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…

Happy Holidays!

Should we all have a “Merry Christmas” or will just having a “Happy Holiday” suffice? Do we really all need to receive supersaturation exposure to all things Christmas for weeks on end? What is the point of the over-the-top commercialism of a religious celebration that firstly doesn’t apply to everyone and secondly is just a figment of the Christian imagination anyway? Why do we lie to our children about Santa? Is it any wonder that there’s now a “War on Christmas”?

For various reasons, religious, economic, personal, some people just do not do Christmas – shock, horror, absolute blasphemy!!! Not that the naysayer can escape from Christmas, the concept and associated musical and visual baggage being shoved down their throats whether people want it or not from pretty much the last week in November (immediately post Thanksgiving in the US of A) through Christmas Day. That’s roughly 1/12^th of your year when all things Christmas, Christmas and more Christmas is pounded into you. Christmas probably gets more exposure or saturation coverage than a lead-up to a federal election. At least department stores, shopping malls and supermarkets don’t broadcast political candidate’s speeches while they’re on their political hustings. No such respite do these retail establishments give you regarding Christmas. Music, displays, and zillions of ads suggesting this or that perfect gift is the order of the month, and of course all those retail store Santa’s are just egging on the kiddies to pester their all and sundry family and friends with “I want, I want, I want, gimme, gimme, gimme” with produce from their store of course. Maybe that’s why there’s finally an anti-Christmas backlash underway – enough is now enough! It’s called the “War on Christmas”.

There’s been a lot of huffing-and-puffing, especially in the US of A over a so-called “War on Christmas”, summed up I guess by replacing “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” and other wise downplaying the religious and traditional significance of the, ho, ho, ho, Christmas. For example, no Nativity displays in public areas. Actually that might be working since this year (2012) the annual Nativity display in my local shopping centre has been conspicuous by its absence. I miss it not one bit since it has all the same degree of historical reality of Santa himself. [Actually, the day after I wrote that bit of wishful thinking it showed up – curses, foiled again.]

Personally, I’d be more than happy to have the entirety of Christmas and all of the associated baggage, mainly economic, tossed out the window, preferably a high-rise window. Since that’s not going to happen, I’ll settle for the downgrading. Of course the Christian Right Wing are spouting hellfire and brimstone over this trend, though that’s really irrelevant since Christmas has bugger-all to do with Christianity or anything related to monotheism - more on that shortly.

For better or worse, most of the advanced countries in the world today, especially those in North America (United States & Canada), Europe, and the Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand) are no longer WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) societies, but multicultural societies. That means, cultures that have significant populations that don’t share the WASP culture, including WASP religions and holidays. “Merry Christmas” has little if any significance; “Happy Holidays” probably has more significance to a broader audience than just WASPs.

One example of personal note, I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but where I live, it is near mandatory for supermarkets, department stores, shopping malls, etc. to pipe in and bombard customers with so-called Christmas music. Much of it is just Northern Hemisphere wintertime music like “Frosty the Snowman”, “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow”, and “Sleigh Ride” (vastly inappropriate in the Southern Hemisphere celebrating high summer where I am, but that’s another issue); some have no religious significance like “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” or “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”. But you get the religiously themes songs too, like “The First Noel”, “Silent Night” or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. It’s with the latter I take objection.

The question is, is it the place of supermarkets, etc. to seemingly endorse a particular brand of [monotheistic Christian] religion by playing these religiously themed Christmas Carols? It’s perfectly legal of course, but is it ethical? I mean these stores don’t pipe in music appropriate to the beliefs of Hindus or those of the Buddhist faith. In a multicultural society, I would strongly suggest that department stores, etc. stick to subjecting their customers to non-religious Christmas, or even better winter holiday, songs, and not ram down a specific monotheistic religious point of view to anyone within earshot. I mean this is not voluntarily attending a concert. People have to shop for necessities, like food. Should part of that experience be the involuntary scenario or experience of listening to music you’d rather not be subjected to? Opting to shop elsewhere probably results in no letup since nearly 100% of stores participate in the unrelenting bombardment. Apart from the unwilling shoppers, pity the poor staffers who have to put up with it for eight hours straight, day-in and day-out for the roughly month long duration. As one such staffer told me, they just tune out as best they can and sort of go into zombie mode for the duration.

The other issue is does Christmas really have any religious connection worthy of its salt at all? The answer is clearly no. You will not find, in any religious text, including the Bible (any version of the Bible in any language) the date, month, or even season when an alleged entity we call Jesus, was born. In short, if you celebrate the 25^th of December as the birthday of Jesus, you have only a 1 in 365.25 chance of being correct. So, why was that date chosen?

Well once upon a time, in days of yore, when pagans ruled, it was usual for ancient and in the main rural societies dependent on farming to divide the year into twelve months of thirty days each. Of course that left a remainder of five days, which had to be used up or accounted for, or else the calendar would eventually get seriously out of sync. Now recall that all of this tradition started from and evolved in the Northern Hemisphere. Now what was THE most important thing to these agricultural communities? The Winter Solstice (the shortest daylight day of the year being 21 December) and confirmation that the day’s daylight started getting longer immediately afterwards (the gods were therefore pleased) and that meant that although it might be a while, spring was returning, with that a promise of planting and another harvest and therefore food on the table. And so you used up that surplus five days in a post 21 December celebration that winter would eventually wan and good times would return.

Enter Christianity and their hatred for all things pagan and polytheistic. The easiest way to deal with this annual pagan festive season was not to fight city hall but to assimilate it and use it for their own purposes. Easy, just give the masses another reason to celebrate roughly five days post Winter Solstice – the birth of Jesus was a convenient substitute since no one could prove any different. And slowly but surely as Christianity replaced paganism and rural communities morphed more into urban societies and one realised that lengthening daylight was the norm of nature and not subject to the whim of the gods, well, there you have it, the evolution of Christmas. But Christmas is celebrated under false pretences. It was equally false when the reason was the whim of the god’s bestowed favour and promised another spring, but then those ancient rural farmers didn’t know any better. We know better for both reasons – Mother Nature rules the hours of daylight and the odds are overwhelming that the birth of Jesus didn’t take place when the Christian Church says it did. But please don’t take my word for it, just ask your local religious clergy or priest or whoever to prove that Christmas Day has any Christian religious significance; they can’t, and it doesn’t.

Let’s be brutally honest about Christmas. It has nothing to do with monotheism, Christianity or Jesus, and everything to do with consumerism and the economy. All the month long hype, all the ads, all the displays, all the music, all the Santa’s, all the ho, ho, ho you receive, etc. are designed to get you, as one staffer put it to me, in the proper Christmas mood, which, basically means psychologically getting you to loosening the purse strings and maxing out your credit cards in keeping with all that Christmas spirit, and spirits. Fortunately, more and more people are waking up to this annual manipulation and perhaps are coming around to the point of view that they would just rather have a non-religious “Happy Holiday” without being made to feel guilty that they aren’t having a “Merry Christmas” a concept shoved down your throat by society at large. 

Conclusion: Christmas is as phoney as a $7 bill and therefore the “War on Christmas” is not only just and logical, but way, way, way overdue.

Happy holidays all!

The Bible: Something’s Screwy Somewhere: Part Two

Multi-millions around the world accept the Bible as the literal word of God, and as such it cannot be in error. However, an examination of Biblical texts strongly suggests, to those with open minds, that error, or as I like to phrase things “something’s screwy somewhere”, abounds.

I know I probably shouldn’t pick on God and the Bible as often as I do, but, you know, it’s so damn easy it’s like taking candy from a baby. God sure leads with His chin. Anyway, if I haven’t been struck down by lightning by now, I probably won’t be, so here goes another round. As per usual, all references are from the King James Version (KJV) of the so-called “Word of God”.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Biblical Sightseeing

WTF? It takes forty years for the Chosen People to get from N.E. Egypt to the Promised Land (Israel) – it only took the American pioneers six months to get to their Promised Land across the Great Plains and mountain ranges and deserts by covered wagon - something’s screwy somewhere unless the Israelites just stopped to smell the roses and take in the local sights and scenery. Then you figure the distances travelled by Captain Cook and crew, Magellan, Columbus, and all those other seafarers in the golden age of sail. They travelled vastly greater distances in vastly shorter time frames. The more you compare the Exodus trek with other treks, the more anomalous it appears.

Biblical Generation Gaps:

One of the most idiotic themes in the Bible is that the innocent suffer because their ancestors were guilty of some sin or other in the eyes of God, whether it’s on the grand scale of humanity condemned to hardship and suffering because of Adam and Eve’s giving in to temptation (Genesis 3), or the examples of the sons and daughters unto the third, fourth even tenth generation being persona non grata to the Almighty because of an iniquity preformed by dear old great, great, great grandpa or grandma (Exodus 20: 5; Exodus 34: 7; Numbers 14: 18; Deuteronomy 5: 9; Deuteronomy 23: 2-3). That our loving, forgiving, merciful, compassionate Almighty would act in such a manner is anomalous.

Biblical Aliens: The Extraterrestrial Jesus

Several times Jesus admits he is “not of this world”. Check out John 8:23 and 18:36.

Biblical End Times

According to Matthew 24:3-14 and Mark 13:4-13 the signs of the end times are to be along the lines of wars; rumours of war; conflicts between nations and kingdoms; famines; pestilences; earthquakes, false prophets; deadly family feuds; worldwide distribution of the gospels;

So what’s changed in over 2000 years? Why would this be interpreted on being now, not then? That interpretation is highly anomalous, yet it’s what a lot of Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe.

Biblical Geography

Though Biblical geography is good in general – no glaring oops like describing massive ice caps and glaciers, that’s no big plus seeing as how the various Biblical authors lived in the areas described by the Bible. I could write a totally unbelievable tale of BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters of the extraterrestrial kind) on the Moon and yet get the lunar geography spot-on. Not that Biblical geography doesn’t have it’s oops moments, like why no physical evidence or remains of Sodom and Gomorrah; where’s Noah’s Ark to be found that hasn’t already been explored high and low?  And if the weather be part of geography, then having a global spell of very persistent wet weather for forty days and nights (960 hours) is highly anomalous, so much so as to be impossible. It’s called Planet Earth, not Planet Ocean, because there’s not enough of the wet stuff to make it so. Parts of Biblical geography are anomalous.

Biblical Hot Air

The Bible is chock-a-block full of prophets and prophecies, right up through and including the end of the world as we know it (Armageddon). Amazingly, all this soothsaying failed to note and log anything about global warming, climate change, etc., rather major issues in our times. The Bible is big on prophecy; the proof of the prophecy pudding is lacking. That’s an anomaly.

Biblical Characters

There are no independent, verifiable documents, statues, pictograms, stele, inscriptions, grave sites, or any other historical or archaeological evidence that yields any additional credibility to the actual existence of various famous Biblical characters like Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Moses & Aaron, Noah, Solomon, David & Goliath, Jonah, Methuselah, Joshua, and a host of others. You just gotta take the Bible’s word for the reality of these individuals. It’s like the only reference to Homer & Plato, Aristotle & Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid & Archimedes, was in an ancient Greek school primer for a beginners’ reader and that’s it. Would the very real existence of these half dozen ancients be given any real credibility given just a reference in a lone text? What makes the Bible a special case then? If Biblical characters are as really real and as really the VIPs they are made out to be, then it’s highly anomalous that there just is no other independent confirmation of that status.

A Biblical Piece of the Action

Both the Bible and the Koran are as two peas in the same monotheistic pod. They collectively have influenced billions upon billions of people – whole societies in fact. These texts therefore somewhat remind me of the “Star Trek: The Original Series” TV episode ‘A Piece of the Action’ (aired January 12 1968) where an entire alien society was in the manner of the Bible/Koran subservient to a ‘religious’ text – in this case a book about Chicago gangsters in the roaring 1920’s. That’s what the aliens patterned their culture after. I’m sure that episode was a deliberate dig at the influence our religious texts have on us. But I consider it anomalous that much of the world’s culture is centred on minor variations on and of a single religious text.

The Biblical Face of God

We’ve all seen images of God, from stained glass windows to Michelangelo to Hollywood. The anomaly is that it’s all make-believe. Unless I’ve missed something somewhere along the line, no where in the Bible is God’s physique noted; no physical description exists. He’s not described as white, somewhere between middle and old age, with a very long flowing grey-white beard and long flowing grey-white hair who looks entirely human. The popular image is that the image of God was created in Zeus’s image. Zeus was the model as Zeus’s image was widely known from statues, pottery, etc. For all you know, God could look extremely alien, or for that matter pass you on the street without you blinking an eye.

You Can’t Trust the Bible

We’re used to current events being set down in the here and now. Journalists, camera crews, microphones, tape recorders, etc. will give you today’s events on today’s evening TV news broadcasts. Reviews of recent events will be covered in your weekly magazines. But if I were to write a new biography of say Alexander the Great, you’d know that it could not be 100% spot-on since there’s no way to interview old Alex or those who knew him. Many a document, monument, inscription, etc. from that era would now be lost or destroyed. But when you read your Bible, do you think of the text as you would the evening news bulletin or weekly magazine news roundup, or, as you would my biography of Alex, someone who died way over 2000 years ago?  If the former, you’re sadly mistaken, for those who penned Biblical texts describing Biblical events can no more be trusted for 100% accuracy than my new biography of Alex, and for a similar reason. Words were put to paper long after the facts of the matter transpired. And as for Biblical quotations, well, no tape recorders existed back then, so take any pithy sayings with a very large grain of sodium chloride. Trusting in the Bible is an example of rather strange and anomalous human behaviour.

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Twiddling His Thumbs

 Presumably, at the close of the Old Testament, God has retired to His throne room and penthouse in Heaven, and that’s where He’s been couped up for way over 2000 years now. The question is, what does God do with His time up there in La-La-Land? Even if He eats and sleeps and goes to the bathroom and taken daily heavenly showers and trims His beard weekly, that still leaves a lot of hours for – well what’s the answer? Perhaps He stands at the Pearly Gates greeting new arrivals, or conducting Heavenly orientation sessions for new arrivals. Maybe He plays chess with Jesus or the archangels. Perhaps He conducts graduate classes in advanced Christian theology. Perhaps He ghost-writes articles for religious-themed magazines; watches those hellfire and brimstone televangelists on YouTube, or maybe once a year takes on the role of playing Santa Claus – no mortal could fill those shoes. Like Santa, God needs to keep a list and check it twice to find out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice to ensure that only those with the Right Religious Stuff enters through those Pearly Gates! It remains however that what God does with His spare time is an anomaly that has never been adequately explained.

Conclusions

This little exercise is barely scratching the surface that exposes that God’s infallible word, as recorded in the Bible, is anything but. It is riddled with fallacies, errors, enigmas, anomalies, and a potful of similar synonyms.

The Bible: Something’s Screwy Somewhere: Part One

Multi-millions around the world accept the Bible as the literal word of God, and as such it cannot be in error. However, an examination of Biblical texts strongly suggests, to those with open minds, that error, or as I like to phrase things “something’s screwy somewhere”, abounds.

I know I probably shouldn’t pick on God and the Bible as often as I do, but, you know, it’s so damn easy it’s like taking candy from a baby. God sure leads with His chin. Anyway, if I haven’t been struck down by lightning by now, I probably won’t be, so here goes another round. As per usual, all references are from the King James Version (KJV) of the so-called “Word of God”.

Biblical Close Encounters

Way more people have had a close encounter with the Loch Ness Monster than all the various Biblical characters put together have had with respect to an up-close-and-personal chinwag with the Almighty. If you put faith in ancient Greece mythology, way more mortals had a close encounter – a very close encounter – with Zeus, than ever conversed with God.

In The Biblical Beginning: Genesis

Genesis 1:24-25 tells us God created the terrestrial animals (cattle, beasts, creeping things). Man was then created in Genesis 1:26-27. In Genesis 2:7, God created man (as in the first male), and then the beasts, etc. in Genesis 2:18-19. So which came first the human or the animal?

God says (Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:3) that if you eat of the forbidden fruit that contained the knowledge of good-and-evil (the Bible never mentions it being an apple by the way) you will kick the bucket, immediately if not sooner. Adam and Eve however had a taste of that good-and-evil brand of snack food (Genesis 3:6), and guess what, like the serpent said (Genesis 3:4); thou both survived and didn’t kick the bucket. So, God was telling fibs! In fact, Adam lived to a ripe old age of 930 years (Genesis 5:5), doing his fruitful and multiplying bit long after tasting the forbidden fruit. So God indeed cried ‘wolf’. In God we trust? I think not.

And does that serpent who lurked in the Garden of Eden know something we don’t, that in fact there is not a god, but gods (plural). Check out the wisdom of the serpent in Genesis 3:5. Polytheism rules, OK? In fact, later on down the track in Exodus, and in other Biblical books, God says the same thing – there are indeed other gods.

Sarah’s age according to Genesis 17:17 was 90 years old when she gives birth to Isaac; Genesis 23:1 records her age as 127 years old at time of death. That should be in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as well as “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”. 

You all know the story of Noah’s Ark and the Biblical Flood and how the animals (every living thing of all flesh) went in two by two, male and female (Genesis 6:19-20; Genesis 7:8-9 and 7:14-15) But in Genesis 7:2-3, clean animals go in sevens, male and female, ditto the fowls of the air, but unclean beasts only go in pairs, male and female. Something’s screwy somewhere when the Bible can’t get the story straight and consistent in one lone chapter.

What age do you expect to live to? If you believe in Genesis 6:3, you’ll live until you’re 120 years old! And here I thought threescore and ten years was the Biblical norm – well I was wrong. I still have another fifty-five years of paying taxes to go, not five. That’s not 120 maximum by the way, but 120 years minimum (since a lot of Biblical characters, like Adam, lived way beyond that). Anyway, 120 years it is. That’s God’s promise. But in reality, sigh, that’s just another of God’s fibs. So if you don’t, live to be 120, you know who to bellyache too!

Genesis 4:17 makes mention of Cain’s wife. Where did she come from?

Then you have that Towel of Babel tale. But it wasn’t just God who went down to confound the language of the builders so that no one would understand anyone else. There is a mysterious, and anomalous other(s), noted in Genesis 11:7 as “let us go down” and do the dirty deed. Who is that “us”? Who knows?

In fact, to be perfectly honest, the entirety of Genesis is one big anomaly from start to finish.

Other Biblical Contradictions

Now where exactly did Aaron, kid brother of Moses, kick the bucket? If you believe Numbers 33:39, Aaron died, at 123 years of age, at Mount Hor. On the other hand, if you believe Deuteronomy 10:6, Aaron died and was buried at Mosera. They certainly didn’t employ fact-checkers back in those days.

Who provoked David to number Israel? Well, according to 1 Chronicles 21:1, it was Satan. But, let’s not give the devil his due quite so fast, because in 2 Samuel 24:1, it was the LORD Himself who did the deed! There’s never a good editor around when you need one.

How many brat kids did Michal, the daughter of Saul have? Well, 2 Samuel 6:23 said she was barren until the day she died. No descendents did she have. But, do not despair for her, because in 2 Samuel 21:8 she gave birth to a total of five strapping boys. Someone (Samuel?) didn’t study enough maths to distinguish zero units from five units.

God says that Jesus preaches peace unto the children of Israel in Acts 10:36. But, Jesus counters that in Matthew 10:34 with his sword overriding any purpose he might have regarding peace on earth. Jesus makes crystal clear that “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth”.

But the biggest contradiction of all is God’s commandment “Thou shall not kill” when not only does God kill again, and again, and again, and again (the Biblical Flood; Sodom & Gomorrah; the Tenth Plague; the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, etc.), but instructs others to kill on His behalf, like in Exodus 32:27 (kill them all) or Deuteronomy 20:17 (destroy them: kill, kill, kill).

So much for the infallible so-called “Word of God”, but then I’m sure that if God decreed that three plus seven equalled a bakers dozen, that His good flock would accept that too without question.

The Source of All Evil

Who is responsible for evil? Is it because Adam and Eve did a naughty and got the heave-ho from paradise for their troubles? Is it because of Satan? Are the fallen angels responsible? No. Who is responsible for evil? God is responsible for creating evil and He admits it. Just check out Isaiah 45:7. So, if there is evil in this world, don’t blame anyone other than the Almighty. Whodunit - The Lord, that’s whodunit!

Biblical Unicorns

The Bible lends credibility to the existence of unicorns, mentioning them nine times over in the KJV.

The Angle on Angels

These are multi-thousands of images from stained glass church windows, to artworks and sculptures, to Christmas cards that show Biblical angels with two wings. I’m damned if I can find any reference in the Bible (KJV at least) that describe angels with two wings - something’s screwy somewhere.

The Bible’s Sir Joseph

Joseph was ‘knighted’ for services rendered unto ancient Egypt, well unto the pharaoh for Joseph had a talent interpreting dreams, especially the pharaoh’s dreams. This really impressed the pharaoh.

Genesis 41: 39-46 notes that Joseph, at age 30, was anointed by the pharaoh at be basically his second in command and ruler over all the land of Egypt

Genesis 45:26: Joseph is governor over all the land of Egypt.

Now Joseph dies at 110 years of age (nice going, though a decade less than expected!) at Genesis 50:26, and is embalmed and buried in Egypt. So Joseph was a very important person in ancient Egypt for about 80 years.

But when we come to Exodus 1:8, we have a new king (pharaoh) of Egypt “which knew not Joseph”. WTF? Obviously the new pharaoh could not have known Joseph personally, since Joseph was dead, but to not even know the name, the famous Joseph, who must have had all manner of texts written about him and monuments and a grave site and so on and so forth. That’s an anomaly. It’s like a new President of the United States (POTUS) who never heard of the existence of a previous POTUS, any previous POTUS.

The latter pharaoh (whoever he was) can probably be excused however for his faulty memory seeing as how to this very day no ancient records, documents, hieroglyphs, stele, far less a tomb has ever verified there being a Biblical Joseph in Egypt full stop.

By the Rivers of Babylon

If God smote Sodom and Gomorrah for being wicked and sinful (Genesis 13:13; Genesis 18:20), why did He not smite Babylon? Despite a lot of godly huffing and puffing in Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isaiah 13:19 and Jeremiah 25:12 & Jeremiah Chapters 50 & 51) that seems to suggest Babylon will cop what Sodom and Gomorrah copped, it was left to the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the desert to take care of and bury wicked Babylon (which virtually became synonymous with all things evil in the Bible). Maybe that was God’s master plan all along, but it sure was the longwinded way of doing things. If God had been consistent, He would have given Babylon the Sodom and Gomorrah treatment directly. Of course if God were really a fag-hater, He would have smote ancient Greece too and dealt with those upstart Greek deities to boot who weren’t exactly Mr. & Mrs. Purity.

To be continued…

So Help Me God

One positive attributed to our trilogy of monotheistic religions is that they form some sort of moral, ethical, legal bedrock for our various civilizations, and without these religious texts we’d all be barbarians if not Neanderthals. Still, when it comes to our legal system, God and the Bible, for example, are not just in the background, but usually offstage, even out on the street.

The Bible contains hundreds of God’s required rituals, laws or commandments as related mainly in the trilogy of the Books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, which are mainly all about better homes and gardens, especially foods, sacrifices, money matters, duties, religious observances – not exactly the stuff of courtroom dramas. Perry Mason wouldn’t have a bar of this Biblical trivia; it would be a total waste of his time and talents. If fact, if you suffer from insomnia, and you need a quick fix, just have a read through of all those highly repetitive do’s and don’ts. You’ll be sawing logs in no time!

Despite that excruciatingly boring multitude of God’s laws, even including the top Ten Commandments as related twice over in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, the fact is there is relatively little of God, God’s commandments or influence, or of the Bible itself when it comes to the legal system of most western civilized countries. For all practical purposes, the legal system doesn’t recognise God despite the common image we’ve all seen in courtroom scenes of the witness, with hand on the Bible, being asked words to the effect of  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”. Well, if you’re caught out in an act of perjury, it’s not God that’s going to kick your butt!

“In God we trust” doesn’t apply in a court of law either. Evidence speaks way louder than trust, or faith or belief. In fact, trust, faith or belief would be inadmissible as evidence.

In a court of law, you can’t call God as a witness either for the defence or the prosecution. Well maybe you can, but at the expense of making yourself look pretty foolish. God’s going to be a no-show.

I very much doubt you could justify speeding or leaving the scene of an accident, say a hit-and-run, because you were running late for a religious ceremony and God would be pissed if you were late.

Insurance companies couldn’t claim an Act of God for a natural disaster like a flood to avoid paying out claims for damages.

The accused can’t cite God as the reason or inspiration for doing something illegal, no matter how often the Bible says your action was okay, like stoning someone to death. There is no such thing as the Biblical Defence, though that’s not true in all cultures which have national legal systems based entirely on their adopted religious texts. Did I hear someone whisper Islam for example? 

Now taking those famous Ten Commandments, often found on monuments in or outside of numerous courthouses, how many have been seriously adopted in our western civilized legal systems?

Now first I’d better point out that there is no such thing as THE Ten Commandments. There is not just one version (they appear twice in the King James Version of the Bible at Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5: 6-21) or interpretation or ordering, it’s all depending on what your choice of source is, but the general basics tend to involve the following.

#1: There shall be no others gods before God – I bet they don’t teach this one in law school, unless the Almighty was the Dean.

#2: There shall be no idols or idolatry – There’s no Idolatry 101 in law school either.

#3: There shall be no cussing out God – If anything, swearing in general is a minor civil matter, even against the Almighty.

#4: Honour the [Biblical] Sabbath (which is really Saturday, the seventh day of the week, not Sunday, which is really the first day of the week, just look at your wall calendar) – There still are some restrictions on Sunday trading in some areas, but the purse strings have been loosened considerably over the decades. If Sunday trading is against the law, it’s only barely. It probably originated in the first place back in the days when most of the population was rural and there had to be time in this horse-and-buggy era to allow traders, sellers and buyers a chance to travel to attend church services, back in the days when attendance was the norm.

#5: Honour Mum and Dad (in the Bible that means look out for and after the old folk) – This is a social thing. Parents have a legal obligation raising their kiddies, but there’s no reciprocation requirement when those kiddies reach adulthood.

#6: Do not kill – Okay, that’s one run on the criminal law board, though God should be embarrassed beyond all measure at stating this given His track record. This is probably the most blatant example of a deity’s ‘do as I say, not as I do’ that you’ll find in any religious text anywhere.

#7: Do not be adulterous – Well adultery may rate highly in the tabloids and the woman’s magazines, even making headlines in major newspapers and news bulletins, depending on the who, what, where, when and why, but it’s ultimately a civil or domestic matter and pretty low on the totem pole as well in overall importance.

#8: Do not steal – Okay, that’s two runs on the serious side of all things criminal.

#9: Do not bear false witness – That’s three runs scored.

#10: Do not covet – You can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking.

Only three out of the ten are really serious legal matters. In baseball, .300 is slightly above average. When it comes to adopting God’s laws, a .300 average is pretty poor pickings.

Anyway, the Big Three commandments are hardly unique to Biblical times. They predate the Bible and are concepts found in all pre-Biblical cultures or societies. It doesn’t take a deity to come up with these. Any ten year old could come up with these legal concepts. It’s hardly the stuff of deep philosophical thought. In any event, if convicted of any of these in a court of law, you’re not accused of having broken this or that Commandment attributed to God of the Old Testament, rather you violated Section X, Subsection Y of Criminal Code Z.

International Law

Any future despots, tyrants, dictators, and those with delusions of world domination will be well advised to read the Old Testament from cover-to-cover and back again to see how it’s done by the Expert-of-Experts, the Almighty. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery! Past and present despots, tyrants, dictators, and those with delusions of world domination haven’t held a candle to God, so there’s scope for massive improvement when it comes to Dictatorship: The Next Generation. The slight fly in the ointment is that the Almighty is not available to be the subject of prosecution by international law, whereas future tyrants might just end up with their butts kicked and necks stretched.

So what are some of God’s achievements on the international stage that are suggestive of being crimes against humanity?

Terrorism (Sodom and Gomorrah) – tick!

Genocide (the Biblical Flood) – tick!

Mass Murder (the Tenth Plague) – tick!

Torture (Job, Jonah) – tick!

Invasion (of the Land of Canaan) – tick!

That’s an outstanding list to aspire to for all those future wannabe rulers of the universe!

In summary, you might swear on the Bible and before God, but you can not use God and the Bible to defend your actions in criminal, civil or international law. As a source of legal wisdom, God and the Bible are near worthless and hardly a unique source of ethics, morality or legalities in any event.

Pray Tell: Part Two

If there is anything the Big Three monotheistic religions agree on it’s the power of positive prayer. What I ‘pray’ for is an end to human stupidity; those who believe in the power of positive prayer in the first place. My prayer will of course go unanswered.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Prayer and Conflict

When it comes to all out conflict, that is to say war, even civil war, every country, every part of their defence force, every soldier, intones that ‘God’s on our side’. Whether it’s a local sports event between teams or individuals, or a global conflict between nations, there can be only one winner, and therefore, the Almighty can’t be on everyone’s side. To claim otherwise is to act in the logically equivalent way of pissing into the wind.

Prayer and the Laws of Physics

Given the relatively low electromagnetic energy output of your brain that’s required to pray, and the inverse square law of physics (doubling the distance results in just one quarter the strength), your message to God would quickly become indistinguishable from the ever-present background electromagnetic noise, both artificial like radio/TV waves o the natural background ‘hiss’ of the entire universe (known as the cosmic microwave background radiation). God can’t ‘hear’ you.  Further, prayer can only propagate outwards at the speed of light maximum, so if God is having some R&R out around the Centauri system, it will be four years plus before He gets your message, which doesn’t do you much good if you’re sinking in quicksand. As for vocal prayers, well they won’t get beyond Earth’s atmosphere. In space, no one can hear you pray. So by all means wish upon a star, but consign God to the rubbish bin. 

Prayer and God’s Comprehension Abilities

Another absurdity about prayer if you think about it, consider this analogy. Could you listen to and comprehend thousands upon thousands of individuals all yakking to you at once, all on differing subjects, and speaking in many different tongues? No? Then what makes you think even God could manage it, or any deity for that matter? 

Prayer and the Power of Positive Posture

Chances are, when you hear the words “let us pray” you go into prayer posture mode – palms held together, fingers pointing skyward, down on your knees, head bowed, etc. Of what possible relevance could adopting this that or another posture make? If your prayer is worthy of God’s attention, then it doesn’t make any difference if you’re standing on your head or hopping up and down on one leg or doing push-ups or chin-ups for that matter. It’s the thought that counts, not the posture you adopt while think those thoughts.

Taking note of positive posture, banging your head against or humping the Wailing Wall (I’m not quite sure what anatomical action is going on here, perhaps it’s a unique form of Jewish fitness exercises or perhaps the participants have been out in the noonday sun too long), looks plain ridiculous, though that’s not hardly unique – looking ridiculous that is. Take Islam for example…

Prayer and the Power of Proper Geographical Orientation

In certain religious cultures, like Islam, not only must you adopt a just-so posture (and doesn’t it look ridiculous too all that bowing and scraping to nobody in sight), but you’ve got to position that posture with respect to your geography. If you’re 179 degrees east of Mecca, and you have to face Mecca (that too is ridiculous for Allah doesn’t live there anymore), do you face towards the west, or look straight down, since Mecca is for all practical purposes under your feet down through and including the centre of the Earth? And if you’re 180 degrees opposite, does it matter if you look due east or due west (or again straight down)? Even if a devote Muslim were but 100 miles from Mecca and faced in that general direction, that is towards the horizon in that general direction presumably, that line of sight, because of the curvature of the Earth, would pass way over the top of that alleged Holy City.

If geography is important, I can only assume that praying in church (or on some other so-called sacred or holy site) is more effective than outside the boundary of such a zone. But such a concept strikes me as being irrational – but who said religion was rational?

What does a deity care about geography anyway? Presumably He’s somewhere up there. Again, it’s the thought that counts, not your position with respect to some manmade structure. But who says that logic has anything to do with religion – it doesn’t. Logic is not religion’s strongest point, rather it’s weakest.

Prayer and the Big Picture

As noted above, if prayer actually worked we’d have no poverty, world peace would be the norm, and all would be perfectly fit and well and live happy ever after. The Big News headline of the day would be something like “Jane took her dogs out for a walk in the park”. So praying for anything is quite an outdated concept. Just look at the state of the world around you. Prayer doesn’t work on any sort of statistically meaningful level. Further, as in the case of supposed miracles (see below), prayer validation is also a highly selective bookkeeping exercise by religious institutions in that a hit is documented and displayed for the entire world to see; a miss is never mentioned or discussed.

Prayer and Miracles

If you pray for X, and X happens, it matters of course about the probability of X happening anyway. So praying for the Sun to rise in the morning isn’t in the same league as praying for the Chicago Cubs to win all 162 regular season games. Now the question arises, has there ever been one absolutely ironclad documented case of someone(s) praying for something(s) that are so absolutely unlikely to come to pass that it has to be defined as a supernatural miracle when it in fact did come to pass. Has such an event ever happened such as to convince a panel of say Nobel Prize winning recipients, or a panel of Supreme Court judges that a miracle by prayer has happened and therefore both the supernatural and the power of positive prayer exists and has been established beyond all doubt? If so, I haven’t read about it. And it’s no use saying that this or that religious has voted in the affirmative for such events since they have a vested interest in being bias in the affirmative. Based on any judgment by any neutral panel of umpires, miracles by prayer have not, repeat not, had their bona fides ever verified. 

Prayer and the End Times

God’s coming! God’s coming!! God’s coming and boy is She ever pissed!!! You hear that every day in just about every possible way from those Right Wing televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, and those hellfire and brimstone Christian Fundamentalists who have convinced millions of sheep (their flock) to pray for the Second Coming and the End of Days, the End Times of the Book of Revelation and the sooner the better. Alas, the world has been hearing that message for 2000 years now without results. Talk about crying wolf – the sky is falling; the sky is falling! Okay, so where is the Almighty already – She who must be obeyed? With every passing day that goes by without a no-show, the raw egg on the mugs of the evangelists, etc. just keeps on getting smelly and smellier as it gets more and more rotten. Of course the reason for the no-show is that not only doesn’t prayer work, it has nothing to work with. God doesn’t exist and the sooner the sheep see through the bovine fertilizer, the flock can just get on with their real lives.

Prayer and Psychology

Despite all of the above, maybe prayer gives you that warm inner glow and thus is maybe psychological beneficial to you; peace of mind and all. If so, that’s where the benefits begins and ends

Prayer and Concluding Statements

Belief in the power of prayer won’t go away because on average more good (or at least neutral) things happen than bad things. One can say that’s because of the billions who pay for good (or at least neutral) things and if those billions didn’t then there would be more bad things than good things happen in the world.

However, IMHO, if no one had uttered a single prayer over the past several millennia, would the world as you know it be ultimately any different? I’d bet the family farm the answer would be in the negative. Prayer or no prayer; it’s the same old world.

I contend that the proportion of good (or neutral) vs. bad is 100% independent of prayer. There’s no statistical evidence to the contrary. Therefore, the power of positive prayer, pray tell, is 100% absolutely and totally irrelevant.