A nonbeliever's SECOND reading of the Bible

A nonbeliever's SECOND reading of the Bible
Hunc tu caveto.
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Tuesday, September 22, 2009



I'm just going to plow through 22 and 23. They cover subjects already discussed, with a few minor alterations. Basically, if you're a slave-owner, a priest, a priest's daughter or slave, and you're routinely sacrificing TONS of animals - you have nothing to worry about. If you're a leper, a guy with a "running issue", or had a wet dream - uh oh.

Chapter 24 is a slight change of pace. There's actually a descriptive story about a stoning. Some lady's half-Egyptian son gets into a fight with an Israelite and curses the Israelite's god. He probably said something like, "F*&% yo God, my God's waaaaay better."

God says, "You know what? This guy got me pissed off, and I order the entire community throw a bunch of heavy stones at him until he's a pile of mush and bone."

Maybe He didn't say it like that, but He basically told Moses, and Moses told the Israelites. Yahweh really does sound like a Roman god or goddess - quick to anger, jealous, and very moody.

A famous quote also comes out of Chapter 24: Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. The chapter suddenly jumps subject to justice. Isn't that ironic? They're talking about equal punishment here, RIGHT AFTER they killed a guy who said a few choice words against their schizophrenic invisible friend.

4 comments:

queenxcathy said...

You know the entire point of the Old Testament is pretty much that God is setting boundaries and rules for the Israelites to test their devotion and to give them boundaries, right? It's all legalism. And in the end, the Pharisees and stuff go overboard with it, and God teaches that it's not necessarily the ardent practice of certain acts, but the heartfelt intent.

Anonymous said...

If that were the case, why did God need to give the Isralites these 'boundaries' that he knew were wrong? Why deliver laws so fundamentally absurd and opposed to all he/his son (Depending on your sect) said latter?

Andy said...

This is a big problem with apologetics, and I'm glad I don't have to apologize for this type of behavior. No matter how you cut it, this stuff is downright bad. Bad, bad, bad. The God in the Bible is down with keeping slaves, killing animals for petty reasons, executing people for arbitrary crimes, and on and on. When are these things good things in ANY society? Face it, Cat. This is a God that we've buried a loong time ago. We don't follow Its rules except the few that we humans choose to follow.

RedSpider said...

Yes, exactly. My biggest issue with Christianity is that it fails to treat other religions as it wants its own to be treated, a golden-rule ideal taken up a notch. One day in my own services we went from praying and crying about church-burnings that occurred in some place or other, and about how horrible it was that people would hate our god so ... Read Moremuch they'd do this..... to singing a song called "High Places" with such glee, which is a song about the reign of Josiah and how wonderful it was for him to tear down the religious places of all other people.

And that's when it hit me... we're nuts. Well, I'm not with them anymore, but they still sing that dreadful song.