Satan Is One of the Good Guys!

Satan (Lucifer, the Devil, Beelzebub, whatever) has gotten a lot of very bad PR. But if you stop and think about it, it’s hardly justified. One could argue that Satan, though hardly a poster boy for the Salvation Army, is angelic relative to his former boss, commonly called God or Jehovah. However, in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter as both Satan and God/Jehovah are as fictional as Winston Smith (“1984”), Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter.  

If Satan popped into the United Nations today – a tourist obviously – and was recognised (those security cameras are everywhere) what would or could that international body actually accuse him of and charge him with? Could Satan be hauled off to the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice and tried for something – say crimes against humanity? Since he is the most evil being that ever was or ever will be, you’d think they’d not only throw the book at him but the whole contents of the New York City Public Library – and that’s a lot of thrown books!

Could Satan be accused of assault, being drunk and disorderly, book burning, bribery or blackmail, child abuse, counterfeiting, corruption, drug use and abuse, drug trafficking, eating meat on a Friday, illegal gambling, graffiti, infidelity, hijacking, being a homosexual, incest, jaywalking, littering, murder, being a paedophile, being a pervert, polygamy, practicing medicine without a licence, prostitution, rape, robbery, sex with a minor, spitting in public, tax evasion or avoidance, terrorism, witchcraft, even cheating at cards? No; none of the above.

Can Satan be accused of genocide? No, but God surely can be. The proof of that pudding is in the Old Testament itself - something to do with forty days and nights of rather inclement and stormy weather. Then there are these Godly bloodthirsty passages from Deuteronomy: 10-17:

¹⁰When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

 ¹¹And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

¹²And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

 ¹³And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

 ¹⁴But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

 ¹⁵Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

 ¹⁶But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

 ¹⁷But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

Satan isn’t as bloodthirsty as God, that’s for goddamn sure!

Now Satan did some rather nasty things to Job, but that was with God’s full authority and approval, so Satan escapes that rap.

I can’t recall anywhere where Satan has actually advocated anyone breaking terrestrial laws. Satan hasn’t issued his version of his Ten Commandments.

Can Satan be accused of mutiny or rebellion? You bet he can and a damn good thing too as he (and his followers – those fallen angels) mutinied against the worst tyrant civilization has ever recorded. The tyrant is God; the written record the Old Testament. Satan and his followers get thumbs up for his and their mutinous action. Now mutiny in the heavens is probably something outside terrestrial jurisdiction and is ultimately none of our damn business. Mutiny itself is not evil; it depends on the circumstances, and ousting a tyrant is a good a circumstance as you can think of. I’m sure we all cheered when Fletcher Christian gave the finger to Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty.

Can Satan be accused of being a smooth-talking, snake-oil salesman? Yes, but that’s hardly a crime as even back then its Caveat Emptor. He smooth-talked Eve into biting that apple; he tried to smooth-talk (tempt) Jesus too. In fact, this smooth-talking is the basis for all of  Satan’s bad PR. He smooth-talks those willing to listen and lead people away from the love of God, but nobody in their right mind who has read the Old Testament can believe for a moment in a loving God, so IMHO Satan is to be commended for trying to steer the great unwashed away from the tyrant we so loving refer to as God. Now of course history is written by the winners, and the Bible is God’s version of things, so its little wonder Satan gets a bad rap since Satan’s mutiny ultimately failed. I mean if the South had won the American Civil War, I very much doubt that Abe Lincoln would have quite the positive image he has today.

What about Satanism or Satanic rituals? We’ve all heard of that, but you won’t find any connection between those and the Satan of the Bible which after all is THE source. Just because some people worship Satan and engage in religious rituals in support of that worship doesn’t of necessity mean that Satan wrote that ‘how to worship me with satanic rituals’ textbook for them – unlike God’s Bible. God is very clear about how He is to be worshiped and adored.

Can Satan be accused of hellish torture? God, who allegedly created all things, has to take full responsibility for not only creating Satan but hell as well. You can’t blame Satan for hell and associated tortures – that’s your ever loving God’s doing. And Satan has nothing to do with satanic ritual abuses – that’s a human ‘invention’. “The Devil made me do it” is just an all too typical human trait that shifts the blame away from where it actually belongs – on the human’s head.

Satan certainly can not be accused of any and all traffic offences and violations. Those are all null and void – no road rage here. Ditto no computer hacking or any other nasties that require modern technology. 

Can Satan be accused of trespassing? Well no doubt God would argue that Satan was trespassing at the Garden of Eden when he shape-shifted into a serpent and chatted up Eve. So, okay, Satan can be charged with trespass. That’s not usually a hanging offence except at Area 51 and similar top secret military bases and locations, but the Garden of Eden hardly qualifies as an example. Besides, if God is so all-powerful, why didn’t He just smite Satan then and there and be done with His one time subordinate? I mean God is hardly squeamish when it comes to cold blooded murder. Of course that would make for a very boring story; the Bible would hardly be a best seller if Satan had been bumped off in Genesis! I mean we can’t have James Bond kill off the villain in chapter one and then have the rest of the chapters alternate between casino locations, bedroom scenes, and being chewed out by M. But on the grounds that God probably didn’t care about the Bible reading something akin to a 007 novel, God could have eliminated His opponent in the beginning but didn’t. Something’s fishy.

And that fishiness leads to wonder, what is the origin of God and of Satan and of monotheism itself?  Clearly in the historical record, there has to be a first accounting; a first mention. And there is! What’s ultimately filtered down to us as God and Satan is nothing more than the invention by Zoroaster (Persia), known also as Zarathustra, from roughly 600 BC. His invention was the start of the transition from mythological polytheism to real reality monotheism. He invented the first monotheistic religion (called Zoroastrianism obviously).

The rational was that it was way more convenient to take all of the thousands of good and bad polytheistic gods and roll them into just one dualism; one example from each of the two extremes, which were called Ahura Mazda (good deity) and Angra Mainyu, sometimes known as Ahriman (bad deity).  Polytheistic Jews held in Babylonian captivity around 600 BC, absorbed this new idea and when eventually repatriated to their homeland (present day Israel) adopted the new monotheistic dualism, and the rest, as they say, is history. Everything spiralled out of control like fast food chains from that original invention, Zoroastrianism branching off into variations on the new theme (maybe to avoid plagiarism). Then, as now, new bright ideas provide ample scope for spin-offs. New and improved imitations branched off; all the monotheistic variations starting with Judaism, hence the Islam, and Christian varieties we know today.

It was Zoroaster who first conceived of the ultimate final battle between good and evil – what we call today the (oft forecast, never arriving) apocalypse. He of course set himself up as chief prophet vowing his second coming (sound familiar?). His religion also promised a final judgement, a resurrection and an afterlife (also sound familiar?). However, Zoroaster never totally wiped out polytheism. Consider the following Biblical verse: Psalm 95:3 (King James Version) “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” That “gods” plural just won’t fade away, and that polytheistic reference is just one of many in the Bible. And since the Bible is the word of God, we note just from that one verse that He has a bit of an ego; He’s really more than just a little bit up Himself!

However, the credibility of Zoroaster and his invention of monotheism is a bit suss. The priests of Zoroastrianism were known as Magi, from which we get the word “magic”. They formally institutionalised the concept of what we call today astrology, charting the movements of the stars in the heavens to predict that ultimate apocalypse. Magic and astrology don’t normally sit well with rational people.

In conclusion, the great fallacy here, quite apart from the likelihood that both God and Satan are as fictional as “Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, is the great unwashed swallowing hook, line and sinker what their religious superiors (priests, rabbis, clergy in any shape manner or form), via selective picking and choosing from Biblical texts, preach to them. The message universally is God is good; Satan is evil. Yet the unwashed sheep, those religious flocks, have never apparently bother to actually read the Old Testament evidence for the accuracy of that good/bad labelling themselves. 

Far closer to the facts of the matter is that God is the ultimate in incredible evilness; Satan has a few flaws, but at least his heart’s in the right place – he never tried to drown the whole lot of us! As far as God is concerned, He has His chosen people; the rest of humanity can take a long walk off a very short pier for all He cares! The various current monotheistic religions that evolved from the original monotheistic Zoroastrianism have preached everything half-ass backwards. IMHO, God wears the black hat; Satan the white hat. God is General Santa Anna (one who shows no quarter, shows no mercy, takes no prisoners – everyone is put to the sword); Satan is Davy Crockett (fighting the good fight against all the odds). God wins in the short term but eventually Texas exists! 

The Biblical Flood: All Washed Up, Left High and Dry: Part One

Everyone loves a good end-of-the-world disaster story and the one about the global flood as related in The Bible is a case in point. The trouble is that like most of the Bible it's pure mythology. Unfortunately, way too many people take the tale literally.

I find it quite amazing there are certain sincere, albeit misguided, individuals who spend thousands of dollars on expeditions chasing up, in search of, something and an event that doesn’t exist. Amazingly, every few years you’ll get a press report that the object (and thus the event) has been found. Alas, there’s never a follow-up story that confirms and authenticates the discovery. It’s always a case of ‘oops, goofed again’; ‘back to the drawing board’; ‘better luck next time’. Oh, what’s the object? The object in question is Noah’s Ark of course; and the event, the story of the Biblical flood.

In terms of  Old Testament tales, the Biblical flood story makes for a great science fiction read, even makes a grand (but fictional) epic film spectacular, but that’s about as far as it goes. The accent here must be on the word ‘fiction’. In fact, this has just got be the greatest crock of bovine fertilizer I’ve ever read about. How any thinking person can swallow this fairy tale is beyond me. Just consider.

Where did all the water come from? There’s certainly not enough water vapour in the atmosphere to precipitate out for 40 days and nights! And would 40 days and nights of rain even be enough to cover the highest mountain peak? I doubt it. And where did all the water go after-the-fact?

Then there’s that minor detail of actually building the Ark. Given the size it would have to be (room for all those multi-tens-of-thousands of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and millions more invertebrates), just using a very few labourers without modern power tools, it would have to take decades, if not centuries to complete the task. And that’s after you have gathered all of the raw materials and transported them on site. From an engineering point of view, there is a limit to how big you can make a viable, sailable wooden boat using only materials and technology available at the time. Too large, as the Ark would have to be, it would at best leak and slowly sink; at worst break apart and rapidly sink, sailing on a rough and stormy global sea. With no land masses to get in the way, can you imagine the force the winds could get to? Cape Horn would be a smooth pond comparatively speaking.

After taking mega-years to build the damn ship, your work isn’t finished. Somehow you have got to find, collect, gather together all the supplies needed as well as find, collect and gather all the animals required for the voyage. That would take quite some considerable time – as in more mega-years. How long would it take you to round up two of every animal species on Planet Earth along with all the resources required to keep them in the style of life to which they have become accustomed for forty days and nights? Don’t forget that many animals have very precise dietary, etc. requirements. I think most pet owners find it quite daunting enough to deal with the time and energy to look after just a few animals, far less several hundred thousand!

And just how did all those thousands of species of animals not native to the region happen to make it to the Ark if they weren’t collected by Noah and friends? I mean like polar bears and penguins and animals native to the Americas? I assume koalas and kangaroos went along for the ride. How did they get to the Holy Lands? How did these animals get returned to their native lands after-the-fact? Then too, there’s been lots of new species discovered since Noah’s time. Presumably they were unknown to Noah too back then, so how did they survive the Flood?

There are the logistical and manpower issues that need to be looked at after the building and gathering together aspects. There’s the need to load and store all those supplies for the adequate care and feeding of at minimum a hundred thousand animal species (times two – one of each sex), and that’s excluding all the insects and other invertebrates (so add several million more). What sort of manpower is needed to care for, feed, exercise, clean (especially clean) and dispose of the organic refuse of all those animals? Let’s just say that a typical zoo has way fewer animals and lots more staff. Noah and crew would never have gotten any sleep. Since there are only 86,400 seconds in a day, each animal would have rated less than a few seconds a day even multiplying allowable seconds in a day by all the available manpower for said care and feeding and exercise and cleaning. Perhaps Noah and crew were born on and came from Krypton!

Was Noah and crew (family) qualified in the care of wildlife? Were they certified veterinarians who could look after a sick animal? After all, if one of the two-by-two of a kind died, then it’s curtains for that species. It goes extinct! I’d guess they probably weren’t so qualified, which was a major oversight IMHO.  How did Noah, etc. know the animals (and even plant seeds) were actually fertile?

Relatively few life forms would have survived in a global ocean. That includes most fish as all that additional fresh water would have diluted the oceans enough, and the rising sea water levels contaminate fresh water lakes, etc. such that nearly all marine and fresh water fish would have died. Therefore, I guess the Ark had to have been a floating aquarium in addition to everything else.

And just how did all those dry land plants survive after being submerged for weeks on end? Well, I guess the Ark had to carry a lot of plants too! Of course fresh water for all the plants wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but what of sunlight since everything had to be stored below decks? Of course perhaps all plants were stored as seeds, but how do seeds (or the actual plants for that matter) native to Australia, New Zealand, or Hawaii say get to the Middle East?

And how could the Ark maintain all those proper environmental conditions on board to sustain the lives of such a diversity of wildlife? From polar to tropical, desert to rainforest, how? And how could the Ark carry hundreds of thousands of animal species (including nearly all the birds), millions if you include insects (which you’d have to do), along with appropriate food for all, all for a minimum of 40 days and nights (plus additional time for the waters to entirely recede)? Do you realize how entirely inadequate the Biblical accounting of the Ark is for such a mission? It’s like trying to house and feed a human population of thousands in a bed-sitter flat!

Speaking of proper environmental conditions, you have got to pity the poor human occupants on board – the crew. I mean between the massive animal stink and animal noise and the constant wet and constant seasickness from the rolling global ocean, plus very poor ventilation and what with no electric lights, inhaling the smoke and fumes from whatever oil-based light source(s) they had – well there sure was no occupational health and safety back then!

To be continued…

God’s Temper Tantrums and General Bad Behaviour: Part One

God is a kind god; God is a loving god; God loves you; God cares about you; God is a compassionate god; God is a forgiving god; God is a merciful god. You see it on church billboards – “God loves you anyway”. We’ve nearly all had that drivel rammed down our throats since we were kids in Sunday School and some of us actually believe it. Does the hype match the Biblical reality? Can pigs fly?

Assuming there is a God and assuming that the Bible is God’s word and an historical record of His activities (and you won’t hear anything to the contrary in church and from other formal Christian religious organisations) then the standard hype you hear, the standard image projected of God (and son) tends to be ‘warm and fuzzy’. It’s all about love, compassion, mercy, kindness and forgivingness, not hell, fire and brimstone. There’s at least one Bible-oriented Internet site that gives you a “verse-of-the-day” which is always ‘warm and fuzzy’ – a Biblical verse you’d whisper to your dying grandmother. However, if the church, religious organisations, even Biblical Internet sites stuck to a ‘wrath of God’ message they would be way more intellectually honest. Alas, people want to hear ‘warm and fuzzy’ not ‘wrath’.

Here are just a few selected ‘warm and fuzzy’ KJV Biblical quotations.

2 Corinthians 13: 14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.”

Daniel 9: 9: “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him;”

Ephesians 2: 4: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,”

Ephesians 4: 32: “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

Joel 2: 13: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.”

So now let’s turn to and examine the Biblical ‘wrath of God’ and see how ‘warm and fuzzy’ God really is. In the beginning, God spits the dummy…

GENESIS: In the beginning God starts off on the wrong foot and continues out of step throughout Genesis.

Well Adam and Eve get booted out of the Garden of Eden by you know who. Now this is hardly the action of a good host, especially when there wasn’t a readily available hotel room down the road as an alternative for our original loving couple. There’s no mercy, compassion or forgiveness here.

Then God drowns nearly the entire human race with forty days and nights of torrential rain. Only Noah and a few of his kin plus a few selected animals ever get to see dry land again. Now if that’s not genocide, I don’t known what is! Hitler could have cited this as a precedent for his own extermination philosophies. One interesting puzzle here is that if God singled out Noah and a few of his relations to survive that flood, then Noah and kin must be God’s chosen people. Therefore their descendents must also be God’s chosen peoples. Alas, since those descendents repopulated the planet, and since not all of that repopulation were favoured by God, then something’s screwy somewhere.

Then we come to the Tower of Babel. People build a tower (early prototype of the skyscraper) upwards towards the sky (i.e. – Heaven). God is apparently terrified by this action, and retaliates by creating and fostering numerous languages on these upstarts so that the architects and builders, etc. can’t communicate since they all speak now in different tongues. How that is accomplished isn’t adequately explained. Still, it’s a rather painless way of learning a foreign language even at the expense of forgetting your own native tongue. Further, to ensure that no correspondence will be entered into, all and sundry get scattered to the four corners of the globe – did God hire a fleet of jumbo jets to transport them? Anyway, since even the tallest of modern terrestrial structures don’t remotely reach Heaven, God worried needlessly. It’s often said that “God works in mysterious ways”. My translation of that pithy but copout statement (something that explains nothing) is that God is as loony as the Mad Hatter. God needs not only to chill but is in desperate need of some serious therapy. 

God then, having gotten up on the wrong side of the bed again, terrifies poor Abraham and nearly gives him a heart attack by ordering him to execute his son, Isaac. An animal is substituted at the last minute and so God says “ha-ha, fooled you, I was only playing a little joke”. However, the damage was done and that sort of joke is hardly good PR designed to command loving respect. Ask yourself, is this the way a real loving God would behave? Would you appreciate being on the receiving end of God’s little joke?

After another bad hair day, God gives Sodom & Gomorrah the A-bomb treatment since the good folk of the twin cities don’t meet God’s moral standards - moral standards? Talk about casting the first stone, or the pot calling the kettle black! God did such a good job of destruction here that to this day no trace of the twin cities has ever been found! Some alchemy is also practiced as the complex multi-element biochemistry of Lot’s wife’s human body is transformed into a pure compound of just two elements – sodium and chlorine. Neat trick that one.

Throughout Genesis God’s composure is anything but cool, calm and collected. He really needs an aspirin and a good lie down at this point, and, we’re only through just the first Biblical book. What horrors are yet in store?

EXODUS: Apparently God was just warming up in the bullpen with his temper tantrums and smiting in Genesis. His nasty side really shines and comes to the fore in Exodus.

Ancient Egypt is ground zero for starters when God inflicts the ten plagues on the Egyptians (obviously not His chosen people). Those plagues included mass murder of the first-born as the grand finale.

God’s not done with the Egyptians however as for an encore He drowns Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, or was that the Sea of Reeds?

God’s personal Constitution is then imposed on His own Chosen People, the Israelites. That Constitution is more widely known then and now as the Ten Commandments, but God exempts Himself, especially the bit about “Thou shall not kill”.

LEVITICUS details a potful more of God’s ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ and ‘or else’s’. God loves laying down the law – as long as it’s His law. In any other context He’d be considered a bully at best or a dictator at worst. He’s certainly not into making laws via the concept well known as democracy.

NUMBERS continues the ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ parade, but also contains some bits not fit for kid’s TV viewing – violence!

There is dissention in the ranks of the Chosen People out there in the Sinai wilderness and so there’s mutiny afoot and the Biblical equivalent of Captain Bligh (i.e. – God) will not be denied His wrath.  Actually there were two related mutinies. The first and minor mutiny ends with a whimper and not a bang. The second and major mutiny ends with a bang and not a whimper. It ends when God kills thousands of His Chosen People with a plague (love those germs) and an earthquake (shake, rattle and roll) as punishment for rumblings in the ranks. Further on down the wilderness track we have the episode of the ‘golden calf’ mark II (i.e. more idols; more idle worship). So God, knowing that His Chosen People didn’t build up sufficient immunity from His last plague, sends another – the local undertaker gets to bury another 24,000 Israelites.

Somewhere along the line here, a pissed-off God does an about-face and instead of leading His Chosen People to the Promised Land via a pillar-of-fire by night and a pillar-of-a-cloud by day in quick-smart fashion as in Exodus, He now dooms the Israelites to wander about aimlessly in the desert wilderness for forty years instead. Not even the Spartan army toughened up its recruits via living-off-the-land survival training in this sort of barbaric way. Who’d want to be an Israelite? So with ‘friends’ like God hanging around looking after you: who needs enemies! But enemies there were.

To be continued…

Should God Be Tried for Crimes Against Humanity?

Could God be tried in absentia for alleged Old Testament crimes and atrocities committed against humanity in say the International Court of Justice or more likely as not the International Criminal Court? It would be no less than He deserves given a track record that puts many of our historical despots to shame. Hitler (as an example) had no monopoly on genocide.

Here’s some Christian church propaganda: God loves each and every one of us. God cares for and about us. God is a just God. God is a merciful God. God is a loving God. God so loved the world that he gave…, etc. Blah, blah, blah. Spare me the hype – what a load of crap! God’s track record in these matters is the exact opposite.

Surely the Christian churches have to acknowledge God’s very existence. Surely they have to go along with acknowledging that if God says (via the Old Testament) He did some things (that we’d consider evil), or ordered others to do some things on His behalf (that we’d consider evil), or stood by and applauded certain evil actions by others, then the Church has to accept that those evil things happened as gospel. Surely the Christian churches would have to take a position that if humans have to take responsibility for their evil actions or activities or deeds, then that applies even more so to a deity. That the Christian churches (in general) don’t condemn God for His crimes against humanity speaks volumes. 

If God exists and is all powerful, then there are no such things as natural disasters. All disasters are Acts-of-God since God sanctions them. If you could have prevented a tragedy but willingly failed to act, then in the eyes of humanity you have a lot to answer for. And note this has nothing to do with God not acting because He doesn’t wish to interfere with your free will. There’s no free will involved when you’re caught up in an Act-of-God; which need not have happened. God appears to just sit back and enjoy the unfolding show. God has a lot to answer for.

Failure to act is bad enough, but the Old Testament is full of tales of God wilfully bringing about miseries equal to, often bettering those of the worst human tyrants in human history. And in cases where God didn’t directly inflict suffering on the masses (or individuals) first hand, the Bible is full of tales where God asked others to do His dirty work and where God condoned the evil actions of others.

Without going into endless case histories (this is an essay, not a book), the word-of-God, the Bible, gives the okay to beat children and slaves, right unto death if they disobey. Rape is okay by God, as is slavery. It’s God’s will to execute those committing all manner of ‘crimes’ from homosexuality to blasphemy, to working on the Sabbath, to practicing witchcraft and sorcery, to heresy, adultery, worshiping someone/something other than God, etc. History is filled with examples of religious figures and institutions committing the foulest manner of atrocities ‘in the name of God’ because that’s what the God of the Old Testament decried. Does the Inquisition ring any responsive chords to doubting Thomases? Well similar case studies can be found within the pages of your Old Testament.  

Any God who orders up animal sacrifices is no God I wish to have an association with. Societies charged with the responsibility of speaking out and preventing cruelty to animals should speak out on this issue, since animal sacrifices is apparently condoned, and sometimes still practiced by some of the world’s major religions even today!

God hates ancient Egypt. There was all these ten plagues inflicted on the great unwashed citizens of Egypt; Then God, via Moses, drowned Pharaoh’s army as well. 

Thou shall not kill is one of the Ten Commandments I believe. So you’d think that God would practice what He preaches. But isn’t, according to the Old Testament, God the greatest mass murder in the history of the world that puts tyrants the likes of Stalin to a status of a rank amateur? I mean there is that Biblical flood story and what about Sodom and Gomorrah? You can’t trust a God who basically says ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

With a bit of help from God, Joshua and his all-star band, blew down the city of Jericho, totally destroying it, and marching inside, took no prisoners. To add to the total destruction, the remains were burned and dire warnings were given to anyone attempting to rebuild the city. If God Himself didn’t do some of the huffing-and-puffing, He sure didn’t mind the total slaughter.

And who’s the deity that actually condemns you to an eternity of torture in Hell, Hades, Tartarus, the underworld, whatever you wish to call it? It’s your ever-loving God, that’s who. You don’t get a slap on the wrist, a fine, a ten year prison sentence, hard labour – no, God dishes out an eternity of you being tortured. If that’s a loving God, I’d hate to meet an unloving one! 

In conclusion, if any human being, tyrant, dictator, general, etc. committed 1/100^th of the atrocities that God has committed or sanctioned, well I can remind you about the post WWII Nuremburg trials, the fate of Mussolini, and what happen to Saddam Hussein and cronies in Iraq. As a general rule we don’t tend to worship, rather we tend to punish, those whose abuse of power runs counter to our general sense of good government. For some reason I’m quite unable to comprehend, God seems to be the exception to the rule. Perhaps it’s time for that to change.

Since God isn’t about to willingly volunteer to stand trial for His catalogue of crimes against humanity, well, He can always be tried in absentia. Now that would put the church’s knickers in a knot for sure!

Biblical Foreign Policy: Make War, Not Love: Part One

When we think of religious fanatics, we think of those long ago times like the Crusades and the Inquisition and those who imposed the doctrines of Christianity by force on non-Christian societies like those in Africa and the Americas. Or, perhaps we think of some modern countries today that have one form or another of religious fundamentalism at the core of their domestic and foreign policies. But surely nations like the United States have not had, and do not have, any such associations, at least at leadership levels. Well, as the 2012 Presidential election campaign rolls on, one has to wonder if that could change.

When it comes to Biblical (God’s) domestic policy, well we all know the basics – the Ten Commandments and all the hundreds of lesser commandments that tell us that ‘thou shall’ or ‘thou shall not’ do this, that and the next thing. Things like what foods to eat and when; the banning of homosexuality; contraception; abortion; and all sorts of other rituals that should be observed like how many ‘Hail Mary’s’ to utter or when to bow and scrape and how low. But unless there literally is a “Big Brother is watching you” scenario, what you do, and with whom, behind closed doors, are of no concern when it comes to the fate of life, the universe and everything.

When it comes to Biblical (God’s) foreign policy, well one now crosses over into the red danger zone. Things aren’t personal issues anymore but national issues. And those national issues have implications above and beyond national borders. Those national issues do indeed have implications for life, the universe and everything. So, pray tell, what’s foreign policy when it comes to Biblical texts – those words of God – or God’s directives when it comes to foreign affairs? In short, it’s ‘shoot first and don’t bother asking questions later’.

Matthew 10:34 (King James Version) “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

Do you realise the word diplomacy or diplomatic or negotiation or treaty or compromise does NOT appear anywhere in the King James Version of the Bible? But you do get conflict (twice), warfare (5 times), war (220 times in fact), battle (163 times), destruction (92 times), smite (117 times), smote (220 times), wrath (197 times), destroy (243 occasions), Armageddon (once only), terror or terrors (44 times), murder and variations (37 times), just plain ‘kill’ (118 occasions) and so on. I think you get the general idea that the general theme of Biblical policy and especially foreign policy is when crunch comes to the crunch, it’s “make war, not love”. Thou shall not turn the other cheek but kick the SOB in the ass. If there really was a God, and if God were really around today, I’m sure His advice to any and all Christian leaders, would be, “when in doubt, nuke them”!

Since the start of the 20^th Century there have been many world leaders who have launched invasions of foreign lands without any real rhyme or reason other than power for its own sake, and there have been many world leaders who have initiated a policy of genocide within their own borders. But relatively few world leaders have done both. Saddam Hussein springs to mind, but he was small bickies compared to Adolph Hitler. But who out eclipses even Hitler (or anyone else you care to name over the past 2000+ years) – God, that’s who. The invasion – by His chosen people of the Land of Canaan under His guidance; genocide – well it can’t get much bigger than the flood as related in the Book of Genesis.  

What ‘person’ in authority was first to use biological warfare – germs as a weapon? Just you’re ever-loving God of the Bible, that’s who. There are some 46 references to pestilence in the Bible. Here are just two of them.

*1 Chronicles 21:14: So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.

*Jeremiah 21:6: And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.

Speaking of pestilence and by association plagues, one well-known example of God’s foreign policy was the Ten Plagues inflicted on ancient Egypt, most notably the final one, death to all the Egyptian firstborn, regardless of name, age, sex or rank. So mass murder is definitely one of God’s foreign policy instruments (and that’s God’s story and He’s sticking to it, though fortunately the ancient Egyptians don’t seem to be aware that they were culled).

Since 1945 there have been lots and lots of chin-wagging over and about ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Japan knows about them first hand; they were a major reason for the second Gulf War. But who was the first to actually make and employ weapons of mass destruction? God again, that’s who. Perhaps it will jog your memory if I mention Sodom and Gomorrah, and other nearby cities. In fact, God used a weapon of total destruction, since no trace of these settlements, have ever been found to this day. You can read all the gory details in Genesis chapters 18 & 19, but the Bible keeps on keeping on mentioning them, as if God were patting Himself on the back. Here are two examples.

*2 Peter 2:6: And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

*Jude 1:7: Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

One question immediately arises, if God was so against homosexuality (‘strange flesh’), how come He didn’t smite ancient Greece, ruled by those – shock, horror – ‘other gods’? That’s strike one alone. Homosexuality was socially acceptable in ancient Greek society (strike two), not only between consulting adults but between adults and minors as well (strike three). 

Oh, by the way at least in the case of WWII Japan, the punishment probably fit the crime and ended up in the long run saving lives – that rational hardly applies to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Another household word today on the lips of the great unwashed is ‘terrorism’, least they be next to have to expect the unexpected. So imagine the terror of the great unwashed of long ago caught up unexpectedly in a long-term weather event of 960 straight hours of not just heavy, but torrential rain, and not an umbrella in sight. The great unwashed didn’t stay unwashed for long. It was sink-or-swim time, and nearly everyone sank. The terror of the Big Wet was bought to your local neighbourhood courtesy of God. If you don’t think that deluge would have been terrifying, imagine yourself slipping overboard in mid-ocean off a cruise ship. There you are floundering thousands of miles from dry land, all alone, just you (and maybe some sharks) and the waves. I’d wager you’d be as terrified as those trapped atop the World Trade Centre on 9/11.   

Then there is this little oft quoted gem.

*Matthew 5:44: But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Love thy enemy? I don’t bloody well think so!

For a prime example that totally contradicts such nonsense, consider Deuteronomy 20:10-17.

*Deuteronomy 20:10: When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

*Deuteronomy 20:11: And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

*Deuteronomy 20:12: And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

*Deuteronomy 20:13: And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

*Deuteronomy 20:14: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

*Deuteronomy 20:15: Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

*Deuteronomy 20:16: But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

*Deuteronomy 20:17: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

The upshot is if your enemy doesn’t want to fight, you have a right to enslave them. If they don’t care for that option and fight, then you invade their territory, put every male to death and have your wicked way with the women and children (and then kill them) and take all else as spoils of war. With that sort of attitude, you really want God on your side! On the other hand, not even Hitler was that barbaric. Love your enemy? That’s just pure bovine fertilizer.

To be continued…