People Kill: God Doesn’t Care: Part Two

Following yet another mass shooting in the US of A, with all the predictable and understandable gut reactions that pour forth, my gut feeling is that nothing of substance will be done since American history, culture and the Constitution rule; gun control isn’t the real issue; things will get worse; people kill (it’s in our genes – deal with it); and it provides another reason why God is an increasing irrelevance in society.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Religious Element

I personally find it amazing, even astounding that in the aftermath of a mass murder episode, people flock to churches and pray and hold candlelight prayer vigils, and express total faith in the Almighty the He will look after the slain innocents. I’d of thought people, especially religious people, should be taking to the streets with raised fists screaming in pure rage and outrage against the alleged loving, compassionate, merciful, all-knowing, all-powerful God for standing by on the sidelines and not lifting a godly digit to prevent the tragedy in the first place.

Of course the obvious answer is that God gave us free will, and a person who slaughters the innocent is just exercising God’s free will gift and therefore God is not going to interfere. God does not want to get involved in the petty daily affairs of humankind.

Or, some might suggest that God works in mysterious ways and that the slaughter of the innocents is part of God’s plan, part of the Almighty’s Big Picture which us mortals can’t comprehend. Well, if mass murder is part of God’s plan, do we really want any part of God?

Some suggest that God doesn’t work in mysterious ways and this is just pure and simple another example of God’s wrath. While that would be keeping within God’s actions and reactions in the Old Testament, I somehow find it hard to believe that God would need to employ a middleman. Further, by employing a middleman, God would lose the benefit of letting all and sundry know that He was pissed off and this was an example of His wrath. So, sorry ‘bout that Westboro Baptist Church but God did not ‘send the shooter’ as per one of your favourite phrases – this time or ever. We do not need God’s help to kill.

Some, especially the extreme Right Wing Fundamentalists, suggest that humans have turned their back on God and therefore God has turned His back on us. That sort of spitting the dummy doesn’t quite ring true with those godly attributes of compassion, etc. I mean a child might in a hissy fit turn their back on Mum & Dad, but Mum & Dad aren’t as likely to reciprocate.

Of course the final answer as to why God ignores us, and allows extreme evil, is that there is no God in the first damn place, and this (mass murder of the innocents) is just part of that evidence.

In conclusion, in one sense, such mass murder episodes are in a strange way ‘good news’ stories for they should re-re-re-reinforce the concept that, sorry Virginia, there is no God, or if there is He does not give a DAMN about the sorry affairs of mankind. He does not want to get His godly hands dirty. So all the vigils, and all the prayers, and all the church attendances, all of which may be psychological comforting responses, in the long and short term, well these actions are absolutely meaningless and a waste of time, effort, energy and tears. Ultimately, it amounts to another nail in God’s coffin. 

P.S. - In a Darwinian sense, when you have a global population of over seven billion and increasing, well, life is cheap. The mass shooting of millions in one day would be of no lasting consequence to the human species; just the opposite, it might improve things – slightly.

People Kill: God Doesn’t Care: Part One

Following yet another mass shooting in the US of A, with all the predictable and understandable gut reactions that pour forth, my gut feeling is that nothing of substance will be done since American history, culture and the Constitution rule; gun control isn’t the real issue; things will get worse; people kill (it’s in our genes – deal with it); and it provides another reason why God is an increasing irrelevance in society.

One undesirable cultural phenomena, often witnessed in the United States, though hardly the exclusive property of the US of A, is the fairly indiscriminate and outright random killings of innocents that the killer has some apparent, albeit impersonal, grudge against. The most recent in a long line of case histories involved the Sandy Hook Elementary School at Newtown, Connecticut (December 2012). However, I don’t want to get into specific cases, nor dwell on the human element as experienced by those most intimately involved, friends, family, and authority figures like the police who have to deal with the situation. Rather, I’m going to focus on the broader issues, two of which are always present in the aftermath. There’s the human element, and often the related gun control issues, and there’s the religious element, an often focus being why does God allow evil and why do people seemingly ignore this facet?

The Human Element

People kill. We’re very good at it. That we are killing machines seems to be hardwired into our neural networks. Why is probably irrelevant, but no doubt can be traced back to our early hominid ancestors and the days of nature red in tooth and claw and that famous summation of biological evolution – survival of the fittest – kill or be killed - or in more modern phraseology, shoot first and ask questions later. Is there any human on this planet over the age of five who hasn’t secretly wished to bash somebody’s head in to a brain dead pulp? If so, the numbers are probably so low as to be statistically meaningless.

People kill. Again, we’re very good at it. And so now and again someone with a gun(s) goes off the deep end and lots of innocents die (or are seriously wounded but pull through even though the intention was for them to snuff it). Whenever one of these mass killing events ensues, especially in the US of A, there will be the inevitable outcry for tougher gun control measures. There will also be the inevitable outcome of keeping the status quo. It’s not easy to change the American Constitution which gives Americans the right to bear arms! American history and culture reinforce that right. Gun control isn’t the issue though that’s the gut reaction, but gun control just ain’t going to happen. But even if it does, even if not one private citizen in the US of A had a gun, so what? If I wish to kill someone indiscriminately or at random, I’m not going to be stopped just because I don’t have a gun. It’s a trite but accurate phrase that “guns don’t kill, people kill”.

How can I kill thee, let me count the ways. Well there are still knives, bows and arrows, swords, and spears. Eliminate those, well I can throw rocks or bang you over the head with a brick. No rocks, no bricks; well I can choke you to death. Maybe I have access to hand grenades, sticks of dynamite, Molotov cocktails, or have the know-how to make homemade bombs or make nerve gas or otherwise employ poisons effectively. Clubs, like baseball bats, are pretty effective too since they can clobber more than just a baseball. I can always drive my car into a crowd at high speed, and cars are unlikely to be banned just because their drivers can employ them to kill. If you really want to go out with a bang rent a fully fuelled plane and crash it into a crowded sports stadium. Then there’s arson via the humble match. No, eliminating guns is not going to end the slaughter of the innocents. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

People kill. We love it. You’d probably be hard pressed to pick up any general history text of any nation and not find, somewhere between the covers, at least one killing contained therein, and truth be known, probably lots of them. Recall all those human sacrifices made to the Aztec gods – slicing open the chest and ripping the heart out kills just as effectively as a gun. Closer to American hearts and minds, once upon a time it was peachy keen to slaughter the Native Americans including women, children and infants, as in “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. Afro-Americans fared only slightly better. 

We almost tend to make cultural ‘heroes’ of those who kill, from Billy the Kid to Captain Kidd, Jesse James to Ned Kelly (Australian), Doc Holiday to Bonnie & Clyde, even villains like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack the Ripper have acquired a certain mythological aura that surrounds them. The passing of time has a way of softening their impact. If you source though the histories of all nations that list could be extended a thousand-fold.

The total number of biographies of the bad guys (and gals), killers and serial killers, the gangsters, the outlaws, the pirates, the assassins, even famous celebrities who were murdered, would fill up the entire shelf space of many a good sized public library. There’s just something about the cold blooded killer that appeals to our genetic makeup.

Our works of fiction are full of human slaughter and not just war novels and westerns. There’s that whole genre of slasher films aimed usually at the teenagers.  We love a whodunit murder mystery and those with a ‘license to kill’ like the ever popular 007. Cop and P.I. TV shows do well; even courtroom dramas which usually feature a murder trial. The Bible (another work of fiction) contains more blood and guts and gore and slaughter of the innocents per page than the most graphic of novels, and you’ll find murder ranging from Shakespeare, Homer and even unto operas – there’s a least one murder in each of Richard Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” quartet of ‘musical dramas’. 

                                                                                                            

And if we get tired of humans killing humans, there are always aliens and monsters on the rampage to satisfy the bloodlust.

I forget exactly the number now, but a study was made of the number of fictional murders shown on make-believe TV shows but the end result was alarming. We are graphically exposed day-in-and-day-out to humans killing humans, and not just on the evening TV news, though that too of course.

I fail to see why people get all worked up over the mass slaughter of, say, 30 innocents. What they are worked up about is the fact that one person killed 30 people, not that 30 people were killed. I’m sure that everyday, in everyway, in the US of A, even a lot more than 30 people are murdered, but hardly a headline, apart from the local murder mentioned in the local rag, gives note to the daily 30 killed by 30 others. But if one individual does murder 30 people at one go, then its global headlines and hundreds of human interest stories follow. In either case it’s the same number of innocent people dead, so why does one rate a massive outpouring of soul searching and the other rates barely a whimper of concern? Is there really anything different in principle between killing 30 or the one? Murder is murder; mass murder is still murder.

And what of that other mass slaughter? It’s what humans do best, not only killing other humans but innocent animals, especially animals, for no reason. A ‘sportsman’ hunter kills 30 deer; a ‘sportsman’ fisherman kills 30 fish. If anything, the ‘sportsman’ gets a pat on the back for his skill.

Speaking of skill, doesn’t the military award marksmanship medals for such gunmanship skills? What about sportsmen (and women) in competition up through and including the Olympic Games for their shooting skills in not only marksmanship with a gun, but say in archery. We reward those who can shoot, and in a manner of speaking, shoot to kill (by hitting the bullseye).

The bottom line is that while most of us are restrained most of the time from acting out our primeval instincts by the laws of the land, each and every one of us can snap; some more readily than others, but snap nonetheless. Perhaps the really amazing thing is that the slaughter of the innocents is as at a low a level as it is. And though this sounds cruel, in the time it takes one person to snuff out 30 lives, another 30 are born. In a nation of 300 million, if 30 are murdered, well that’s a drop in the ocean, but in the real world, the world of nature red in tooth and claw, that sort of ratio wouldn’t cause Mother Nature to bat a proverbial eyebrow, and aren’t humans part of that real world (although we’d probably deny it, since we think we’re something special, like something special in the eyes of God). In the cosmic scheme of things, an elephant stepping on an ant hill, while a tragedy for the ants concerned, is of no consequence for the overall survival of the ant species.

So what’s going to happen? Nothing is going to happen except things will get worse! With every passing day there are more and more people – more and more chances for a massacre of the innocent to come to pass. With every passing day, more and more instruments that have lethal powers are manufactured. Even if there come to pass legal ways of preventing the two trends from interacting, there are always the illegal ways and means, and if history is any guide, what Lola wants, Lola gets, even if Lola has to beg, borrow or steal.

To be continued…

Where Was God When…?

Humans can and do die prematurely through no apparent fault of their own. It’s a common feature on the news. It’s reasonable to ask who’s responsible. There are various agencies that can be held accountable: God, Mother Nature and Mankind. Since God is allegedly the Top Banana, the buck stops with Him when it comes to a ‘please explain’ those premature deaths. So, here’s an analysis of possible explanations with God taking centre stage.

Either God exists or God does not exist. If the latter, God cannot be held accountable for anything good, bad or ugly. But, if God exists, and has those positive attributes given to Him, even by His own words in the Bible, then God has a lot to answer for when it comes to explaining why humans are allowed to die prematurely through no fault of their own. The basic charge is premeditated murder at worst, almighty godly negligence allowing death at best.

Let’s review some positive Godly attributes:

God is Loving – Jeremiah 32:18.

God is Merciful - Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13.

God has Compassion – Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8.

God is Forgiving – Daniel 9:9; Ephesians 4:32.

God is Kind – Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13.

God is Gracious – Exodus 34:6. Psalm 86:15; Psalm 116:5.

God is Righteous – Psalm 24:5; Psalm 116:5.

And there’s a lot more besides but you get the idea. God is the good guy. God is your friend. God looks after you. Pure bovine fertilizer! In fact the extreme Christian Right Wing, those televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc. all like to stress some other of God’s attributes, like being a jealous God, a vengeful God, a God quick to anger and a wrathful God – they like a God who hates and who kicks human butts, hard, and fatally. To them, any premature death to anyone by any cause is attributed to God, thank God, full stop. That also strikes me as pure bovine fertilizer. 

Humans die thanks to God before their time is due:

Why God’s rush to judgment? Since everyone is doomed to die anyway, there’s no apparent need for an immortal deity to rush their demise. To God, a billion years either way, either side of now, is of no consequence, so a human lifespan is just a piddle. If other words, since God will get His pound of flesh, or the devil his due in the fullness of time, there’s no need for any human not to be granted the right to live to die of natural causes – old age.

Innocents have been put in harms way through no fault of their own. Who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? The buck ultimately stops with the chief cook and bottle washer – the Almighty. 

We have humans killed by deliberate Acts of God:

An Act of God usually implies wilful death and destruction, pain and suffering, inflicted on humanity by well, guess who, the Almighty Himself. That’s murder in the first degree. What else would you call Sodom and Gomorrah; the Egyptian tenth plague on the firstborn; the invasion of the Land of Canaan? Nor does it have to even be a mass murder scenario – even God smiting a single individual is premeditated murder. Fortunately, there have been no unnatural actual Acts of God (as opposed to natural Acts of Nature) in way, way over 2000 years plus, at least defined as a major destructive event that happened without benefit of a natural cause, or even a single death that can only be attributed to “God” and so listed on the death certificate. So in the Common Era, God is off the hook for premeditated murder, though God should still stand trial for atrocities committed in the Old Testament. 

We have humans killed by random Acts of Nature:

That’s wilful negligence since God, if there be a God, ultimately controls nature, God being all-powerful and all that. But first, if it appears to be a natural disaster (flood, drought, famine, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone, tornado, bushfire, volcano, earthquake, hail, epidemic, pandemic, asteroid/meteor impact, solar flares, blizzards, icebergs, lightning, tsunamis/tidal waves, etc.) then lets adopt the duck philosophy – if it looks, sounds, swims, flies, and otherwise behaves like a duck, it’s a duck, or in this case, it really is an Act of Nature and not something deliberately set in motion by Mother Nature’s boss, God, though that’s not set in any philosopher’s stone by any means.

Acts of Nature have an apparent natural cause, but of course that could mean that God is hiding behind an apparently natural causality curtain, but in reality forcing Mother Nature to do His bidding. But why would an all-powerful God hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts? - Back to the duck philosophy. So let’s just assume that God just sits on the sidelines (if He’s still in the neighbourhood, don’t forget He hasn’t been seen or heard from in over 2000 years) and lets Mother Nature strut her stuff – the nice balmy spring mornings; the multi terror-tornadoes that strike in that afternoon.  

Now what does He do from His heavenly sidelines? Well, He can do nothing and wash His hands of the unfolding events, whether it’s the twisters that form in Tornado Alley, a Hurricane Katrina moving towards New Orleans or an Asian tsunami about to strike. But God failing to take action is akin to the parents of a toddler who’s crawling across a road busy with traffic and failing to take action to prevent the inevitable tragedy. That’s wilful negligence. Or, God could manipulate apparently natural events to suit His purpose – create winners and losers.

In any natural disaster (Acts of Nature) there will tend to be ‘winners’ (survivors) and losers – the newly deceased. If God got down off His throne and intervened then presumably He wanted the ‘winners’ to live and the losers to die and made sure the natural dice were rigged to ensure that outcome. If so, then the ‘winners’ can “Thank God”, at least for the surviving part, though God should still get the Big Finger from true believers for allowing that Act of God under the guise of an Act of Nature to have transpired in the first place. Is the credit due God for saving some lives outweighed by the blame for the deaths and overall destruction God caused in the first place?

We have humans killed by Acts of Man at God’s direction.

That’s God being an accomplice to murder in the first degree, for example the Battle of Jericho. Of course today such a defence holds no legal water. If I murder someone, the jury is unlikely to be swayed as to my innocence if I suggest that God wanted and directed me to carry out that murder. So let’s let God off the hook for Acts of Man, even if humans were inspired by God setting a bad example, summed up by that old chestnut, “do as I say, not as I do”. God may say “Thou shalt not kill”, but God’s own track record matches anything Jack-the-Ripper accomplished by many, many orders of magnitude over and above Jack, the serial killer.

We have humans killed by Unintentional Acts of Man:

Friendly fire is one such term, ditto collateral damage. It’s quite apparent from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on TV that human related accidents cause the death of other innocent humans. A driver has a heart attack, loses control of his vehicle which slams into another car killing the occupants. A hunter shoots at what he assumes is a deer only to discover it’s a fellow hunter he shot by accident. It’s not a difficult assignment to come up with dozens upon dozens of accidental death due to some human error or unintended scenario unfolding, like that cigarette butt tossed out the window which starts a bushfire which goes out of control and ultimately kills dozens. The issue arises; we know why Hercules or Superman can’t come to the rescue, but why doesn’t an all-powerful deity, believed by the multitudes to exist, come and save the day? Doesn’t the deity, say God, care for the innocents? Or perhaps the multitudes are mistaken and God has no more reality than Hercules or Superman. If the former, God doesn’t come out of the situation smelling like a rose, that’s for sure. If the latter, the multitudes need to engage their brain into forward gear and question their beliefs, rather than have it idling in neutral, ever unquestioning.

We have humans killed by Intentional Acts of Man:

Though God ultimately has control over the actions of humans; God could argue that because of man’s free will, He shouldn’t get involved or be held accountable, even though parents are morally accountable for the actions of their children, and aren’t we, allegedly, God’s children? That analogy aside, though God probably thought it was none of His business, should He have really turned a blind eye towards what was to unfold in August 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And what about the innocents caught up in the events of 9/11? What about tens of thousands of similar, but less memorable happenings like intervening before Jack-the-Ripper ripped? Again, God probably said it’s none of my doing; I’m not going to get involved. But, would such an attitude jive with all of those loving, kindness, compassionate attributes so noted and logged in the Bible? 

We have humans killed by their own stupidity: The Darwin Award:

Many a human has ended his or her own life prematurely through sheer stupidity, forgetfulness, negligence, and similar concepts. There are a whole series of books on what’s titled the “Darwin Awards” – those who benefit humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool and thus not passing on their stupidity genes to the next generation. Some people are their own worst enemy, accidents waiting to happen. While we’ve probably all experienced an ‘oops’ moment, some ‘oops’ are fatal ‘oops’. Now the question is should God save you from your own stupidity? Whatever your answer, God’s clearly answered that philosophical issue in the negative since people do die prematurely because of their own stupidity. Humans have a far better track record saving or rescuing people from their own stupidity – in the nick of time – than any deity.

Conclusion:

By way of final explanations, either 1) God does not exist or has left the building for parts unknown; 2) God doesn’t give a damn which suggests He isn’t compassionate or merciful, etc.; 3) God plays favourites which also implies He’s not merciful, etc. to all equally. It’s also statistically improbable that only those who were the losers in every natural or human related disaster deserved, in God’s eyes, to burn, baby, burn, and every ‘winner’ was a saint in human skin. When it comes to allowing even dictating the premature deaths of God’s children, well, God’s a god-awful parent! And this is the God you want to snuggle up to in heaven? If God really doesn’t have these positive attributes (mercy, compassion, etc.) then it illustrates that the Bible is full of it, and I don’t have to elaborate or spell out what “it” is.

Religion: No Good; Just Bad and Ugly: Part One

Is our Christian religion really the right religion? Human societies have believed in hundreds of religions, some current, many extinct. Humans have worshiped literally thousands of deities over a hundred thousand or some odd years. All religions, and all deities, can’t all be true. Perhaps none are. Regardless, religion has a lot to answer for.

So what makes the Biblical religion or the Christian religion or the Old Testament religion the be all and end all of true religion and associated religious deities for the multitudes? I mean there is as much written and archaeological evidence for the existence of Thor, Zeus, Odin, Apollo, Ares, Athena, et al. as there is for God. No longer are people devoting believers in the religions and associated gods of ancient Rome, Greece, or the Norse countries – why? The arguments for those religions and their existence were so weak as to be unsustainable. So, why not go one religion and one God further?

There have probably been more wars, deaths, executions, murders, torture, crime and suffering in general, perpetrated in the name of religion (God and associates) over the millennium than over any other specific cause. Anything and everything can be justified as long as ‘God is on your side’ or the Bible says so, as per holy wars, crusades and inquisitions.  I like the point – not original to me by the way – that if there were no God, no religious moral teachings, no Biblical threats of punishment, or promises of rewards, then you’d have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. Add religion and associated baggage into the mix however and you now have some good people doing evil things – all in the name of their religion and their God. As the sayings go, and apologies to the originators whose names I’ve forgotten, ‘science flies men to the Moon; religion flies men into buildings’ (as per 9/11), and ‘atheists have never killed in defence of atheism, but, religious fundamentalists have certainly killed in the name of God’. That just about sums it all up. Has all the misery religion has caused, or has been caused in God’s name, been justified? I’ll state at the outset that, IMHO, the answer is an absolute NO, if for no other reason than it’s highly unlikely that God even exists! 

So what’s then the origin(s) of religion? If there is no God or gods, no supernatural beings or deities, how come we got religions (plural since there have been and are hundreds of them)? Easy!

Primitive, ancient, cave, etc. men (and women), call them what you will, had little understanding of how the natural world, their environment, worked, including those events that most directly impacted on their day-to-day existence and survival. They had no sophisticated understanding of physics and chemistry, geology, oceanography, meteorology and astronomy. But it was obvious to them that something had to be responsible for what happened to them; maybe even more obvious that the responsible agent was probably someone – maybe plural. Since they didn’t have that sort of level of power or control, that someone (one or more) had to be a really BIG SOMEONE, yet a BIG SOMEONE who stayed out of obvious sight. Since ancient man had no way of naturally explaining things, but the existence of a BIG SOMEONE did explain things, thus a supernatural being(s) was created or born.

It’s equally obvious that you’d want this BIG SOMEONE to maximize good things and minimize bad things, and so you tried to converse with the BIG SOMEONE. But since the BIG SOMEONE wasn’t visible, wasn’t in your face and in person, conversation had to be one-way – call it prayer! It doesn’t take long for patterns and rituals to become established, and the most successful prayer person becomes a leader, a respected member of the tribe, a priest in other words. A religion is born.

This evolution of a religion is reinforced because of the nature of death. Everyone takes note of the fact that something that was alive is now something not alive – maybe it’s just the animal you killed for food, but also maybe it’s your mate or your offspring, or a tribal elder you knew and respected, or a neighbour in the hut or cave next to yours. Someone dies of old age or for no apparent reason. What exactly happened? Why did it happen? Who is responsible? Why, the BIG SOMEONE of course.

Associated with death is obviously noting that whatever is dead doesn’t respond to the environment any more, can’t eat, can’t breathe, can’t enjoy sex, or company, and the overall caveman equivalent of the good life. Also, the dead in fact will eventually decay, rot away and smell. So, death is something to be avoided, and if it can’t be avoided, well maybe there’s a continuation of the good life afterwards in some mysterious way that only the BIG SOMEONE controls. The BIG SOMEONE provides a home we all go to after we die. Tossing up the option of an afterlife, or no afterlife, when there’s no obvious evidence either way, well, it’s a no-brainer. Our number one prayer person, our priest, will tell us what we want to hear! That’s politics.

So it’s relatively easy to explain the origin of a religion and how it can take on a life of its own with loads of trappings, with do and do-not aspects, etc.

But, religions have not also come, but gone. Maybe the great prayer person had a streak of bad luck and so the BIG SOMEONE was replaced – as was the priest. The upshot is that in this age of enlightenment, we have consigned most of our historical collection of BIG SOMEONES, our gods and supernatural beings and deities to the dust bin. The prayers have failed, the priests have failed, the gods have failed or went away, so ultimately it’s now easy to accept that maybe there was no evidence at all for them in the first place – they no longer explain anything. Now all that’s basically left is now just one more final body to get rid of. It’s time God too was consigned to the dust bin.

What about our Religious concepts central to morality, ethics, values, right & wrong, etc.? It is presumed by those in a Biblical frame of mind that our concept of morality (and related) comes from God and Biblical preachings and teachings. Oh dear! According to The Bible, God commits, or commands others to commit, or condones what any moral person living today would term atrocities and crimes against humanity worthy of Pol Pot, Stalin, Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. In fact Satan comes across as a far more moral character in the Biblical texts than God. After all, it’s God who condemns people to eternal torture or torment, not Satan. It’s God who inflicts plagues on the populace, not Satan. It’s God who condones rape, slavery and cannibalism; it’s God who demands sacrifices, executions and torture, not Satan. Satan actually comes across as a bit of a trickster perhaps, but not really evil incarnate. God is depicted in Biblical texts as the personification of pure evil. Who does the smiting – God or Satan?

Take the morality or ethics of what God dos to Adam and Eve. If Adam and Eve understood that it is evil to disobey God and good to obey God, then Adam and Eve already possessed the knowledge of good and evil, and there was no need for God’s warning and they had no need to give in to temptation and eat that apple! God, being all-knowing, knew this. There would have been no moral reason to punish them. If Adam and Eve did not understand God, if they didn’t comprehend the difference between good and evil, then God punished them, and all their descendents through to and including you, quite unfairly.

I think it is safe to say that animals do not, and can not, read the Bible. Animals and humans are supposed to be separate creations, with mankind somehow something extra special – we’ve had morality bestowed upon us by God (a God who basically says do as I say, not as I do). There’s no mention of God bestowing morals (and related) onto animals. Yet, there are numerous first hand observations of animals exhibiting behaviour which we would describe as moral or ethical or showing distinction between right and wrong. Now either this behaviour in animals evolved naturally, and by implication our morals evolved naturally too, or else God breathed good behaviour into animals – again no mention of that in the Biblical literature. So, humans aren’t a special creation based on morality.

Rather than give second-hand examples of animal morality, here’s one of mine – first hand. My two companion cats hate each other and will engage in a cat fight at the drop of a proverbial hat. However, no attack will even occur when either cat is eating, sleeping, or using the litter box. Then it’s truce time. In human society it’s considered immoral and cowardly to attack someone when they are sleeping – ditto the cat community. In neither case has that come from God or Biblical teachings or passages. 

To be continued…

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

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.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

There’s also a few other quirks. Actually in some cases you need more than two per species. You can’t have just two dogs or two cats, but two of every dog breed and two of every cat breed. Multiply that by all other species that have various distinctive breeds. Speaking of breeds, where did all our genetic racial diversity come from if there were only a few (Noah and crew) survivors of this Biblical (global) flood?

In fact, since some animals only eat live (animal) food, I guess more than two of some species had to be on board to serve as appropriate snacks. I mean there wasn’t any tinned or dry cat food available for the moggies, no means of refrigeration of raw meat or fish, so extra live mice had better be on hand. That sort of example could be multiplied many times over.

After-the-fact, when the flood waters receded, what food would the herbivores eat? It would take some time for the grasses and bushes and trees and forests to regenerate. Further, immediately after-the-fact, wouldn’t the predator-prey ratio be all screwed up? I mean in a healthy population, prey vastly outnumber predators. If there are 200 deer and 2 lions, both survive. If there are two deer and two lions, both go kaput pretty quickly, the deer killed for food, the lions then starve.

And isn’t it strange that there were no other boats in existence that would have carried other survivors? I mean apparently every other boat in Biblical time’s existence sank, apart from the Ark! Rather inadequate boat building skills back then apparently or perhaps the whole story has all the reality of a Twilight Zone episode.

Now God may have a bone to pick with humans, but not with innocent animals. Although God dos the right thing by ‘saving’ a pair of each species, God also exhibited extreme cruelty in murdering (drowning) untold multi-millions of innocent animals.

There’s that concept of murder which God perpetrated on the human race en masse despite his or her own commandment about not killing.  Thou shall not kill is one of the Ten Commandments I believe. So you’d think that God would practice what he (or she) preaches, but doesn’t, according to the Old Testament. Because the Biblical flood was God’s flood, God was the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world, a murderer that puts tyrants the likes of Hitler to a status of rank amateur! I mean there are not only the Biblical flood story, but what about Sodom and Gomorrah? You can’t trust a god who basically says ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

The logic of it all is illogical in the extreme. And even if the Biblical flood were only a localized affair (which makes far more sense and explains some of the above problems), that still doesn’t absolve God from being a mass murderer.

If God – assuming a God exists and being all powerful and such – really wanted to wipe out all but a very few of his or her originally chosen people, those made in God’s image, humanity in other words (but please spare the innocent animals), he or she certainly picked a complicated way of doing it. A really all powerful God could have just snapped his or her fingers and instantaneously all of the humanity bar those very few special ones (Noah and company) would have become the dead dust of history. But why be quick and merciful (‘snap’) when you can drag it out and make them suffer!

Now the tale of the global flood is in fact global! Cultures from around the world tell similar tales to the Biblical flood. The argument is that therefore the story must be true as these diverse cultures had no contact with each other. My answer to that is related to bovine fertilizer! End of the world tales, or myths, the concept of Armageddon, punishing the wicked with total catastrophe was as common and popular then as now. We all love a good ‘end of the world’ story that has a moral attached. Alas, the choices or mechanisms available for said end of the world stories to myth makers’ way back then were rather limited. They had no knowledge of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts or massive solar flares or nuclear war and resulting holocausts or killer asteroids smacking into Planet Earth, etc. All they had to work with was the day-to-day sorts of routine natural events part and parcel of their daily lives. In fact, many tale-spinners might not have been familiar with, say, volcanoes, and while most relatively violent weather phenomena, like tornadoes, may be destructive, they aren’t destructive enough to wipe out the wicked that populate a wide area.  However, everyone would have experienced rain, heavy rain, even torrential rain say from hurricanes, etc. that resulted in minor flooding, or say witnessed storm surges from the sea that inundated the land, and/or witnessed rivers, ponds and lakes overflowing. It doesn’t take that much imagination to notch up minor real events, in the guise of story telling, to mega disaster proportions. If it rains heavily for one day and there’s some local flooding, up the ante to 40 days. It’s difficult to imagine any story teller from 5000 years ago coming up with any other sort of end of the world scenario!

The one point to end-of-the-world, mega disaster stories is that there must be at least one survivor to tell the tale! I gather in this case that includes survivors such as Noah and kin.

Another possibility, perhaps complementary to the above or perhaps as a standalone in its own right is that many regions, high and dry, often arid, give rise to rock strata that contain fossilized sea shells, fossilized fish, and other marine organisms. Now natives seeing these anomalies, knowing nothing of historical geology and palaeontology, would obviously conclude that there must have been a massive body of water here at one time, which they interpret as a relatively recent giant flood, so gigantic that it must have been universal. Of course it was a ‘flood’ of sorts. As the configurations of the continents have changed, invasions of the sea have created vast oceans eons ago where now stands dry land. The natives couldn’t have known that – the concept of deep (geological) time didn’t exist for them.

I have read of one other explanation for universal flood stories. If I recall correctly, a student of Freud came up with the idea that the tellers/inventors of flood tales got the idea from dreams in their sleep. And they dreamed the dream all because they were asleep with relatively full bladders. Personally, I think that’s a piss-weak explanation!

Is there another solution? Well, here’s one possibility. What if God, she, he or whatever, were in reality a very ‘flesh and blood’ extraterrestrial (E.T.) computer programmer, who has written a software package called, say “Planet Earth”. Maybe it’s a computer or interactive video game – maybe a homework assignment for a smart E.T. student. Anyway, computer software easily explains all the Biblical miracles (virgin births; the resurrection, etc.) or anomalies (like where did the entire Biblical flood’s rain come from; where did all the water go; how did Jonah survive inside a large fish, etc.) or inconsistencies (like Cain’s wife, the discrepancies between Biblical time and geological time). Regarding the Biblical flood, no humans actually died; no animals suffered and drowned, and so on, because the humans and animals were never real to start with, just as you and I aren’t real, just part of – for want of a better analogy – a computer game simulation. Now that’s pretty outlandish, but probably no more so that actually spending time, effort, energy and your hard earned dollars in search of the mythological and IMHO nonexistent Noah’s Ark.

But if you still believe in the physical reality of Noah’s Ark., then I guess it is logical to believe that the Ark must of carried unicorns, fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden, dragons, centaurs, leprechauns, elves, sirens, Bigfoot, griffins, werewolves, trolls and just for good measure, the Cyclopes (plus a host of others).

The more obvious conclusion or implication is, if the Bible – the alleged word of God – gets this alleged event so wrong – it fails on any level of logic you care to apply – then how much faith can you put in the rest of the Biblical text? What sort of credibility does the Bible have? My belief is that it has absolutely none. So, potentially then the entire Bible, judging by the tale of the global flood, is a farce – just a collection of myths and fairy tales for grownups.

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, 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:”