God, the Psychopathic Killer: The Tenth Plague: Part Two

God is a cold-blooded, premeditated, serial killer. The Bible says so. With respect to that tenth plague inflicted upon ancient Egypt, death to the firstborn, there’s no wriggle room here. God did not delegate; no one else did the deed; it was no one else’s idea; God and God alone must bear 100% of the responsibility for His actions and the death of up to a fifth of the entire ancient Egyptian population. To add insult to injury, others celebrate those deaths via the Passover!  

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Point Seven: God also executed judgment against the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12). Sorry, but my reading of that little announcement suggests, indeed demands, that there is such a thing as the gods of Egypt, since you can’t pass judgment against something that doesn’t exist! Therefore, God, by his very act, acknowledges the reality of polytheism. Perhaps the gods of Egypt should cast judgment of the God of Israel! Would any impartial jury rule for the God of Israel, or the gods of Egypt? Methinks it’s an open and shut case. God is the murderer, not anyone else, not gods, rulers, commoners or the beasts of Egypt can or should be held accountable.

Point Eight: The mass murder of numerous Egyptian citizens is actually ‘celebrated’ by various cultures in something called the Passover. The origins of Passover reside in this ‘historical’ firstborn execution, in that God’s Chosen People, the Israelites that were in Egypt at the time, were passed over when it came to smiting the firstborn. So, for all of you out there in reader-land, if you celebrate Passover, you’re celebrating mass murder by your almighty deity.

Least there be any doubt about this, interested readers are invited to check out Exodus chapter 12 for God’s instructions leading up to verse 11 which notes the “Passover” and verse 12 which notes that God will “pass though the land of Egypt” doing His imitation of Charles Manson but sparing those who took heed of the introductory verses of Exodus 12. It’s made crystal clear shortly after, and we notice how the people then worshiped the Biblical Charles Manson. Actually that’s unfair to Charles for he didn’t come close to God’s numbers, not by a long shot. 

*Exodus 12:27 - That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.

Point Nine: Obviously God is very, very proud of His mass murder as the Bible (God’s word) refers to it again and again.

*Numbers 3:13 - Because all the firstborn are mine; for on the day that I smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast: mine shall they be: I am the LORD.

*Numbers 8:17 - For all the firstborn of the children of Israel are mine, both man and beast: on the day that I smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I sanctified them for myself.

*Numbers 33:4 - For the Egyptians buried all their firstborn, which the LORD had smitten among them: upon their gods also the LORD executed judgments.

*Psalm 78:51 - And smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham.

*Psalm 135:8 - Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast.

*Psalm 136:10 - To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Point Ten: Note the use of the words “smote” and “mercy” in the same sentence. Wow!

Point Eleven: The tenth plague is not an isolated one-off incident. There are numerous other instances from the Bible that equally point out God as being the Jack the Ripper or Charles Manson or any other modern mass murderer, sadistic, serial killer you care to cite as that personified in the Old Testament. For example, please consult Deuteronomy 20:10-17. If all that’s not enough to convince you, there’s always Ezekiel. The following chapter and verses should convince you that the tenth plague was not an isolated incident. Ezekiel 12:20; 25:17; 28:23; 30:26; 32:15; 33:29; 35:4; and 35:9.

Point Twelve: If you in fact looked at those eight Ezekiel chapter and verses, you’ll have noted a certain phrase repeated over again and again. We note the everlasting phrase “I am the LORD”. Just to make sure you don’t forget it, that phrase is repeated 162 times in the Bible (King James Version). I personally think that’s a bit on the side of overkill. Can you imagine an American president again and again reminding Americans who is top dog and boss by thundering out “I am the PRESIDENT”! Such constant reminders might be suggestive that the utterances come from one who is really a tad insecure in the position. 

Point Thirteen: Speaking of the president, the modern relevance of this little exercise is that yet, in modern America, the 21^st Century, you have had presidential candidates (unnamed, but you know who they are), who would be happy to end the separation of church and state and who would govern from the White House according to the texts of the Bible. Governing according to the Bible would mean carrying out God’s version of foreign policy, which is, according to the Bible, something akin to a policy that tends to shoot first, shoot often, shoot to kill and don’t worry about asking all those awkward later questions as dead men tell no tales; the hell with all those later questions, full stop. The President and Commander-in-Chief would be playing the role of God and that would have to include being willing to carry out all the sort of God-performed and God-endorsed atrocities of the Old Testament, like that tenth plague. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. My reading of this is America, be afraid, be very afraid, for even if it doesn’t come to pass in 2012, there’s always 2016, or four years later, or four years after that. Sooner or later, ‘God’ in the persona of POTUS (President of the United States) will be elected. 

P.S. The closest America came to having ‘God’ in the White House was Christian fundamentalist and thrice Presidential candidate (and triple loser) William Jennings Bryan. Bryan has totally against the theory of evolution and the teaching of that theory in American schools and universities. His main claim to fame is that he was the guest prosecutor in the 1925 Scopes Trial, or the so-called Monkey Trial”. Teacher John T. Scopes was accused of teaching Darwinian evolution to his students in violation of Tennessean state law.  When Bryan himself was placed on the stand by the defence attorney, the famed Clarence Darrow, as an expert in all things Biblical, well the verdict was that Darrow made a ‘monkey’ out of Bryan. Bryan died just five days after the trial ended. Though Scopes was found guilty, the verdict was later overturned on a technicality.

God, the Psychopathic Killer: The Tenth Plague: Part One

God is a cold-blooded, premeditated, serial killer. The Bible says so. With respect to that tenth plague inflicted upon ancient Egypt, death to the firstborn, there’s no wriggle room here. God did not delegate; no one else did the deed; it was no one else’s idea; God and God alone must bear 100% of the responsibility for His actions and the death of up to a fifth of the entire ancient Egyptian population. To add insult to injury, others celebrate those deaths via the Passover!  

Matthew 10:34 (King James Version) says “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” If that’s God’s son saying that, then what must God’s foreign policy be?

Well, nowhere is God’s foreign policy more evident than that related in the Book of Exodus and forcing Egypt’s supreme ruler, the pharaoh, to “Let My People Go”. To accomplish that diplomatic trick, God inflicts those ten plagues on pharaoh’s helpless Egyptian people. Now while the first nine plagues might have natural causes, there is no way the last plague, the slaughter of the Egyptian firstborn (and their animals’ firstborn), can be put down to natural happenings. God is judge, jury and executioner. Our loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, etc. supreme deity, the Almighty, shows His true colours, no ifs, ands or buts about it. .  

I’d wager that any competent criminal psychologist or psychiatrist would conclude that God derives much sensual pleasure and satisfaction from mass murder and He always looks forward to the next time, since God’s done it often enough. However, let’s just examine that one specific case history, the tenth plague that was inflicted on ancient Egypt in the Biblical Book of Exodus.

The basic story is that God will go forth among the Egyptian peoples (who have done Him no wrong), and their livestock (who have certainly not sinned) and execute all those who were unfortunate to have been the firstborn (including livestock), except for any and all of whoever of His Chosen People (the Israelites) that leave out a sign that they should be passed over.

Here are the relevant chapters and verses, and some points of contention relating to them.

*Exodus 3:20 - And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.

*Exodus 11:4 - And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt.

*Exodus 11:5 - And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.

*Exodus 11:7 - But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast: that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.

*Exodus 12:12 - For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

*Exodus 12:29 - And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

*Exodus 13:15 - And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast.

Point One: There’s one immediate problem with this ‘firstborn’ extermination. What if prior to that smiting, your firstborn had already died? I mean way back then infant mortality in particular, and mortality rates in general would have been at higher rates for lower age groups, like for the infants, those of childhood ages, even young adults. God cannot smite your firstborn if your firstborn was already dead! Those authors who penned this nonsense should have taken a course in Logic 101. 

Point Two: That minor point aside, but as hinted immediately above, firstborn doesn’t just include babies, infants, toddlers, and children. Teenagers and adults, even those middle-aged and the elderly might be a firstborn. Nowhere in Exodus does it associate firstborn with a child or children! In fact, the odds are high that the pharaoh himself was a firstborn since succession of rulers tends to be the firstborn son of the previous pharaoh. I’m 64 years old, and I am a firstborn. Just as well I wasn’t an Egyptian citizen way back then! Take a typical family, say one with five kids. One of those kids will be a firstborn. If the entire Egyptian nation is composed of a one in five ratio of firstborn to later born; and if that one in five is the firstborn that God smites, well that’s a percentage of, well, 20% (give or take). Exterminate one fifth of any nation and I’ll guarantee the person(s) responsible won’t be an object of worship. Even Hitler didn’t exterminate 20% of those residing in Germany and those countries he invaded.  

Point Three: So if any modern leader, president, prime minister, chancellor, emperor, king or queen, dictated that all of the firstborn of his or her country were to be executed forthwith, can you imagine the outcry? Even if the resulting death toll would have been ‘only’ 15% or 10% or 5% that would have been the least of his/her worries. Such a person would exceed being on a par with the worst of the worst of terrestrial tyrants – from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot back to Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. The nations of the world would unite quick-smart to act against such a person. Yet because this is God doing the smiting, well that’s okay. Except, in the Old American West He would have likely been lynched by a mob from the highest branch of the tallest oak tree or else tarred and feathered, and drawn and quartered if not buried alive in an ant hill.

Point Four: What’s God got against the beasts like cattle? Add animal cruelty to God’s sins.

Point Five: It certainly wasn’t the Egyptian people that were responsible for pissing off God, just the political powers-that-be (that unnamed pharaoh). Most certainly the Egyptian beasts of burden weren’t responsible, yet it’s the firstborn of people and beasts that were smitten – that’s the act of a psychopath.

Point Six: A far more rational God, a far less sadistic deity, could have caused a hell of a lot less death and suffering of the innocents by just torturing pharaoh into His objective “Let My People Go”. It would have been easier all around. God used a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. God’s an idiot, which would be funny except you wouldn’t expect the Egyptians to be laughing!

To be continued…

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

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?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

DEUTERONOMY: There’s one major problem with the Promised Land as far as the Israelites are concerned – it’s already inhabited and occupied by non-Israelites. As the Amerindians, the Mesoamerican Aztecs and the Australian aborigines found out, possession maybe nine-tenths of the law, but it doesn’t protect you from bullets (or spears and swords).

Hitler had his chosen people invade Europe. God directs His Chosen People to invade the Land of Canaan (the Promised Land). That makes God no better than Hitler IMHO.

Oh, Moses finally caves in to old age (at a relatively youthful 120 years young, at least when compared to Methuselah and a few others) – RIP. However, before heading off Heavenly-bound he gives the Israelites a good old fashion Winston Churchill type V-for-Victory speech akin to ‘meet them on the beaches’, etc. 

JOSHUA: Hitler had his generals, and so too God.

God appoints Joshua to replace Moses as leader, and to command and lead the invasion of the Promised Land along with a little rape and pillage, looting and wanton destruction on the side.

Jericho is the first to fall, followed in quick order by the rest of the cities in Canaan Land – and you thought the Germans perfected the blitzkrieg. In old Wild West America there used to be a saying that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. That has a precedent. There’s nothing original there for the Israelites are well known for taking no prisoners. All shall be put to the sword. Whether that’s Gods philosophy or Joshua’s I’m not sure*, but more likely as not Joshua took his marching and smiting orders from his non-elected commander-in-chief, president-for-life, Sir God. I’m sure Joshua wouldn’t have done anything without God’s approval, least he be replaced, court martialled and smote as well. Anyway, to the victors go the spoils and so the invaders divide up the newly conquered land between them. God must now be quite pleased with Himself as His Chosen People are now King of the Hill!

JUDGES: Once the Israelites get settled into their Promised Land, lapses into idolatry and a bow and scrape now and then to some of those ‘other gods’ happen. God has to redress this wickedness via some more smiting – just to keep His Chosen People on the straight-and-narrow mind you.

1 SAMUEL: The wicked Philistines nick off with the Ark of the Covenant, but a bit of Heavenly sent germ warfare takes care of that and the Ark is returned to its proper custodians.

2 SAMUEL: Another first-born gets wasted by God’s wrath, this time the offspring of David and his unmarried bed-partner, Bathsheba.

JOB: Job involves not only Job but a very, very ‘odd couple’ bedfellow-sharing partnership indeed. God gets all buddy-buddy with Satan and in fact hires Satan to cause our hero all sorts of misfortunes and calamities. For example, Satan employs one of God’s favourite tools, germs, to test Job’s immunity against them. Alas, Job has no immunity against divine germs, and so Job ends up covered with boils from head to foot. All of this was just a means to an end, the end being to test Job’s faith in God in the face of adversity. So, Abraham and Job have something in common with which to vent their spleen over and pour their bile on – your ever loving and always compassionate God.

JONAH: In the Book of Jonah (Jonah 4.6-11) God has the audacity to say (in admittedly a rather obscure way) that He’s God of all nations and has concern for all nations and their peoples, not just His Chosen People. That’s because He spared the Assyrian city of Nineveh (after Jonah warned them to shape up or else) which wasn’t inhabited by His Chosen People. Regardless, tell the Egyptians that God is God of all nations! God should go crawling down on His hands and knees to Cairo begging for forgiveness from the Egyptian people for fairly obvious reasons.

While there are many references in the New Testament (Luke, Romans, Ephesians, etc.) of others saying or implying that God is a god of all nations and peoples, not just Israel and the Israelites, I can’t find a reference where God Himself says this, so it’s all apparently a case of someone who told someone who told someone, etc. It’s all second hand testimony to that effect, unlike the Book of Jonah where God speaks for Himself.

Yet even in the New Testament we find in Luke 1: 68 a passage that praises the “Lord God of Israel”, so it’s difficult to know what to believe. But assuming a shift, then one could also view the shift of ‘God of Israel’ to ‘God of all nations’ as a behind the scenes grab for power – a coup against all those detestable ‘other gods’ who ruled over other kingdoms and nations. Gods like Odin, Zeus, Baal and Horus. That would certainly be consistent and fit in with God’s egomania and sadistic personality, behaviour and constant demands for all and sundry to bow and scrape down to Him. God acknowledges numerous times that there are other gods that He does so really hate mortals to worship, so why not bump them off Mafia style and take over the world Himself?  

At this stage God petty much just retires to sit on His Heavenly throne and no doubt pats Himself on the back for a job well done up to this point. He no doubt keeps Himself amused with all of the shenanigans we mortals get up to down on terra firma. Most of the rest of the Old Testament is full of office politics, who’s sleeping with who, local wars, civil wars, revolts, personal squabbles, back-stabbings & assassinations, infightings, political intrigues, idolatry, corruption, executions, with more ungodly plots and amoral subplots than you can shake a serpent at – the sorts of things commonly reported today on the nightly news or in the morning newspaper, or round the clock if you’re surfing the Internet. There’s also a few fairy tales thrown in for lite entertainment involving say Samson’s haircut or Jonah’s whale of a tale. 

Based on a lot of those above-mentioned shenanigans, there’s also lots of Old Testament Biblical finger-wagging about what God’s gonna do when His already short and burning fuse reaches the dynamite. It’s sort of like the standard “just you wait until your father gets home”! God actually commands a lot of people (like Zechariah, Ezekiel, Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah, etc.) to wag their fingers on His behalf. Methinks that’s a tad too much like buck-passing. It’s God’s responsibility to wag His own finger and say “naughty, naughty – daddy’s gonna take off his belt and whip you good now”, not that any of this finger-wagging actually eventuated to date in anything or to anything. Talk about crying wolf. Father doesn’t come home! Well, maybe God’s alarm clock failed to go off and He’s still sawing logs, and all hell will break loose when He finally arrives at the office.

Or maybe in the end God is perhaps getting tired of all His smiting and His wickedness. Not that He has turned over a new leaf entirely – not by a long shot. In that final Biblical book, Revelation, which is as far removed from ‘warm and fuzzy’ as you can get, God delegates others to do His dirty work for Him. It’s a rather unusual hands-off approach for Him. God is the scriptwriter (or inspired the mortal scriptwriter), producer, director but not the star of the show. He’s not one of the actors in the drama. He leaves the acting to others, like angels and his son.   

Oh, speaking of Revelation and all that it implies, among other of God’s little pleasantries, He created Hell so you’d have a warm place to sleep your eternal sleep. How very thoughtful of God to provide the ancient’s equivalent of the electric blanket!

Now in conclusion, is this the sort of deity you really want to spend eternity in Heaven with?

If you still believe after all of this that God is a loving, compassionate, caring, merciful, forgiving God then there’s this rather large statue in New York Harbour I’ll sell you going real cheap!

P.S. - Jesus too had a temper and a mean streak. Like father like son? But that’s another topic for another time. 

*Though I guess this little gem settles the matter:

Deuteronomy 20:17 (KJV) “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:”

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!