I will term the right reasons (though with trepidation, as I do not like to call anyone outright wrong) as it does not take a very thorough look into history to understand that while portions of the Gospels may be true their bulk is historically invalid. The culling of the innocents by Herod sounds like the kind of thing that would bear mention in at least one other history book, but it is invalid. The Census taken that was the excuse given for Jospeh’s presence in Bethlehem happened many years after Herod died (The census wasn’t taken until 6AD, and wasn’t even a census ordered by Caesar–it was merely a small, provincial census), therefore Herod would not even have been around to order the culling of the innocents anyway. What I just did, in only a few lines, was taken a huge chunk out of the historicity of the Gospels and simplified your calculation for Jesus’ “chances of fulfilling prophecy” greatly.

An atheist who can be convinced by this fallacious reasoning (taking the Bible as historically accurate) was never an intellectually honest atheist. Mark Sebert cited that he “became an atheist” (which I don’t believe is the way most atheists would describe themselves; for me, I would say “the long period over which I questioned my belief in God”) because he “wanted to be a free thinker.” That’s right, “I wanted to be a free thinker, so I thought how other people thought. I mean, I can’t see a problem with that.”

To me, and at least to Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, one does not “believe in atheism”, one “does not believe in God.” To further expound that point, as Mark Sebert said “there was so much more going on than a dictionary definition, that is ‘the lack of belief in God or gods,” I have looked at data, at history, at science. I did not begin to believe in atheism, I lost my belief in God. I did not lose my belief in God because Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens told me to, I lost my belief in God because I read books about science and history, because I read the Bible and found the narrative lacking, because when speaking with a Pastor about my issues with faith, he was unable to answer my questions and replied instead “I can see that you are digging holes and then looking for holes, but you really just have to have faith.”

This was deeply unsatisfactory to me; I wasn’t digging holes, I was walking through a minefield and looking for dirt to fill the holes I kept falling into. This brings me to another class of atheist, and this next statement is going to sound highly egotistical, but I can think of no better way to word it. Lee Strobel and Mark Sebert were religious atheists; I would describe myself as a rational atheist. The rational atheist, which generally contains the vast majority of those in the upper echelons of scientific discourse share(and here is the ego, for I would like, if you would let me, to count myself as sharing beliefs with them, beliefs that I came to independently), is one who comes to atheism through an extended search through the evidence for both sides. Lee Strobel stresses repeatedly “I was a hard core atheist. I didn’t want to hear about Christianity, I didn’t want to talk about the Bible, I thought it was all just stupid superstition.”

The view taken by atheists such as Strobel is not the view of almost any rational atheist. Extensively in their books, Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins cite chapter of verse of the Bible. Frequently in my blog I have done the same; I do not avoid Christianity, and I don’t even want to take Christianity from anyone. I don’t want to “make anyone become an atheist”. I became an atheist of a sort, there is no doubt about that, but the loss of religion is something that takes a serious toll of anyone who was brought up in the fold. What I ultimately want is for Christians to examine their own beliefs, and at the very least discard the hateful parts of it. What I write here is not prompts to leave your faith, but prompts to think. If you lose your faith, I do not want it to be because I told you so, but because you internally decided it was the correct course of action. I am sorry if I have harmed anyone through my blog, in any case.

I read and immerse myself in the Christian Bible, or with those teaching the Christian Bible, nearly as much as I immerse myself in the works of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. I also immerse myself in books by people who do not profess their stance either way; to read a book on history, one does not need to believe or not believe, that is irrelevant; history is a study of what happened and when, and your opinion about those things does not change what has already passed. I do not avoid the teachings of Christians, I merely seek to find what it is that they see as evidence that makes them believe as they do. Often, I will say that their science is bad, their assumptions erroneous, but I will never insult them for their assumptions (though for the purposes of theatrics, I will make fun of the assumptions themselves very frequently). I love Eric Hovind, because he is clearly sincere in his beliefs. He gives me an almost pristine case study of what it is that the hardline Christians believe, and that is valuable to me.

Another thing that you will often see in religious atheists is that they do want, actively, to take away your religion. They will insult “the stupid Christians,” something I would never say. They will say the world would be better if “everyone thought as we think.” I do not believe this is so, because the underlying world view they take is dangerously exclusive. They are as likely to go to war as they would accuse Christians as being, and that is never what I want.

Richard Dawkins opened his book “The God Delusion” with a preface containing a line I think speaks volumes. “I will never go out of my way to offend, but I will also not dawn [white gloves] and handle [religion] with undue care and reverence.”

I know what I say offends the beliefs of many, but what I say is never meant to offend, as so often Christian comments, and atheist comments do. Again, I will stress that any atheist that will offend or insult Christians is no friend of mine.

Sometimes, I reread what I wrote in stream of consciousness style, and see that I ran off on a tangent. This happened, but I am going to leave it. Let’s get back on track as I near my conclusion, though, and I apologize for wandering off; what I wanted to clarify is the view of a rational atheist.

Now we come to the core of the Christian criticism of “the danger of the atheist world view.” There are those who very likely would take it to the extreme you do, whoever you are that spreads this dogma. In fact, I believe if those I have termed “religious atheists” become the norm, we will eventually end up with at least a small outbreak of people whose conscience was eroded by the fact that they fear no hell; it is, admittedly, something I worry about. Any faction, any faction, any faction, (I have repeated this three times for clarity) will have its extremists. Religious atheists have a strong militant dogma against religion, much as religious people have a strong dogma against atheists. Men have killed in the name of religion, no one can deny this; you can say they were misguided, they were extremists, they were wrong in their beliefs, but no matter how you try to justify it, they killed because, in their mind, their religion commanded it. I am afraid this works more for my side than it does for yours; there will be those who kill in the name of stamping religion out (and, in fact, many have done so). These are not rational atheists, these are those who embrace a dogma of atheism.

An extremist rational atheist would be someone along the lines of Richard Dawkins. At his most vitriolic and vehement, he will aggressively try to talk you out of your religion, but any well educated, intelligent, rational person would never kill you for your belief, other than in self defense. They may punish you for things you do because of your belief, but I’d say that is fair game.

The point of this long rant is this; there are different kinds of atheists, and I will stand beside many Christians in their criticism of those I would term religious atheists. They sully the name of atheism, poison the pool, and darken the hearts of Christians against anyone who doesn’t believe in God. They hurt our cause as much as you believe they are hurting yours.

You can have them. You can have people like Lee Strobel and Mark Seber. They do not bring anything to the table, and I know how you do so love to swell your numbers. You will take anyone, and that is fine for you, but I do not want people like that on my side of the fence, frankly.

If I were the only atheist left in the world, I would still be happy. That is a huge difference between you and I, theoretical Christian. I believe what I believe not because it is cool, or because someone told me to, or because there are others I admire who share my belief, but because I have walked a journey of discovery and this is where I am right now. Do you know what, though? The difference between you, who have planted a pole with a sign that reads “God” and chained yourself to it for all time, and me is this: I am still journeying. If your God is out there, I may find him. I may find Brahma, I may find Allah, or I may continue in my nonbelief until the end of my journey; death. But rest assured, I will keep journeying until I die.

And people who are on this same journey, this journey of discovery and learning, this journey, where anyone walking the road in good faith (and I chose these words more carefully than many I choose) is welcome to share in my journey and share insights and ideas, those people are those I want on my side of the fence. We do not fight, we discuss. We do not insult, we learn. If there are Christians walking this same journey and finding God, I still want them on my side of the fence, so I can enjoy their company and their reason. We can all learn together. We can make the world a better place.

You can have the religious atheists, for they have planted a pole that says “No God,” and chained themselves to it. They are not welcome on the road I travel, and I don’t want them on my side of the fence.

This is my world view. This is my manifesto.

It is different form my simple mission statement, which is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it, but the two are compatible.

This is my “atheist worldview”, if you are dead set on pigeonholing me into it. But I would call it a “rational worldview” or a “personal worldview”. I do not believe I have to share my worldview with anyone else; I am happy holding it in any case.

Thanks for reading, thank you for being part of my journey. I look forward to walking this journey with all of you.

The Real Ten Commandments

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

This will be a short post, and I will have something of full length forthcoming for the day, but I just thought I would mention it. In Exodus chapter 34, God writes ten commandments on stone tablets. Hurray, right? There is something that popular culture got right!

NOPE!

According to Exodus 34 (and I will cite verse to make sure no one calls me dishonest), the below are the ten commandments. The punishment for breaking any one of the following commandments is that you, your kids, your grandkids, and your great grandkids go to hell (Exodus 34:7)

Commandment One: Thou shalt kill the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and do not forge any contracts or alliances with them. You will destroy their altars to their gods. Only worship me. (Exodus 34:10-14)

Alright, commandment one is somewhat familiar, if a little wordier. Since all of the peoples God commands killed are extinct, the only part left is “Thou shalt have no gods before me,” which is the familiar first commandment.

Commandment Two: Thou shalt not make any idols of worship. (Exodus 34:17)

Again, we are still on familiar ground.

Commandment Three: Celebrate the Passover feast, and make really sure the bread is unlevened. SERIOUSLY! NO YEAST! (Exodus 34:18)

Commandment Four: The first offspring of every womb belongs to me. For the firstborn of every donkey, sacrifice a lamb. If you don’t sacrifice a lamb, break the donkey’s neck (for some reason). For the firstborn son, sacrifice a lamb. (Exodus 34:19-20)

Don’t know why God hates donkeys, but there you go. There is no provision for what happens if you don’t sacrifice a lamb for your firstborn son, but if we use extrapolation…

Commandment Five: No one is to appear before God without a sacrifice prepared. (Exodus 34:20)

Well, that does seem consistent with the personality of the Old Testament God.

Commandment Six: Keep holy the Sabbath. Do no work, light no light, do not start any fires. (Exodus 34:21)

We’ve moved a commandment, but you might recognize this from the original ten you learned.

Commandment Seven: There is to be a festival of the harvest, and you are to sacrifice your first harvest of wheat to God. (Exodus 34:22-25)

Commandment Eight: When you make a sacrifice to me, make REALLY SURE none of it has any yeast. Or looks at yeast. Or has been in the presence of yeast. Did I mention I hate yeast? Because yeah, I hate yeast. (Exodus 34:25)

Commandment Nine: Sacrifice the first fruits of any soil to God. (Exodus 34:26)

This one seems a duplicate, but it seems God really had a point to make here, and He was going to get it across.

Commandment Ten: Thou shalt not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. (Exodus 34:26)

Yup, that is commandment ten.

Exodus 34:27:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

So there you go. These are the Ten Commandments that were chiseled in stone.

These are the moral teachings of the covenant of God.

Just thought you should know.

Do as I… What Was I Talking About Again? Part 6

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

As we walk towards the finale of the epic tale of Exodus, Moses is dragging gigantic slabs of rock down a mountain, the tablets having been inscribed by the Finger of God Himself with every rule He could think of.

Meanwhile, at base camp:

“Hey Aaron, we were all just wondering,” a nervous looking Israelite was fidgeting as he spoke. “Moses has been gone for like… Weeks. Do you suppose he just made all of that God stuff up? And I mean… Like… Now, I am just spitballing here… We need to have gods. We can’t live without them. Now, since he made that God up, we don’t want to believe in Him any more. What say you make up a god for us?”

Aaron looked thoughtful. “You know what? You’re right, he probably made it all up and isn’t coming back. Gather up all that gold we stole from the Egyptians, let’s melt it down and make us a god.”

Aaron collected all of the gold and jewelery from the Israelites and melted it into a cast he apparently had handy of a calf. From it he made a golden calf.

“There you go, Israelites! Against all evidence, and ignoring the fact that I obviously just made this calf in front of you a few minutes ago, this is the god that rescued us from Egypt!” Aaron flung his arms wide in a gesture indicating the glory of the golden calf. (Seriously, Exodus 32:1-4)

“And since this is our new god, let’s offer it some burnt sacrifices! Since we aren’t following Moses’ stupid God that he totally made up any more, these bulls aren’t doing anything useful anyway!” So they made an altar in front of the calf and sacrificed some stuff to it, because why not?

Then, for the first time in 40 days, the omniscient God looked down the mountain that Moses was slowly descending. “Oh what the hell! You’ve been up here for what? A few weeks? They said they’d worship me forever out of fear! How could they turn so quickly? I am going to smite them so hard”

Moses let the gigantic slabs fall to the ground, and spun on God. “Oh no you don’t. No. You don’t get to ruin my life, then mess with my family and me for over forty years then just smite them. You put so much effort into saving them, why would you waste that? And you promised Abraham that his descendants would number as the stars, and what would everyone say if God just went around breaking promises?”

“Uuuuuugggghhhhhhhhhh. Fine. But you just wait until I tell you the new rules. Those slabs you are carrying down the mountain? Those will practically be invisible beside the paper it will take to write out my new rules.” God crossed His arms in a huff and wandered off to smite something that Moses wouldn’t complain about. He mumbled as He turned “Stupid people don’t realize the amount of awesome they are constantly rejecting.”

Moses turned around and dragged the slabs to near the bottom of the Mountain when he saw that everyone was celebrating in front of a golden calf, just like God had said. Realizing that the Israelites were completely undermining all of his effort, he got so angry that he threw the tablets down the mountain, shattering them that God Himself had written. “Oh, oh, oh hohoho. You know what? I am going to smite some of these idiots myself. I am tired of this crap!”

Moses ran the rest of the way down the mountain, through the people, and poured oil all over the golden calf. He then started the calf on fire, and kicked it over and it smashed (as gold is wont to do) then made the Israelites powder the statue and he shouted “You drink it! YOU DRINK YOUR SHAME! IDIOTS! And you, Aaron! What the hell, man? YOU’VE TALKED TO GOD YOURSELF! You know how He is! What did they do to you, that you actually made this god for them?!”

“Well,” Aaron was staring at his shoes and drinking his burning gold-oil water. “They asked me to make a god, so like… What was I gonna do? Say no? So I made them a god. Well, really, it made itself. You know. With magic. It’s kind of hard to explain.” (Exodus 32:22-24)

Moses was struck dumb momentarily, and Aaron thought he could actually see something break in Moses. Moses turned around and walked to the altar of the Golden Calf. He turned and looked at the people, all in rapt silence looking at him.

“Whoever believes in God, come over here.” Only one group followed him, the Levites.

“Ok, so God wanted to smite everyone, and I thought, you know… How bad could it be? But you know what? This is stupid. This is all stupid. So grab some swords, and kill all of the Israelites in the valley except the Levites. Just… Smite them. As hard as you can. Maybe seeing some wanton destruction in His name will keep God from smiting some random tribe.” The Levites grabbed swords from the armory, and like a giant living lawnmower they killed everyone, their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who were not of the tribe of Levi.

As this wanton destruction happened, Moses climbed back up Mount Sinai to talk to God.

“Hey Moses, saw what you did back there. I like it. I like your style. Hey, though, just for good measure I am going to strike all of the Israelites with a plague, so they remember how awesome and merciful I am. Should put the fear back into them, too. It worked so well last time!”

Moses just shrugged and said “Sounds good.”

Good looked at Moses with something that could have been concern, but probably wasn’t. “Hey buddy, you ok?”

“M’fine. Go plague some stuff. I have to go rethink my life.”

“Cool, cool. Oh, by the way, you may be my chosen people, or whatever, but I’m done helping you directly. Seriously, I have almost killed all of you so many times, I’ve just decided to be hands off going forward. You guys don’t deserve to be in my awesome presence anyway.” And for the first time in forty years, Moses felt a sliver of hope that he may yet know something like happiness in his life.

“Oh, but before I go, we have to remake those slabs you broke. I mean, I could put them back together… But I’d prefer if you came back up Mount Sinai. Don’t worry, I’ll still do the writing, but you have to make the slabs. Bring them up the mountain with you tomorrow! That’ll cheer you up!”

Moses had regrets about ever having been optimistic, but the next day chiseled out some slabs of stone and dragged them up the mountain.

When Moses got to the top, God was waiting. “Heeey buddy! Have I mentioned how awesome and merciful and compassionate and slow to anger I am lately? Because I am all of those things. But if you break even one of my rules, I swear upon my own name, I will send you to hell, and your kids to hell, and their kids to hell, and their kids’ kids to hell. COMPASSION! Am I doing this right?” (Seriously. Exodus 34:6. In fact, I think I made it make God sound even more merciful than the Bible version does.)

“Anyway, as part of how merciful and compassionate I am, I feel like now is the time to remind you to go to the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and kill them. Kill them so dead. Like… Turbo dead. Is that a thing? Turbo death? I feel like I should make that a thing. Man, I’m awesome. Turbo-death. So awesome. Hey, I just remembered. When was the last time you had a seven day long party in my name? You should do that. Do that each time you annihilate an entire people in my name. Just so I know you know how awesome I am. AND NO YEAST (Yup, came up again, Exodus 34:25). I hate yeast. It is so… So not awesome. Also, don’t know if I mentioned this recently, but make sure not to cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. That’s important. (Exodus 34:26)

“Anyway, stone slabs are ready. Get dragging. Also, I turned you into a nightlight; isn’t that hilarious? You should probably wear a veil for the rest of your life, or people will make fun of you for glowing. (Exodus 34:33) Have fun, you rascals!”

Moses dragged the slabs down the mountain, and showed them to the Israelites. He also made sure that the Israelites built the box God wanted, and set up a tent with the patterns exactly how God wanted them, because even though God is slow to anger, Moses knew that God would smite them all if the patterns weren’t exactly right. After all of the work was right, Moses made sure to inspect every inch of every piece of the box and of the tent and of the furniture in the tent, before even telling God that it was done. And when he was done inspecting, he inspected again, because he was not going to bargain for the lives of 2 million people again, especially when they didn’t deserve it, and when he himself had ordered thousands of them smited.

For the rest of eternity, the Israelites were blessed with the opportunity to carry a box weighing thousands of pounds with them wherever they went.

The End

What a nice story, am I right?!

Do as I… What Was I Talking About Again? Part 5

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

When we last left Moses, he was writing down strange and onerous rules pertaining to justice, mercy, and the moral way of living (as punishment for backtalk to God). I won’t list all of the rules in this summary (you can find them in my previous blog posting, The Laws of Morality), but suffice it to say, God was probably just messing with Moses just to see what happens. After Moses had delivered the laws to the Israelites, they said they would happily follow them to avoid pissing God off because they saw what he did to Egypt and they are not as stupid as Pharaoh.

God was just giddy to see the look of fear and terror in His beloved playthings… I mean people. He came down onto Mount Sinai again, and called out to Moses, “Hey buddy, come back up here. Bring Aaron with you, I like him, and bring like… Seventy elders or whatever. I want witnesses. But only Moses comes close, the rest get to watch from a distance.”

“Are you asking me to pick out 70 elders to come up the mountain but still not come close to them just so you can watch 70 elders climb a mountain?” Moses asked sardonically.

“… No. Shut up. Bring the elders. Oh, but before you come up, I need you to be cleansed. So here’s how you are going to cleanse yourselves; you are going to sacrifice twelve bulls, one for each of the tribes with you, and collect all their blood, then take half of it and pour it on yourselves. Then you’ll be clean! Then you can come up the mountain.”

Moses heaved a heavy breath and went to gather twelve bulls, built twelve altars, and made sure he had twelve very large bowls to collect all the blood. He then engaged in the slaughter according to what God had said, because at this point this was probably one of the least frustrating things God had asked them to do, aside from the fact that there was a lot of meat there, and they weren’t allowed to eat it.

Then Moses, Aaron, and the seventy elders climbed Mount Sinai and saw God sitting at the top. Moses was frankly surprised they the elders weren’t killed by God for some reason (no, seriously, Exodus 24:11). Once they got to the top, God told Moses to come up further, away from the elders, and He’d write the Laws of the Covenant on stone tablets for Moses to take down to the Israelites.

When Moses arrived at the foot of the throne of God, he really wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Maybe that he’d get stone tablets quickly? But he wasn’t so lucky.

“Heeey Moses! How’s things with you? Having fun being the caretaker? Hey, I’m gonna spend some time writing these tablets, why don’t you make yourself comfortable?” God cheerfully began carving stones at about the same speed Moses could have.

“I’m… Well,” Moses replied unsurely. “How long are we talking here? How long will I be sitting alone with you?”

“Oh,” God said, then looked at the stones around him thoughtfully. “I should be done in about forty days. But hey, we get to hang out for forty days! I arranged it like this, because I am awesome, and I knew you’d want to hang out with me after being stuck with all those other boring people for so long!”

“I can’t even describe how I feel right now, God. You have no idea.” And so began forty days and forty nights of Moses hanging out with God.

After the forty days, before God sent Moses down Mount Sinai, He decided to drop the bombshell. “Hey buddy, these forty days have been awesome! Thanks for hanging out. But hey, I feel like the Israelites haven’t been sacrificing to me all that much since you came up here, so here’s what you’ll tell them to sacrifice to me when you get down there: I like gold, silver, and bronze, so those are good. Ummmm… Blue, purple, and scarlet string.”

“What?”

“I like those colors. So yeah. Blue, purple, and scarlet. That’s important. Some goat hair would be nice. Make sure you burn it, though.”

“But that will smell awful!”

“Hahahaha! It sure will! Where was I? Goat hair. Right. Ram leather, but only the stuff that has been dyed red. I’d like some acacia wood, too. That stuff is great for medicine.”

“But if you burn it, you lose all of the medicinal parts…”

“I KNOW! It’ll be hilarious. Stop interrupting. Spice-scented olive oil, and any gems you have. Then you’re gonna build an insulated box for me to stay in so I can ride along with you guys.”

“An insulated box? Insulated against what?”

“I have this bad habit of accidentally killing people whenever my mind wanders. If you build the box according to these plans, there is only a minimal chance you’ll all be killed for being too close to me! Aren’t I awesome?!”

“Uhhh… Why does the box have to be made almost entirely out of gold?”

“It will be SUPER SHINY! It’ll blind anyone who looks at it! Won’t that be hilarious? And gold is like super heavy. I wanna watch you guys carry it around, everywhere, for the rest of forever. I mean, you guys would never lose something as important as this, right?”

Moses decided to keep all of the future questions to himself.

God looked thoughtful for a second. “Here, have some more plans. One for a bitchin’ tent that you are to put the box in. I don’t want a standard tent, and remember how I mentioned blue, purple, and scarlet? The tent had better be those colors! And I’ll need priests! Can’t have a solid worshiping without priests, right? But how will they know that these priests serve the most bitchin’ God of all time? Hmmm…” There was a brief pause before God continued. “Make the robes out of blue, purple, and scarlet, of course. But the best priest will need a bejeweled breastplate. We don’t want people thinking I am worshiped by peasants, right? How will they know how awesome I am if my priests are boring assholes?

“I think that about covers how they look. But how will I know they are serious about the position? Well, how about this. Have them sacrifice a bull to me, but remove its internal organs and burn those as sacrifice to me, and haul the rest of the body out and burn it in the wilderness. Eheheheh, that corpse is gonna be so hard to carry.

“Also, we’re just warming up. Take two rams and sacrifice them to me. Cut up the first one and cook it, but you can’t eat it. It is mine. The second one, take its blood and mix it with oil, then smear it on Aaron. Actually, you know what? Cover Aaron’s sons with it, too. Yeah, gotta know Aaron is serious about being a priest.”

Moses looked up at God for a moment, setting down the plans for the box. “You haven’t asked him to be a priest yet. How do you know he will even be sort of serious about it?”

God looked at Moses quizzically, “Wouldn’t anyone want to be a priest for such a bitchin’ religion? Wait, I get it! You’re jealous! You wanna be my High Priest. But you don’t have to be, you’re my boi! That’s like… Way better! The High Priest will barely ever get to talk to me! Haven’t we had such awesome conversations?! That’s what I thought.”

Moses again sighed heavily and looked back at the plans for the box.

“Also, bread. Lots of bread. But NO YEAST. You’ll make two different kinds of bread for this. One of the breads will be baked with olive oil mixed in. BUT NO YEAST. The other one will just be brushed with olive oil. ALSO NO YEAST! Did I mention I don’t like yeast? Because yeast is awful. Hell, I’d go as far as to say yeast is me-damned. Me-damned yeast. Hate that stuff.

“Anyway, once you have the bread, give it to Aaron and his sons, and have them wave the bread at me. (Author’s note: What? Seriously, what? Exodus 29:24-26) Then, burn it. Burn all that bread. I want to taste it in the air.

“Now, this is just on day one. For the next six days, sacrifice a bull each day.”

Moses didn’t even look up this time. “How many bulls do you think we have?”

“Psh, you think I care? I like burned bull, and that’s what you are going to keep burning. It’ll be awesome. Also, you think you are going to run out of bulls? Wait for this next one!

“Every day for the rest of eternity I want you to sacrifice two lambs. They have to be exactly one year old, so you’d better be calving those sheep every day. Also, wine. Lambs love wine. Sacrifice the lamb with wine.

“Anyway, I think that about covers it. As long as you do this stuff, I will be your God. But if you ever stop these sacrifices, you bitches are on your own. (Exodus 29:45-46)

“Now, this next part is important. I don’t know how many of you there are, so take a census. Also, for every person, take a ransom to ensure their good health (seriously, God blackmails them with plague threats in Exodus 30:12, and asks for protection money). The ransom price is one half a shekel. Also, I want to know how much the people like me, so no one is allowed to pay for anyone else. The poor have to provide their own ransom money! (Exodus 30:15) Use this money for the upkeep of my bitchin’ box. See? I’ve thought of everything. Aren’t I awesome?!

“Now, you guys smell a little funny, so I need you to make a huuuuuuuuuge basin of perfume. Literally enough to last for the rest of eternity, because anyone who makes any more of the perfume as per the recipe I am giving you will be SMOTE. Seriously, dead and sent to hell. This perfume is serious business. Also, only use it on the priests, because they are the only ones who can come even close to me. The rest of the smelly peasants just aren’t allowed nearby.

“And now the most important commandment I will ever give you. No work allowed on Saturday. If you, or anyone, or any of their animals, work on Saturday, even to lift a finger, wash, or whatever, kill them, and I’ll make sure their stay in hell is eternal and horrible.”

God then handed Moses the stone tablets that contained not just the ten commandments, but all of the Jewish rules, because it would be hilarious to watch a 90 year old man drag around gigantic slabs of rock.

—-

I think Part 6 will be the last part of Exodus, then I can return to my regularly scheduled updates.

But seriously, this section was ten straight chapters of God making rules. I tried to capture the highlights, but seriously. The specificity is amazing in there for just the smallest things. There’s bread recipes, and rules for the patterns in the tent where they are supposed to store the ark, and rules for the smallest details in the lid of the ark. I am sorry, I really didn’t know how to capture any of this section but also make it funny. There’s just nothing interesting there, for ten straight chapters, except for the fact that the reason that God hasn’t talked to anyone since Jesus was around is because we stopped sacrificing the lambs (probably). So I guess that makes sense.

The Laws of Morality

Posted by The Guy Who Wrote This

So you may recall, if you are a regular reader, that I am writing a sort of “The Bible Abridged” kind of thing (I plan to vastly expand this project, as I’ve mentioned) and that means I am rereading the Bible so I can do it right. Well, I just came upon the Ten Commandments section, which contains far more than just the Ten Commandments; it contains the rules for all people in being just and moral. What does it take to be just and moral in the eyes of God? Let’s start in Exodus 21.

First, male slaves (if they are Hebrew, of course) are to be set free after 6 years of slavery. If you give him a wife from among your slaves, though, the wife is yours forever to do with as you please, and the only way he get to stay with his wife (and any children he had, which are also the lifelong property of you, his owner) is for the slave to dedicate himself as a slave for life, serving one master until he dies (or you force him to leave, and keep his wife and kids, which you can totally do).

Alright, dickish and kind of sexist, but as far as rules for slaves, it could get worse. Right? Well, hold on to your belt, suspenders, or waist band, friends. It does.

Let’s go over the good news, first, though. If you kill someone on purpose? Death penalty. If you kill one of your slaves by accident (and we are talking beating them to death here), you are exiled but are to face no other punishment.

Now, here’s the fun part; if you beat your slave with a rod but the slave recovers from their injuries, there will be no punishment. It goes on more explicitly to say “Because they are your property.” (Exodus 21:20-21)

It is also in Exodus 21 that we find the extended version of “An Eye for an Eye,” which reads, in full: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Exodus 21:24-25) But don’t worry, this doesn’t apply in full for slaves; the above caveat (if they recover) still applies. Go nuts! But things like knocking out their tooth, or blinding them? Well, you don’t get punished, but you have to let the slave go free. JUSTICE! Thank God for such merciful justice and strong moral leadership, right?

Also, if your slave is killed not by you, but by say… Your livestock? You have to pay the owner of the bull (you) 30 pieces of silver. LOOPHOLES ARE THE BEST HOLES, AM I RIGHT?! Now, if your bull gores another owner’s property (slave), you have to pay that person 30 pieces of silver, and your bull is put to death, and that is way less fun that putting disobedient slaves in a bull pen for sport, right?

For some reason, though, Exodus 21 focuses as much on cattle (Bulls and Oxen, mostly) as on slaves (logic: they are both livestock). Now, I am not sure how often this kind of thing happens, but apparently bulls killed so many people that verses 28-36 (more than one fifth of the chapter) are completely dedicated to how one handles bull-related violence. Huh. Weird.

Exodus chapter 22 has some weird rules, too. If someone breaks into your house at night, you can kill them, no questions asked. If he breaks in during the day and you kill him, you are to be put to death. One would imagine that hiding bodies would make good sport back in the day. Then, when night rolls round, you throw them in the kitchen and cry bloody murder and call the watch! For this body, stiff with rigor mortis, clearly JUST BROKE IN! MORALITY!

The legendary point of contention, if a man sleeps with a virgin who is not married, he must pay the father restitution and marry the woman. What say does the woman have in all of this? SHUT UP AND DON’T ASK QUESTIONS! You’re married now. Go make some babies and a sandwich! (At least, one presumes that was the thought process that went into Exodus 22:16-17)

We go through a few of the more mundane rules; kill witches, kill people who have sex with animals, kill anyone who offers any sacrifice to any gods but God) but then we get to what I am going to call the “Insurance Salesman Clause”. It reads, as per Exodus 22:22-24, “Do not take advantage of a widow or the elderly. If you do, and they tell me you took advantage of them, I will kill you myself!”

There are some basic rules about banking (you are to charge no interest on money you have lent, but you are allowed to take collateral, except their coat. You can have anything except their coat. It expands this thought: If you take their coat, what will they sleep in? So leave them your coat, for I am a God of compassion. Wat. (Exodus 22:25-27)), then the basic rules of religion (kill blasphemers instantly), etc, etc.

Another slightly weird rule is that you are never to eat meat if the animal was killed by any wild animal, no matter how fresh it was (there are, listed I believe in Leviticus, extensive rules for kosher slaughter, but I can’t recall the exact chapter because I try to avoid reading Leviticus as the rules in it are so… Ugh… Well, I am working on a project that involves rereading the whole Bible, so I’m sure I will talk about the weird rules there eventually on this blog). Why does slaughter have to be done in a very specific (and, frankly, no more humane than many other methods of slaughter) way? BECAUSE SHUT UP, GOD SAID SO.

I like the opening parts of Exodus 23, this one is the lawyer cause. You shall never help a guilty person by lying on their behalf. Welp, there goes the entire idea of law as we understand it today (take that, lawyers). Also, if you are the prosecutor and you get a false conviction, and the person is put to death as a result of your prosecution, even if no one knows, and you didn’t know he was innocent, God does. And better know he will judge the everliving shit out of you. Again, take that, lawyers (in Texas)!

Now, these are quick mentions, but again go to how odd the rules in the Bible are… Exoodus 23:18-19. If you are making a sacrifice to me, it must not be made with, in, around, containing, or generally mentioned in the same sentence as, yeast. NO YEAST. This is said at least 15 times in Exodus, NO YEAST. God hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates anything to do with yeast, or yeast byproducts. When it rained bread from heaven (manna), it was flat bread, because even God can’t leaven bread without yeast, and NO YEAST! Mentioned in the same breath as that yeasty tirade (hehehe. That sounds gross) is “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” One presumes other milk is ok, but how common was it to cook it in its mother’s milk that God put a rule in there, the penalty for breaking being… Well, that isn’t spelled out, but generally smiting is the go-to punishment.

Now, things start to get a little darker. Go to the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and kill them. This commandment is not optional. And as long as I am happy enough with how dead they are, I will make sure no one among you gets sick, hungry, thirsty, or even has a miscarriage, because I want to see those people dead SO BAD. (Exodus 23:20-30) In fact, there are three he wants dead worse than others; I will send swarms of hornets ahead of the Jews (who, you must remember, are marching to kill these nations anyway) to just… Ruin their day. Before they die. Seriously! “OH GOD! PLAGUE OF HORNETS! THERE IS NO GOD!” Then you get stabbed in the face by someone on the orders of the same God who just plagued you with hornets? Shiiiiiiiiiiiit, that’s not right, bro…

And the common rebuttal of the harsh laws of the Bible (mostly contained in Deuteronomy and Leviticus) is that “Well, those laws were for the priests.” But this is Exodus. You can’t have “The Ten Commandments”, because God never said “Here are ten specific things.” The Ten Commandments are lumped in with all of these others rules, the rules about beating the everliving hell out of your slaves, but only bad enough that they can still walk.(The actual provision is that they have to be able to walk with the aid of a walking stick within two days of the beating, WHICH ACTUALLY MAKES IT WORSE TO ME!) Also, the killing thing being not optional? Yeah, that gets reiterated over and over in Exodus 23, just make sure NONE OF THEM ARE LEFT ALIVE, NOT EVEN ONCE.

Well there you go, friends. There are your rules for morality, and these are mentioned in chapters shared by the so called ten commandments. (And, it should be said, there are numerous caveats to the commandments, like “You can kill at night, if the person was breaking into your house. But not at day.”)

Boy, I sure am glad the rules for being a good person are so clear in the Bible, and it’s no wonder Southern Christians think people without belief in God are the worst people (even worse than rapists according to Pew and Gallup)! Why, all of us who have alternate laws for morality? We might want to have mercy on those around us, but it’s a good thing God was there in Exodus to tell us that MERCY IS FOR SUCKERS. In fact, the Stand Your Ground law that was at the very forefront of public discourse in the Trayvon Martin case? Justified by God Almighty, and reiterated by Jesus, for as is stated in Matthew chapter 5: “17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.””

Time to go buy some slaves and make them marry each other. For science.

Blog42: My Stream of (semi)Consciousness

Rants about life, the universe, and everything

Best Friends with God

A Personal Kind of Excuse

Everything You Ever Wanted

A War of Gentlemen

Ramble ramble ramble

Worldviews: My Manifesto

The Real Ten Commandments

Do as I… What Was I Talking About Again? Part 6

Do as I… What Was I Talking About Again? Part 5

The Laws of Morality