Day 9, Chapter 26. Young Isaac is a chip off the old block. He pulls the same weird get-rich-quick scheme that his father did, and with the same guy; Abimelech, the king of Gerar.

God tells Isaac to go to Gerar, because He will make Isaac's seed "multiply as the stars of heaven." Isaac is quick to be sold to this idea. This is the Bible, and it's telling us about the interests of Bronze Age people. Again, we see how important it is for men to have a strong lineage. I suspect at the period of time that this was written, the Israelites didn't have a belief in the afterlife. Rather, their immortality came from their bloodlines.

Anyways, the men of Gerar find Isaac's wife Rebekah to be gorgeous, and Isaac, just like his dad Abraham, says that Rebekah is his sister. After awhile, Abimelech looks out the window and sees Isaac "sporting" with Rebekah. Abimelech catches on and says, "Man, why the F*CK did you lie to us about being married to her @$$HOLE!"

No, he didn't say that. But he should've. Hell. If I was Abimelech, I would have as well.

Abimelech then decrees that no man shall sleep with Isaac's wife, and if they try, they will surely be killed.

Isaac was probably already rich at this time, but what he gained from Abimelech was an element of security.

Later, after Isaac has matured as a businessman and landowner, God reappears to him and other people see that God was hanging out with Isaac, and so King Abimelech, a guy named Ahuzzath (who was Abimelech's friend), and the general of army of Gerar, come to Isaac and form an alliance of sorts. Who can blame them, after all? The friggin' LORD OF THE UNIVERSE is hanging out with Isaac, the guy they just kicked out of Gerar.

At the end of Chapter 26, Isaac and Rebekah's son Esau marries TWO Hittite women, Judith and Bashemath. Isaac and Rebekah are pissed off because their son actually had the gaul to marry a Hittite! The nerve of him. Wow, Hittites must've been pretty low back then.

Chapter 27. The oddest, craziest, most f***ed up thing happens in Chapter 27. Isaac is now an old, blind man, and asks his hairy son Esau to hunt some venison and bring it to him. Isaac tells Esau that when he comes back from the hunt, Esau will receive his "blessing." "Blessing" seems to refer the passing on of Isaac's inheritance.

A few chapters ago Esau gave up his birthright, which is apparently not the same thing as a blessing. I suppose a birthright just means some other sort of privilege (like being the favored son). Blessing is the actual passing of inheritance.

Rebekah overhears the conversation and while Esau is out doing his father's bidding, she sends the younger, smooth-skinned son Jacob to his father with freshly killed and prepared goats. Rebekah also disguises Jacob by making him put goat skin over his neck and hands. Jacob enters his father's room and tells him that he is Esau, and that the reason he came back so fast was that God gave the meat to him.

Isaac buys it! And oddly enough, God buys it too! Isaac hears Jacob's voice, but after touching his hands concludes that this is indeed Esau. He tells Jacob, "Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee."

As soon as Jacob leaves the room, Esau comes back, and is understandably pissed off that his dad gave the blessing to Jacob. Esau cries to his father, and says, "Don't you have at least one blessing for me?"

If I was Esau, I'd say something like, "Um dad, you're blind and you just blessed the wrong guy. Your OTHER son just tricked you."

Isaac then does something that is truly jacked up. He tells Esau his blessing, "You get to serve your little brother as his right-hand man."

Esau is pissed off and vows to kill his brother. Rebekah overhears this and sends Jacob away until Esau's anger wavers. And then racist Rebekah closes the chapter by hoping that Jacob doesn't marry one of those dirty Canaanites.

Chapter 28. Aside from more intolerance from Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob is also fleeing his brother Esau and has a vision of the ladder, known more popularly as "Jacob's Ladder."

At the top of the ladder is God, who promises Jacob, just like he promised Abraham and Isaac, that his seed will be like dust and that his people will be spread all over the Earth.

Man, this promise is said repeatedly by the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the Universe, and still has not been upheld to this very day!

He wakes up, pours oil on the stone that he was sleeping on, and calls the town "Bethel", although the town is called Luz.

First of all, who is Jacob to be naming other people's towns??? Most importantly, in this chapter Jacob names the town "Bethel" before he meets his future wife Rachel. Later on in Genesis, he names the town Bethel again just before Rachel dies. AND, the town has always been called Bethel, according to Genesis 12:8 and 13:3.

Okay, so I'm still upset about fundamentalists who believe these things are literally true; but I'm also a bit confused with the moderates and liberals who not only don't know what they believe, but they offer some sort of legitimacy to the fundamentalists.

Day 8, Chapter 23. Sarah finally dies at the tender old age of 127, a little bit over the age that God said he'd let live. I wonder if she was still hot?

Abraham, on the other hand, lives on to be 175 years old! The rest of Chapter 23 is Abraham bartering with some guy named Ephron over a field. Abe is thinking of using a cave on the field to bury Sarah and possibly use it as a family burial plot. Ephron actually offers the cave for free, but Abraham insists on buying it.

Chapter 24. In Chapter 24, Abraham is beginning to succumb to his age. He asks his head servant to bring Isaac to his old stomping grounds to find a woman to marry. And to make sure the servant does this, Abraham has the servant hold him "under his thigh" to give an oath. There is dispute on what this type of oath is all about. The most interesting is that the oath actually involved holding Abraham's testicles!

Imagine, a man holding the testicles of a 175-year-old man! It's an interesting oath. I'd probably have multiple females swearing this oath to me.

Anyways, the servant goes to a city called Nahor in Mesopotamia. He has interesting way of choosing Isaac's wife, too. He basically waits by a well and the first woman who lets him drink water, and gives water to his camels, will be the lucky girl.

I'm glad my parents didn't use this tactic for my wife. Actually, I'm glad my parents had very little say in who I was marrying.

The lucky girl is a young virgin (they make a big deal about this) named Rebekah. She was basically very hospitable. After asking if he could drink water, she says, "Sure! Here ya go!" And she offers food and water for the camels, too.

The servant is awestruck by her kindness and immediately starts worshipping God. That must've been awkward for Rebekah.

After telling Rebekah's brother about his experience and getting his permission, Abraham's servant returns home with Rebekah. The chapter ends with a touching moment when Isaac is in the field meditating. Isaac opens his eyes and sees the camels coming, and Rebekah sees him. "Who's the hottie?" she basically asks.

The servant says that is the man she's going to marry, and she immediately covers herself in a veil. Shortly afterward, they marry and consummate the marriage inside his parents' tent. Isaac also finally feels better after the death of his mother, because he got laid. Ah yes, the healing power of sex. Even the folks who wrote the Bible recognized its healing powers!

Chapter 25. But wait! Abraham takes ANOTHER WIFE!!! Her name is Keturah. A couple of chapters ago, it said he was succumbing to old age and now he's taking another wife? And guess what? Keturah gives birth to SIX KIDS! Imagine that. An approximately 175-year-old widower, find another wife and fathers SIX KIDS. He's most likely in the low-180s now, unless she had sextuplets.

Abraham finally dies, and leaves his estate to Isaac. To all the kids born from his many concubines, he gives them gifts and sends them away. Apparently, Sarah was the only one that had problems giving birth. Abraham humped quite a few chicks and it seems a lot of them had children; even sons. Unfortunately, they're never acknowledged and Isaac is said to be Abraham's "only son." Very strange customs, indeed.

Later, after some more family lineage stuff that I am glossing over, Rebekah (Isaac's wife) finds out she's pregnant. Apparently, she was barren, but with God's help she gives birth to two boys; Esau and Jacob. When Esau was born, he "first came out red, all over like a hairy garment." I'm guessing that he had a lot of red hair all over his body? And then came Jacob, who was holding Esau's heel.

God didn't like poor Esau. Isaac did, because Esau was a great hunter, and Isaac enjoyed the venison he caught. But God HATED Esau! Wow. That's pretty strange, and there's no reason given as to why he hated him, either. He created Esau, and He hates him. The ultimate Catch-22.

The chapter ends with Jacob tricking Esau to sell his birthright (because Esau was slightly older). Esau came from the field and was feeling faint. Jacob had just finished making ... I don't know - soup? Esau, who felt like he was going to die, gave up his birthright for some "pottage of lentiles" (lentil soup?) and a little bit of bread.

That sucks. Sell away your inheritance and birthrights for a piece of bread and a bowl of lentil soup?

Well, I'm going to put the Bible away until tomorrow. I am mystified at how Christians look to the Bible and swear that it is full of wisdom and that it is the Word of God Himself. If anything, it's a record of ancient and alien customs, of which we should be thankful we no longer practice.

Day 7 - In Chapter 18, God and three angels visit Abraham at his home, where old Abe SERVES THEM water, a calf, milk, and butter. That's right, God and the angels not only eat and drink, but they apparently have no problem eating un-kosher meals! That is, if they boiled the calf in milk (Exodus 23:19).

God, all-knowing and all-powerful, then asks Abraham, "Where's your wife?"

God's got good news for them, and He reports to Abe that Sarah will have a son. Sarah, from behind a tent wall, overhears this and laughs her @$$ off because she's 90 YEARS OLD! God punks Sarah a little bit because she laughed, and she says she wasn't laughing at God, she was laughing because she was afraid.

At about this point, God looks toward Sodom and wonders aloud to one of his angels, "Should I hide from Abraham that little thing-a-ma-jiggie that I'm about to do?"

Nice. A little foreshadowing. God's planning another mass killing, and is trying to be modest about it. God can't hold it in, He's probably very giddy, and says, "Alright, Sodom and Gomorrah are doing horrible things, and I'm basically about to blow the two places up."

Abraham is concerned and asks, "You're going to kill both the righteous and the wicked?" This starts an interesting bartering process. "What if there's 50 righteous people in Sodom, will you spare the city?"

"Yes, I will spare it," replies the Almighty.

"What about if there is 45?"

"I'll spare it."

Finally, Abraham gets down to 10. "Hmm ... well, what about 10?"

And God agrees. He will not destroy the city if there are 10 innocent Sodomites. How hard is it to find an innocent person? Well, children are innocent. Newborns? Toddlers? Nah ... there are apparently no innocent newborns and toddlers in Sodom. Not even 10 of them.

Chapter 19. God sends two angels out to Sodom and they visit Abe's brother Lot, who is supposedly the only known righteous person in the city. The angels EAT and WASH THEIR FEET! The residents find the angels to be sexually irresistable and the men of the city surround Lot's House. "Hey Lot!" they call. "Where's those two dudes you brought into your home. Let them out so we can get jiggy wit' 'em!"

Lot, being the righteous man and a great host, refuses to let his guests be raped by the Sodomites. Instead, he offers his two virgin daughters. "They're virgins! Take them, and do with them what you will," he says.

Like I said in the last post, Lot is a despicable human being. What other person aside from an immoral one would offer up their daughters (virgin or not) to a mob of sexually depraved men? Angels are supernatural warriors, and can easily take out a mob of humans. Sure enough, the angels blind all the men surrounding the door and the angels make their escape.

In 19:14, the angels tell Lot to take his family (son-in-laws, daughters, wife, etc.) elsewhere because they're going to blow up Sodom. But wait; son-in-laws? Lot just lied to a mob of rapists and offered his virgin daughters to them. But they're not virgins - they're married! Lot is a liar and a coward.

The angels say when they leave, that no one should look back. Everyone knows what happens next. Lot escapes with his wife and daughters (the son-in-laws thought Lot was a nutjob ... they were right!), and then his wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. I'm with comedian Julia Sweeney on this one, I think that Lot's wife did it in purpose. "Being a pillar of salt is PREFERABLE to be married to Lot."

So, Lot and his daughters are the only survivors. They find a cave in the mountains. Lot's daughters, who are now single, apparently think that God killed EVERYBODY. They say, "Woe is us, there ain't a man out there to come (cum?) in us. Let's get daddy drunk so that we can have sex with him, and preserve his seed."

Who the hell are these people?!?! Family values, in the Old Testament, is all about preserving the patriarchal family line. That's it. Maybe the New Testament is better? Well, when I get there, and that won't be for a while, I can guarantee that it isn't. The truth is, I don't know where conservative Christians get their family values. I know for sure that it isn't from the Bible.

I'm glad that Chapter 19 ends, and I'm glad to start reading about Abraham again. Maybe this sickening feeling in my stomach will soon go away. Yea right.

Chapter 20. Well, Abe is lying about Sarah being his sister again, and for the SAME REASON! And why not? He got hooked up pretty damn good the last time! This time, it is King Abimelech of a nation called Gerar. For some strange reason, the King of Gerar finds Sarah - who is 90 YEARS OLD - simply gorgeous. But God tells the King, in a dream, that Sarah is married and that the King shouldn't have sex with her or He'll destroy Gerar. The King, who is very reasonable, opts not to hump her and returns her to Abraham. And, like the Pharoah, says, "Why the F*CK didn't you tell me you were married, A$$H*LE!!! Why'd you lie to me?"

He didn't say exactly like that. But he should've, though. I would've.

Abraham weasels his way out of it and says that technically, she is his sister; just a half-sister. So he didn't really lie! And the reason that he lied was that he was scared the King would kill him just to have 90-year-old Sarah.

Like the pharoah, King Abimelech gives Abraham slaves and riches. Unlike the pharoah, he invites Abraham to stay in his land. And God heals the wombs of all the women in King Abimelech's household. Apparently, God sewed all of them shut because King Abimelech believed Abraham's lie, even though he never touched Sarah!

Chapter 21. Finally, 90-year-old Sarah gives birth to her son, and Abraham names him Isaac. As Isaac's growing up, old Hagar's son Ishmael mocks, or inappropriately plays with, Isaac. It's unclear as to what happened. Perhaps Ishmael, who is supposedly 16 years old by this time, was molesting Isaac? Whatever it was, it was bad enough that Sarah arranges (with God's help) to get Hagar and Ishmael kicked out, which Abraham agrees to.

Oddly, Genesis seems to err (probably by later editing) and suggest that Ishmael is but a child, which is of course impossible. Abe sees Hagar off with a bottle of water and some food. Hagar is holding Ishmael over her shoulder (pretty tough to do if he's a 16-year-old) and later, after running out of water, she casts Ishmael under a shrub so that he will die. An angel saves them by pointing out that there's a well right next to them.

Chapter 21 goes on and on, and eventually ends with Abraham moving to the land of the Philistines, which is another historical inaccuracy because the Philistines didn't arrive on the scene until 800 years later, in 1200 BCE.

Chapter 22. God decides to test Abraham. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son. "Take now thy only son, whom you love ... and offer him as a burnt offering."

In other words, "Hey Abraham, you know that son that you worked so hard for and whom you love. I'd like you to burn him alive as proof of your love to me."

Abraham obeys, and doesn't ask any questions. In fact, he tells his son that they're both going to perform an animal sacrifice. Very awkward. It would be kind of hard to break it to your only son that you're about to murder him because God requested it. So, they take their "long walk" together to where the sacrifice is tol take place.

Isaac notices that they've gathered wood, and basically says, "Okay, we have fire and wood. So, um, where's the lamb?"

Abraham replies that the lamb will be provided. He then promptly ties up Isaac and puts him on the wood, he grasps his knife, and just when Abraham was about to kill his son, God says, "Ha ha, just kidding Abe. Don't kill your son. I just wanted to see if you'd actually do it."

And God sends a ram instead, and Isaac and his father have some quality time sacrificing the ram together.

Just some thoughts - only an evil God would request this of a father, and only an evil father would carry through with it. Frankly, their morality is alien to me and I can't help but think that these people in the Old Testament are psychos.

Day 5 - I am on Genesis, Chapter 12. And to be honest, I'm not going to be able to get to the child sacrifice just yet. I forgot how long the saga of Abraham was.

The story of Abram, later to become Abraham, starts with God telling Abe to get the hell out of Dodge so he can be a founder of a "great nation." Abraham makes the journey south toward Egypt, and takes with him his wife Sarai (Sarah), and Lot, who will be instrumental in the future destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

A side note on Lot - He is one of the big honchos of the Old Testament, and I'd argue that everyone living today would agree that he was just about as evil as the folks in Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, he gave his "virgin" daughters up to a mob so they can be raped, just to save two angels from being raped. Angels! Angels are supposed to be warriors. On top of that, Lot lied about his daughters virginity. More on that in a later entry, but I wanted to point out that our morality today is so much different than it was back then.

Back to Abram's story - On the way to Egypt, Abram tells his 70-year-old wife Sarai that she is very beautiful and that the Egyptians will kill him in order to have her; so he's going to tell the Egyptians that she is his sister. She is his half-sister, after all. Yea, that's gross but incestual type relationships were common back then.

I don't know what the Egyptian standard of beauty is, but how many 70-year-old women out there are hot? Hot enough to murder for? This is waaaaaay before Botox and plastic surgery folks, and well after God had sentenced mankind to the 120-year max lifespan. Was there an elderly fetish going on at the time?

Sure enough, the Egyptians actually do think that Sarai is the cat's pajamas, and true to his word, Abram says that she is his sister. The Pharoah even thinks she's hot, and gives Abram livestock and slaves so that Sarai could be part of his harem. God gets pissed off as usual and sends a plague on the pharoah and his family.

Man, that sucks! The Pharoah thinks a 70-year-old chick is hot, trades with Abram livestock and slaves so that Sarai can be part of his harem, and then gets punished (by GOD, no less!) because he believed Abram's lie. That ain't right!

Pharoah somehow gets wind of Abram's lie and said to Abram, "Why the F**K did you lie to me, @$$hole?" Okay, he didn't say that, but he should've. I would've. But the Pharoah didn't understand why he was lied to about his wife, and sent them away with all the stuff they accumulated as well. How nice. Abram basically just pimped out his wife and became rich because of it!

In Chapter 13 it says that Abram was very rich in cattle, silver, and gold - it doesn't say that he was rich because he whored his wife out to the Pharoah, but that is basically what happened. Abram and Lot wind up settling with the Canaanites somewhere south of Egypt.

For some reason, the herdsman of Abram's and Lot's herds get pissed off at each other, and Abram and Lot decide to split up. "You go left, and I go right," is basically what they agree on. Abram settles in with the Canaanites, and Lot winds up living near Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Bible says that the men in Sodom "were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly." But there is nothing specific. This of course will later play out with the infamous story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is one of the main reasons so many conservative Christians hate gays.

Male gays especially; lesbians are tolerable. It's like what the comedian Bill Hicks said, "Two women together in bed is God's way of showing how much he loves us. Two men together in bed is evil. Two women together in bed is a miracle bestowed on God's children. Two men together in bed is satanic."

As for Abram, God tells him that he can have the land of Canaan "forever". This verse (Genesis 13:14-15) is one of the main justifications for the unending warfare that exists in the Middle East. And history will tell us that this promise was broken multiple times throughout the following millennia. Most of the time since then, the land was controlled by other people as well. It's only been the 60 years or so that Jews have regained control over this area.

Chapter 14 is a very dry report of battles and rebellions. One interesting event was when Lot was taken captive in Sodom, and Abram hears of the news. Abram responds by training and ARMY OF SLAVES (318 of them) and sending them to rescue Lot. The army of slaves pursues Lot's captors into the city of Dan. The mention of Dan, by the way, is proof that Genesis was edited later, as the City of Dan did not exist until later. The guy whom Dan is named for wasn't even born yet!

Abram plans a night assault with his slave army and successfully saves Lot, some women (Lot's women or Sodom's women?), and some goods. But Abram does return the goods, and keeps just enough for his army to survive the journey back.

In Chapter 15, Abram is a little concerned that he has not produced any male offspring and starts to consider one of the slaves born in his house to be his heir. God tells Abram not to worry, he'll have countless seeds (like the stars, in fact).

"Just sacrifice some animals to me," says God. Specifically, God asks for a 3-year-old heifer, a 3-year-old she-goat, a 3-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram does it, but still no dice.

By Chapter 16, even Sarai is concerned that no offspring have been born, and suspects it is her own advanced age. She even tells Abram to have sex with a female slave named Hagar. After having sex with the old man, Hagar conceives and all of a sudden Sarai gets PISSED OFF and JEALOUS.

God and an angel tell Hagar that the son, to be called Ishmael, will have a successful lineage, as long as Hagar returns to Sarai as her slave. "Oh yea, and there's something else I'd like to tell you about your son," the angel says. "He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren."

Finally, in Chapter 17, God makes a covenant with Abram, and it goes something like this. "You can have all the land of Canaan if you and all the men in your tribe chop of the tips of your penises. And any man that doesn't have this operation done will no longer have a soul."

Abram is now called Abraham, and Sarai is now called Sarah. God tells Abe that Sarah will give birth to a son (at 90 years old!) and Abraham understandably laughs. So, Abraham happily chop off his foreskin, as well the foreskin of 13-year-old Ishmael and every male in his house. The word "house" used here is probably more like a tribe at this point, and includes other families, herdsmen, slaves, etc. More than likely, by the time this was finished there was a sizeable amount of penis flesh laying around. Just imagine that, piles of foreskins!

I will end this section of Abraham's story here. And will continue tomorrow with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and God's request for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, who will be his heir.

The Tower of Babel -

Unless you're into funny names like Nimrod and Arphaxad, or if you like reading more into things than you need to, I would advise skipping Chapter 10 of Genesis. Chapter 10 is just the usual boring family lineage one finds sprinkled here and there throughout the Bible. The ancient Israelites idea of "family values" was basically to protect and preserve the family line as much as possible.

After all the 'begats' I come across another famous tale - the Tower of Babel. The Bible tells me that prior to the Tower's downfall, all of humanity spoke one language. I'm going to call "Bullsh*t!" on this one! The Tower of Babel event supposedly occurred around 2400 BCE. By this time, there were numerous civilizations in full effect. Not just the Sumerians, but the Egyptians as well. And what about the smattering of Native American tribes who may not have been full-fledged civilizations, but were on what would one day be American soil at the time? Or the various Asian, European, and African tribes. Archaeologists believed Neandertals (who went extinct maybe 24,000 years ago) had to have some sort of language. And of course, are own ancient ancestors evolved maybe 2 million years ago. Anyways, you get the picture.

The story of the Tower begins in Genesis, Chapter 11. In order to be closer to the gods, men start building a humongous tower so that they can be close to heaven. Given that these are superstitious men in the desert, this seems like a fairly innocent thing to do.

But God sees this from his heavenly perch, and decides to come down and inspect the tower. An ALL-KNOWING, ALL-POWERFUL God, comes down from heaven, to look at a tower being built by Bronze Age men. Actually, God and at least one other came down, because He says, "Let US come down."

If I was reading the Bible for spiritual inspiration, I would've stopped reading at the conflicting creation story in the second chapter of Genesis. Fortunately, I'm reading it for other reasons, so I'm just letting the "physical God who needs to come down and inspect buildings" thing slide.

After inspection, God apparently sees this tower as a threat. A THREAT!!! He thinks that if the humans reach Him in heaven, they will become omnipotent like Him. Huh?

In response, God and his friend(s) (other gods? Angels?) go down among the builders of the tower and confuse them by giving them multiple languages and then scatter these people to all ends of the Earth.

The rest of the Chapter 11 is more geneaology that we can casually skip. The most important thing is the birth of one of Judaism's legendary and mythological heroes, Abraham, whom I will discuss next time.

I am more suspicious than ever that those religious folks who claim to have read the Bible, didn't. Or they are lacking reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. More likely, they have so much conviction in the Talking Snake theory, that their minds are doing unneccessary mental gymnastics just to fit the Bible's message with a modern-day worldview with up-to-date data and facts. Either way, I'm really starting to feel bad for pious, religious people, and concerned for American politics in general.

In conclusion, I must invoke our modern day understanding of reality on this story. When we're talking about towers to heaven, the Tower of Babel must have been very UNIMPRESSIVE in light of all the buildings that have ever been built. We're talking about Bronze Age technology here, folks. This thing, if it even existed, was way smaller than the average skyscraper, let alone the Sears Tower. If the Sears Tower can't reach "heaven", then imagine how inadequate the Tower of Babel was.

I am sad to report that the god of the Bible is a very petty god, indeed. Can't these religious people just believe in a deist God? That's what all of their arguments (Prime Mover, First Cause, Design, etc.) point to, not this mentally unstable character in the Bible. As a nonbeliever, I have no problem with a deist God, because there's no dogma attached to it.

Tune in next time to read about Abraham, the supposed founder of Judaism, and his near-successful attempt at child sacrifice.

I am at the story of Noah's Ark. Someone needs to edit the Bible - badly. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people altered it and changed it prior to its canonization. This part of the Old Testament was probably canonized before 'The Exile' of the Jews.

I last left off at Chapter 6, the beginning of the stories of Noah. Yes, I said stories. There's at least two distinct narrations going on at the same time.

The authors of this section of the Bible are all over the place. For instance, in Chapter 6 God asks Noah to bring two of each animal into the ark, and then in Chapter 7, which is essentially an altered version of Chapter 6, God tells Noah to bring seven of each clean animal and two of each unclean animal.

Chapter 6 starts off by saying that by Noah's time man had multiplied and gave birth to daughters, whom the "sons of God" thought were hot stuff and wanted to have sex with them. Nobody knows what is meant by the "sons of God" but most people think they are angels. Angels with penises? WHY?!?!

Somewhere between the giants and the angelic sex, God gets tired of struggling with man's flesh and says men shall only live for 120 years. Except for Noah, because he lives another 350 years after the flood.

After sentencing humans to live 120 years (which is still a nice age to live to), the story jumps to men having evil thoughts, and God's decision TO KILL EVERY LIVING THING because of these evil thoughts! Wow! What a bad idea!

Even the children and unborn fetuses? Those were evil too, I guess. Not to mention the poor critters - millions of species of germs, insects, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians - many of which only exist in very isolated geographic locations (i.e. kangaroos), and what about dinosaurs?

So, all humans die except for Noah, of course, who is described as "just and perfect." Yes, the same Noah who later on gets drunk and naked in front of his family. Wow! For Noah to be considered just and perfect compared to everyone else, I'm wondering what everyone else was like.

God tells Noah to make an ark that is 450 feet long. How is a 450 foot long boat going to carry MILLIONS of species of different kinds of creatures? The Bible says the animals walked onto the ark on the "self-same" day, which means they had to enter the ark at a rate of at least 20 animals a second!

Chapter 7 flip-flops alot, but basically the deluge begins by God opening "the windows of heaven", an allusion the firmament. The firmament is an invisible solid barrier that separates the waters of chaos (instead of space, they believed that there was an infinite amount of water up there) to keep us dry. The firmament is actually mentioned in the first chapter creation account. It's hard to understand now because we modern humans know there's no such thing as a firmament, but the ancient Israelites apparently believed that there was a firmament, and God occasionally opened it to let in a little water. This was probably their explanation for rain, or why the sky was blue.

In Chapter 7, the flood is said to last 40 days and 40 nights, but then it says in the same chapter that the flood lasted 150 days! Like I said - either someone's messing with us or whoever canonized this didn't care to factcheck.

Finally, in Chapter 8, "God remembers Noah."

I like to think God said, "Oh yea, I forgot about the guy with the boat and all the animals."

In Chapter 8 again, there's reference to both 150 days and 40 days, as if there's no problem with mentioning each right next to each other. There's other problems too. Noah sends out a raven which flew about to and fro until the water dried up, but he also sent a dove, which seven days later comes back with an olive leaf.

HOW DID AN OLIVE TREE SURVIVE A GLOBAL FLOOD THAT LASTED AT LEAST 40 DAYS!!??!!

Another problem - Genesis says that the waters dried up in the first month, and then later it says it was the second month. If people really took the Bible literally, they'd be insane.

But that's not the end of the madness. God tells Noah to let all the animals out and let them multiply and be abundant, but Noah also builds an altar and sacrifices the extra "clean animals" (remember the seven pairs of clean animals?).

After smelling the sweet smell of burning animals (mmm ... hamburgers), God now feels bad for what He's done. "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."

Those are the word of an all-knowing, all-powerful God. He actually felt bad for slaughtering off wholesale a whole population of humans and animals. How comforting!

And as a sign of his sorrow, he makes a rainbow to remind Himself not to slaughter off all the animals again. Rainbows, in case you didn't know, are natural occurrences that happen when light reflects of water at a certain angle. Now, when I see a rainbow, I imagine in my head that God is telling Himself, "Oh yea, I almost forgot not to MURDER OFF ENTIRE POPULATIONS OF ORGANISMS!!!"

Chapter 9 ends with Noah being drunk and naked and pissed off at his sons for seeing him drunk and naked. Noah lives 350 years AFTER the flood.

As you can probably tell, I'm pretty pissed off right now. This is obviously the clumsy handiwork of priests who are trying to reconcile TWO conflicting flood accounts. There are literally millions of people out there who believe this story is literally true, AND they vote.

Next time, I'm going to topple the Tower of Babel.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

I''m re-reading the Bible. Not for any particular reason, except that I can, and I feel it will legitimize my nonbelief. The first time around it led me out of faith. Who knows? Maybe the second time around, I'll be led back into it ...

I'm on Chapter 6 of Genesis.

When I left off last time I was at Chapter 3, where God plays hide and seek with Adam and Eve, and later punishes the both of them for eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and even admits there are other gods (see the last note).

Adam and Eve ate the fruit and became ashamed. When they heard God WALKING and TALKING in the garden, they hid and God couldn't find them. God called unto Adam, and said unto him, "Where art thou?"

Keep this version of God in mind because Yahweh changes later on in the Bible. He becomes more ephereal and not so limited to the physical realm. At this stage of the Israelite evolution, the God of the Bible is nothing more than one god out of many - a myth with concepts borrowed from previous Canaanite/Sumerian myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma elish.

Chapter 4 is similarly filled with problems. To summarize, Adam has sex with Eve, presumably for the first time, and they have kids. Cain and Abel. Cain is an agricultural kind of guy, and Abel is an animal herder. When they give a sacrifice to God, God likes Abel's sacrifice (presumably because God likes the smell of blood and gore). Cain is then jealous of Abel, and so he kills his brother. After coming to the conclusion that Cain murdered his brother, God banishes Cain.

Here's where it gets weird - Cain is actually worried that other people will find him and kill him! First of all, how many people are there in the world? At this point, I just thought three - Cain and his parents. Even stranger, God is just as worried that someone will kill Cain, so He puts a mark on Cain and then sends Cain packing eastward (the land of Nod).

And then Cain "knew his wife". Where the hell did he get the wife!!???!! After knowing his wife, Cain's wife gives birth to Enoch and they built a city. A CITY FOR ONE FAMILY!!??!!

Okay, so Chapter 4 is pissing me off. I must have glossed over this stuff the last time I read the Bible.

Chapter 5 fares no better. It's just a list of Adam's offspring, from Cain's son Lamech and Adam's other son Seth. These people live to be 900 years plus. Holy crap! At the end, the infamous Noah is born.

And that leaves me at Chapter 6. There's a lot of things happening in Chapter 6, so I'm going to leave that for the next note, or blog (whatever). Tune in next time as I try to tease out some meaning from this turning point for mankind, when God kills off almost all of humanity, and then feels bad about it afterwards!

Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament).

I've mentioned before that I'm re-reading the Bible. Not for any particular reason, except that I can, and I feel it will legitimize my nonbelief. The first time around it led me out of faith. Who knows? Maybe the second time around, I'll be led back into it!

More recently, I've read most of the Koran, and a lot of Hindu and Buddhist stories and sutras. I'm also very familiar with Greek mythology and even some Native American lore.

Since I'm reading other books, the going will be slow, but I think the analysis of it will be more thorough. I'm currently at Chapter 3 in Genesis. First off, I would like to say that anyone that says the Bible is inerrant has not gone past the first two chapters! There's two contradicting creation accounts right there!

God also tells Adam that if he eats from the fruit of the tree of good and evil, that he will die the SAME DAY!!! But Adam lives on for another 930 YEARS!!! Did God just lie? Yes, it seems He did.

Also, is it me or is God SURPRISED at Adam's actions. An all-knowing deity can not be surprised! And in just the first few chapters, God even implies that there are other gods as well. In 3:22, for example God is upset that Adam ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, and has just made him animal skin clothes. God says, " Behold, then man is become as one of us, to know good and evil."

Upon further research, This fits right in with the fact that the ancient Israelites started off as pagans. They were basically Canaanites and Sumerians. Genesis was probably first being compiled in the 10th century BCE and was in its current form by the 5th century BCE.

The writing that took place in 1000 BCE represents the first stage when the ancient Israelites broke off from the surrounding Canaanite/Sumerian cultures, and started focusing not on many gods, but on one particular god named El. At the time that the authors of Genesis were first writing (1000 BCE?), the Israelites still recognized that other gods existed, which I will bring up later when I get to them.

The REAL Desert Dogs: Bury my legs in the El Pasos

This video takes place in the El Pasos, which is actually close to Inyokern, California.

The Desert Dogs try for their third and final time to find a Paiute 'mummy'. Along the way, they come across some 'tuuwaruugidi', a Kawaiisu word for 'bad omen'.

Also in this episode, what to do if you forgot your eating utensils, training dogs to stay away from rattlesnakes, and a shout-out to all the other desert adventurers out there, like the Dzrt Grls, Panamint Charlie, Antelope Valley Haunts, and Adventure Space.

www.adventure-space.com
www.antelopevalleyhaunts.com
www.digital-desert.com
www.dzrtgrls.com
www.panamintcharlie.com

The other day Jesus graced me with a parking spot at the local supermarket. Hallelujah! It really is wonderful that we have a God that loves us so much that He can grace us with things most people take for granted, like the occasional parking spot, and that leads me to what this meditation is about. I’m not shy about praising the Lord.

It’s okay to speak about religion positively, but it’s not okay to criticize it. In fact, it’s a social taboo. It’s a taboo that God Himself put into our social relations.

From what I understand, every major critic of religion out there needs to hire security. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (former Muslim), and many others, all need to protect themselves from the righteous. Poor nonbelievers. If you would only believe in our ancient Bronze Age stories, you wouldn’t need to protect yourselves, now would you?

Speaking of Sam Harris, let me show you how deluded an unbeliever is when debating against believers:

Afternoon Meditations for the Employed: Persecution

Hello fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, I wanted to talk to you about how glorious it is that we are persecuted in the name of the Most High. If you are persecuted at all, praise His Name because it is a sign that we are TRUE Christians!

The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3:12, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”

You may know me. I like to preach the Good News to everyone I meet. Whenever someone listens to what I say, I know that God put him or her in my path to receive the seed that is His Word. But every once in a while, I run into a so-called ‘atheist’ who completely rejects what I say and turns around and criticizes what I am telling him.

Yes, my friends, there are actually people out there who not only know of His Holy Word, but reject it outright. This is when you can take comfort in the words of Jesus Christ Himself, when he said in Matthew 5:10, “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.”

By telling people that they are wrong to not believe in God (and Jesus Christ in particular), or invoking His name publicly every time I find an empty parking spot or anytime I narrowly avoid danger; I am helping people. But when people try to prove that what I am saying is false, they are attacking a belief that is inside my head. Hence, by criticizing or attacking my beliefs (which are in my head), they are in effect persecuting me.

So, take comfort Christians. We know the Truth. These poor nonbelievers have been deluded, either by the Devil, or as 2 Thessalonians 2:11 says, God Himself! “For this reason, God will send them a powerful delusion so that they will believe a lie.” Hallelujah!

God knows what’s going to happen in the future. In fact, He’s willing to make sure that what He says will happen will come to be by deluding certain segments of His creation so that they won’t believe in Him, making it easier for us Christians to realize that we are being persecuted by those who were deluded by God Himself.

It’s so simple.

The REAL Desert Dogs: Desert Dog Down!

This time, the Desert Dogs set out to find those elusive mummies they've heard about in the past (see the first El Paso episode). But the spirits of the dead decide to thwart their efforts. Ben, the Desert Dog website's blogger, fell seriously ill as the Dogs get closer to their rendezvous.

Also in this episode, the Desert Dog's Bug Man Marty Lewis finds a hive of killer bees, sits right next to them and talks about them too. He finds another insect, but that will be in the video found at the Desert Dog website, www.therealdesertdogs.com.

Archaeological Site Steward Joe Perry runs across numerous artifacts, even what may be a Native American burial, complete with beads, a broken metate, and maybe even some bone.

Music used with permission from Petroleum (Warner Music Group, the owners of Metallica's music, started cracking down on us). We might have passed the dispute process, because they stopped muting our videos. Gotta love fair use!

Previously, I wrote a rather lengthy explanation about a philosopher named Baruch Spinoza. Here's the practical part. You can apply Spinoza's ethics to real-life situations like cigarette smoking. Wanna know how? It's very easy. Learn as much as possible about the addiction.

This is actually how most people get out of their addictions, they become experts.

I used to smoke a pack and half to two packs a day, and so I was a heavy smoker. I was so addicted that I had to smoke just to make me feel normal. The way I overcame smoking was to examine all the reasons I held to rationalize my smoking, and all the triggers that led me to do it.

In other words, I acquired knowledge about particular things. For instance, I smoked because it made me feel calm when I was stressed out, because others around me smoked, and because I had acquired a taste for the smoke. I also had multiple triggers that I had associated with lighting up; someone calling me, getting in a car, eating, drinking, being bored, etc.

However, as I examined each reason it became clear to me that they held no water. The physical addiction to nicotine subsides in about two weeks, but the mental addiction can last forever. The mental aspect of the addiction is the biggest part of the addiction, yet it is only a figment of the imagination.

So I thought about my reasons. My first reason was that smoking makes me calmer. This reason was debunked after I imagined two people on a park bench; one is smoking and the other is reading a book. Who appears to be calmer? The person quietly reading a book of course! The person smoking is too busy trying to become normal again. Besides, nicotine is a stimulant and thus actually has the effect of making a person less calm. Reason 1 debunked.

The second reason was being around people who smoked. After watching people interact and smoke and laugh and talk, it became obvious that smoking part isn't that important. What causes people to laugh and interact with each other is simply being there. Reason 2 was debunked.

The third reason I had was that I had acquired a taste for smoke. The taste of smoke is tricky. First of all, it isn't a necessary taste but to be consciously aware in the present moment of smoke inside my mouth was enough to convince me that cigarette smoke in fact does not taste good at all. Reason 3 was debunked.

My fourth reason was the unconscious triggers. I would get into a car and light up, or if someone called me I'd light up. These were largely habits. I began to pay attention to what activities caused me to light up, and I wrote down a list. I had become aware of my triggers, something that very few smokers try to do. There was no reason to smoke.

What I'm illustrating here is that the most important thing is really to internalize your knowledge; learn about your habits and why YOU do them. Understanding WHY you do something, makes it easier to STOP doing something.

From there, you need only take action. Or actually, you only need to STOP.

Now imagine applying this to all our vices. Wouldn't it be great? Well, it's easier said then done. I've done this for a few things already, and of course there are more to do. This has been spoken of by numerous people, not just Spinoza, so there's a lot of words to back it up. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Siddhartha Gautama, William James, Bernadette Roberts ... they say the same things but they only differently. Supposedly, if enough vices are removed and replaced with knowledge and productive skills, one can reach a state of happiness, or 'excellence' as Aristotle called it.

It is a difficult state of being to achieve, and as Spinoza, a heretic who was excommunicated because he did not have the right view of God, said, "That which is excellent is as difficult as it is rare."

This is going to be a long one, but if you like philosophy then I think you'll enjoy it. The next blog will feature something more practical.

Baruch Spinoza's theory of ethics is still applicable today, and is even more relevant then ever in light of recent shifts in the views of religion. Being that I am writing this over 300 years after Spinoza, I will tweek it to fit a more modern understanding of the issues being brought up.I don't mean to reinvent the wheel, just to evolve it. Maybe throw some treads on it and attach it to a robot. Haha… I will also examine one particular example of how Spinoza's ethics can come in handy, and that is my own experience with smoking.

Spinoza wrote about his views on ethics and his concept of God at a time when Christianity was a dominant and militant force in Europe. His views were deemed heretical and he was subsequently sent into exile. He probably would have seemed fairly normal by today's standards, as the influence of the church, while still great, is such that it no longer administrates punishment for heresy.

Spinoza's ethical theory relies greatly on gathering more knowledge. He believes that we have a free mind, but not a "free will." In fact, humans are deterministic in the sense that they are slaves to their desires. By increasing knowledge, however, Spinoza argues that the desire for the most basic needs and wants in life can be largely superseded by a desire for higher things in life, such as wisdom. This switching of "masters" allows a person to free his mind, if not his will.A free mind doesn't control the body, but a human's individual desire does. This is because a body has certain affections that it needs in order to persist. So, when our body craves something – like something we are addicted to - our mind will crave it as well. This craving for something by the mind and the body is "appetite," and when the craving is tied to our consciousness, when we are constantly aware of it, is called desire. To illustrate, a drug addict will choose his drug of choice over sobriety over and over again because the drug has the effect of bringing him back to a perceived state of normality.During his ordeal however, a drug addict can think of what it must be like to not be addicted, even if just reflecting on the times prior to his addiction. He is free to think as he wishes, but not to act. His addiction is not necessarily connected to his intellect, but his actions are connected to his addiction.In order to begin to adopt more positive behaviors, Spinoza suggests developing good habits and most importantly, acquiring knowledge. Acquiring knowledge, specifically intuition toward particular instances (like drug addiction), will free us from our limited desires and replace the desire for lesser things, like drugs, with higher things, like knowledge.

To me, a human living more than 300 years after Spinoza, I can't help but admire his insight. Albeit his vocabulary is somewhat archaic, he touches on something that is relevant, even to one who is living in 2009. Today, of course, we are relatively familiar with fields in science that study the structure of matter right down to the atoms. And the strange thing about matter is that when we get down to the heart of it, it almost seems like it isn't there. It exists as a sort of energy.

That said, humans are caught in a weird situation. Given the vast expanse of space and time, an individual human is infinitesimally small and seemingly insignificant, yet for some reason a human comes from the default perspective that he or she is the center of the universe. Our perspective is largely why the reality of how insignificant an individual human is largely goes unnoticed by humans.The word "desire" is also antiquated. I would suggest that the word "addiction" be used to describe carnal desires, as it would be a better word to differentiate that particular kind of desire. Addiction, after all, is precisely what Spinoza was speaking about; physical and mental cravings tied to consciousness. Desire itself merely describes all appetites that our attached to our consciousness.

When humans with the proper faculties (not severely mentally handicapped) begin to seek knowledge about the world, there is a sort of satisfaction that is met as more knowledge and understanding is acquiesced. By learning more about the world, understanding our own mortality (memento mori), and discovering the connections between all of us, we are actually feeding another desire that we all have. Some call it "the need for God," while another may simply call it natural curiosity.For example, we don't actually see the thing out there in the world that light emanates from; we only see how it affects our eyes. And the way we interpret these things depends largely on the systems we've developed throughout our life to understand these phenomena. One's own religion, his understanding of science, and his own philosophy are what people use to understand reality, because we do not have any true perception of what "reality" is.So, a drug addict can overcome his addiction by seeking other things, and that's why many former drug addicts seek God. In a way, it's just filling one addiction with another. A drug addict overcomes addiction by focusing on a perceived truth (like God). He can remain relatively stupid (as far as book smarts go), but still conquer his addiction by focusing on something other than the problem.What Spinoza was talking about, however, is something more profound then simply switching addictions. And while his way isn't necessarily the only way, his solution of acquiring knowledge about particular things is better, and I can only speak from personal experience. Not by mistake, what Spinoza is describing has been mentioned by all mystics, religious and philosophical; from Buddha and Plato to Spinoza, and are still continuing on to the present.Humans naturally have a curiosity to understand their place in the universe, to understand the reality of it. Whatever it is, feeding this curiosity functions in much the same way as the drug addict who suddenly finds God, but structurally it is different. It removes the focus away from the addictions and/or bad habits; and gives us an objective understanding (yes, I think it’s possible to have an objective understanding) of why such behaviors are bad, and therefore unties the addiction from our consciousness. Colloquially speaking, the addiction seemingly floats away.

A Spinozan approach to addiction is better than adopting religion because the addiction isn't simply switched around, it actually is removed. It also begins to replace the addiction for the bad habit with a value judgment that has been determined by the person to be more valuable then the addiction itself.What makes these judgments valuable to a person is that they are in accordance with self-love and compassion; they are behaviors that make a better person. This is freedom, according to Spinoza. In essence, true freedom comes when we are able to make all our addictions float away.Philosopher Andrew Youpa said it this way, "... an individual in bondage is one whose value judgments result from his emotions and desires. A free individual, on the other hand, is someone whose emotions and desires result from his value judgments."

Next time, I will discuss how all this can be applied to practical situations like ending addictions.

Baruch Spinoza's theory of ethics is still applicable today, and is even more relevant then ever in light of recent shifts in the views of religion. Being that I am writing this over 300 years after Spinoza, I will tweek it to fit a more modern understanding of the issues being brought up.I don't mean to reinvent the wheel, just to evolve it. Maybe throw some treads on it and attach it to a robot. Haha… I will also examine one particular example of how Spinoza's ethics can come in handy, and that is my own experience with smoking.

Spinoza wrote about his views on ethics and his concept of God at a time when Christianity was a dominant and militant force in Europe. His views were deemed heretical and he was subsequently sent into exile. He probably would have seemed fairly normal by today's standards, as the influence of the church, while still great, is such that it no longer administrates punishment for heresy.

Spinoza's ethical theory relies greatly on gathering more knowledge. He believes that we have a free mind, but not a "free will." In fact, humans are deterministic in the sense that they are slaves to their desires. By increasing knowledge, however, Spinoza argues that the desire for the most basic needs and wants in life can be largely superseded by a desire for higher things in life, such as wisdom. This switching of "masters" allows a person to free his mind, if not his will.A free mind doesn't control the body, but a human's individual desire does. This is because a body has certain affections that it needs in order to persist. So, when our body craves something – like something we are addicted to - our mind will crave it as well. This craving for something by the mind and the body is "appetite," and when the craving is tied to our consciousness, when we are constantly aware of it, is called desire. To illustrate, a drug addict will choose his drug of choice over sobriety over and over again because the drug has the effect of bringing him back to a perceived state of normality.During his ordeal however, a drug addict can think of what it must be like to not be addicted, even if just reflecting on the times prior to his addiction. He is free to think as he wishes, but not to act. His addiction is not necessarily connected to his intellect, but his actions are connected to his addiction.In order to begin to adopt more positive behaviors, Spinoza suggests developing good habits and most importantly, acquiring knowledge. Acquiring knowledge, specifically intuition toward particular instances (like drug addiction), will free us from our limited desires and replace the desire for lesser things, like drugs, with higher things, like knowledge.

To me, a human living more than 300 years after Spinoza, I can't help but admire his insight. Albeit his vocabulary is somewhat archaic, he touches on something that is relevant, even to one who is living in 2009. Today, of course, we are relatively familiar with fields in science that study the structure of matter right down to the atoms. And the strange thing about matter is that when we get down to the heart of it, it almost seems like it isn't there. It exists as a sort of energy.

That said, humans are caught in a weird situation. Given the vast expanse of space and time, an individual human is infinitesimally small and seemingly insignificant, yet for some reason a human comes from the default perspective that he or she is the center of the universe. Our perspective is largely why the reality of how insignificant an individual human is largely goes unnoticed by humans.The word "desire" is also antiquated. I would suggest that the word "addiction" be used to describe carnal desires, as it would be a better word to differentiate that particular kind of desire. Addiction, after all, is precisely what Spinoza was speaking about; physical and mental cravings tied to consciousness. Desire itself merely describes all appetites that our attached to our consciousness.

When humans with the proper faculties (not severely mentally handicapped) begin to seek knowledge about the world, there is a sort of satisfaction that is met as more knowledge and understanding is acquiesced. By learning more about the world, understanding our own mortality (memento mori), and discovering the connections between all of us, we are actually feeding another desire that we all have. Some call it "the need for God," while another may simply call it natural curiosity.For example, we don't actually see the thing out there in the world that light emanates from; we only see how it affects our eyes. And the way we interpret these things depends largely on the systems we've developed throughout our life to understand these phenomena. One's own religion, his understanding of science, and his own philosophy are what people use to understand reality, because we do not have any true perception of what "reality" is.So, a drug addict can overcome his addiction by seeking other things, and that's why many former drug addicts seek God. In a way, it's just filling one addiction with another. A drug addict overcomes addiction by focusing on a perceived truth (like God). He can remain relatively stupid (as far as book smarts go), but still conquer his addiction by focusing on something other than the problem.What Spinoza was talking about, however, is something more profound then simply switching addictions. And while his way isn't necessarily the only way, his solution of acquiring knowledge about particular things is better, and I can only speak from personal experience. Not by mistake, what Spinoza is describing has been mentioned by all mystics, religious and philosophical; from Buddha and Plato to Spinoza, and are still continuing on to the present.Humans naturally have a curiosity to understand their place in the universe, to understand the reality of it. Whatever it is, feeding this curiosity functions in much the same way as the drug addict who suddenly finds God, but structurally it is different. It removes the focus away from the addictions and/or bad habits; and gives us an objective understanding (yes, I think it’s possible to have an objective understanding) of why such behaviors are bad, and therefore unties the addiction from our consciousness. Colloquially speaking, the addiction seemingly floats away.

A Spinozan approach to addiction is better than adopting religion because the addiction isn't simply switched around, it actually is removed. It also begins to replace the addiction for the bad habit with a value judgment that has been determined by the person to be more valuable then the addiction itself.What makes these judgments valuable to a person is that they are in accordance with self-love and compassion; they are behaviors that make a better person. This is freedom, according to Spinoza. In essence, true freedom comes when we are able to make all our addictions float away. Philosopher Andrew Youpa said it this way, "... an individual in bondage is one whose value judgments result from his emotions and desires. A free individual, on the other hand, is someone whose emotions and desires result from his value judgments."

Next time, I will discuss how all this can be applied to practical situations like ending addictions.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened.” - Luke 11:9-10

Any true Christian knows that all prayers are answered in three basic ways: Yes, No, or Wait.

Of course, the so-called skeptics always try to butt in on the truth, and say nonsense like, “What else do you expect?”

The best answer is that you can expect God to answer your prayers. I know in my heart of hearts that God answers prayers. In fact, I have tons of stories about how God has answered my stories. Why, just the other day I was praying to God, in tongues might I add, to heal my little puppy, which had just got run over by some low-rider driving a Chevy Impala. Guess what happened? Nothing.

That’s right! God answered my prayer “No.” And I respect Him for it, too. It is His call, after all. That is the proof that God answers prayers.

Another friend, William, said “That a difference that makes no difference is no difference.” He was presumably poking fun at my claim that God answered my prayer, and that no prayer would have the same result.

William wasn’t looking at the big picture. To quote Jesus, in Luke11:9-10, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened.”

Jesus didn’t specify WHAT would be given to you if you asked, only that “it” will be given to you. And IT is simply an answer! If I didn’t ask God to heal my puppy, then He wouldn’t have answered my prayer. But since I DID ask, Yahweh clearly and decisively answered it with a “No.”

William didn’t realize that there was indeed a difference. I prayed and God answered my prayer.
Some good advice to make sure you get the best results in prayer is to actually worship God in the beginning of your prayer. Actually, Jesus provides the best framework for a prayer, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who has sinned against us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

Lay it on thick. God likes that stuff. Then ask God to help you, but please be earnest! I’m pretty sure that since God is all-knowing, he knows whether you really mean it. True, since He knows everything, He also knew what you were going to say when He decided to create the universe somewhere between 6,000 years and 18 billion years ago, depending on which model of the universe you subscribe to.

Spread the Good Word to others, be sure to forward this to friends and family!

2 Kings 2:23-24: "... as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

Sometimes at the copy machine, we find ourselves in the awful predicament of having to fill it back up with paper, because the last person to use the machine did not. In the employee breakroom, the stains on the table suggest that someone ate some barbecue chicken, but did not bother to clean up after himself.

And to make it worse, when passing by two employees, you overhear them gossiping and saying mean things about you, giggling in hushed tones as you pass by.


Quite often, irritation arises with fellow employees because of various reasons; neglect, gossip, etc. This is when we should consider 2 Kings.. 2:..23-..24, when the Prophet Elisha sent two female bears to maul and tear apart 42 children who were making fun of him.Most Christians might ignore this story, saying it has nothing to do with Jesus teachings. This is what is called "cherry picking".


The story of the 42 children being torn apart is a part of the collection books that we Christians call the "inerrant Word of God." And so we must embrace it as truth.


There must be wisdom in this story, and this is it:The next time you hear your constitutuents gossiping about you, or if you know who it was that didn't fill up the copier, or who didn't clean up their mess - ask God to repeat the events of 2 Kings 2:23-24. Put yourself in the sandals of the Prophet Elisha, and remember, as Jesus said in Matthew 21:22, "... whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."


Please feel free to forward to as many people as you'd like.

Time for some Q & A. Someone asked me this question:

What can be used as evidence for what one believes? You say that a christian cannot use a bible to prove their point but a scientist can? If you yourself are still learning then how can you objectively know that you understand religion or anything else as well as you think you do? You used to believe in the bible's teaching and now you look back and feel you were wrong. Then how do you not know that you are wrong now? I find your points through out the topic very intriguing and was just curious as to what is the best way objectively to search for the truth? And for that matter what do you believe truth really is?

Well, the scientific method can be used. But so far, all the times it has been used on religion, it has failed. The biggest experiment on prayer, financially backed by the Templeton group (which is a group that seeks to show religious truth by scientific methods), showed that prayer makes no difference at all.

We can also use the Dead Sea Scrolls, and older manuscripts, that show differences in the Bible as it has been copied over the millenia.

You seem focused on finding an "objective truth". I'd have to say this is physically impossible, given our brain capacity and our having one fixed biological perspective of being the center of the universe (we experience the universe as it enters our senses). We can approximate an "objective truth" only through intellectual honesty. That is to say we must have the courage to call a spade a spade.

The truth is that religion is a failed science. Claims made by religions made sense thousands of years ago because people tried to interpret their experiences and natural phenomena by integrating their superstitions in with their explanations - that's how we get Biblical ideas like the firmament or the "windows of heaven" mentioned in the Flood myth, or the circular (not spherical) earth.

Science shows us that as time goes on, newer information is continually filtered and we are constantly updating what we know about the world. Imagine if humanity decided to be dogmatic about scientific notions and stopped at Newton. Einstein's theories on relativity and gravity, etc. would not be allowed into scientific thought.

Well, in a sense this has already happened with the practice of our religions. Except instead of being stuck hundreds of years ago, we are stuck THOUSANDS of years ago. Now THAT is scary!

Roughly all religious testimonies where someone actually claims to have come into contact with a primary source or ’God’ is the same. And I can say that because I’ve heard many testimonies in my life, and I’ve noticed the pattern.

Essentially, the person hits some hard times or some significant event leaves the person with no other option than to give up or surrender.

What happens next is where they make their mistake, because no one really knows what they’re surrendering to, but they sure would like to know.

Usually, they believe they are surrendering to God, and what God is to a desperate individual largely depends on what a person already believes God to be.

And that’s the problem. "God" is a word that carries with it certain baggage, and the word entails different things depending on the context. I’m pretty sure ancient Greeks, when in similar circumstances, petitioned with all their heart to Zeus or even Poseidon. If Hurricane Katrina occurred in ancient Greece, for example, people would’ve been praying their hearts out to Poseidon.

The person who first converted me claimed to have had God speak to him, and so he picked up the Bible and became caught up with its mythos. If you believe the Bible is true, then of course you will wind up believing that the picture that it paints is true. This becomes obvious in the choice of words people use.

A very common thing to say, something that I’ve said myself, is that "The Bible tells us that _________ (fill in the blank) is true" or "Jesus tells us (through the Bible) that __________ (fill in the blank) is true."

The entire statement is built on the assumption that the Bible is true.
I can’t say that I have personally met God, but I have met religion. My brush with religion is largely the experience that most people have. I really don’t think most people who profess to be religious really buy into their own religion. They try to, but they don’t really believe it. This is because most people do not meet face-to-face with a primary source, and are thus prone to doubt. And this is a good thing.

Most people have never seen a convincing miracle. Instead, they are religious because of some perceived social pressure, and thus become religious because of a secondary source.

This secondary source is extremely common and powerful. Church is, after all, important to certain families; it’s culturally important in certain regions; and sometimes it’s just a fun place to hang out. Most people go to church to be around other people.

The trick to not get into this mess, is to not make the first mistake of assuming that religion must be true. When you’ve managed to surrender and you feel that blissful feeling that everything will be okay, don’t run to the Bible or the Koran for answers. While I don’t doubt that when one manages to totally surrender, there is a feeling of bliss and vivid awareness of some sort of presence, we should quickly understand that this is a feeling that people of all religions have felt.

The first mistake comes when the individual gives this feeling of presence a name and subscribes to a background story that simply isn’t true.

And to you people who have never felt the primary source, it would behoove you to be more skeptical toward such claims.

Just an Infidel: My Deconversion Story

I guess I'm an atheist in respect to religion, but not necessarily to God.

Sure, I'm still open to the idea of a God or gods existing, but I know that the concept of God could not be accurately presented from any of the religions we have at our disposal. A personal God as espoused by our holiest books is something I have come to reject. I've even witnessed spiritual phenomena during the course of my life, some might even say supernatural, but fortunately I abstained from attributing these incidents to a specific religion, which is a mistake many people have done.

I grew up in a Catholic home; Filipino Catholics. Most people have heard of the zeal of Filipino Catholics, some of whom will actually go to such lengths as nailing themselves to a cross! I haven't seen such acts in person, but often at a Filipino funeral, someone will lug a huge cross down the church aisle just to get their point across. My mother, however, wasn't steeped in this tradition, and so I wasn't raised by the zealots of the Catholic faith, rather just the moderates.

Later on in my life, at about 14, my father, who is an American of British ancestry (since before the Revolutionary War) converted to Protestant Christianity, and it was through my father that I became acquainted with it as well. The brand of Protestantism that he converted to was Pentecostalism, known for preachers laying their hands on babbling parishioners speaking in tongues, falling onto the ground, and writhing in religious ecstasy.

My first experience with the "laying on the hands" occurred during a youth group session. At the end of his sermon, the youth pastor asked us to come up to the altar and be prayed for. It wasn't long until he began speaking in tongues and tapping people's foreheads. Naturally (or perhaps supernaturally), these normal, boisterous teenagers, began falling down and twitching like epilepsy victims.

I'd also gone up there to pray, but was a bit perplexed by the odd happenings going on around me, though I had heard about this in prior meetings. When the youth pastor started praying over me, I thought I felt a tremor in my knees.

He then laid his hand on my forehead and blew out a blast of hot air at me. I opened my eyes and looked at him, and he gave me a genuine look of surprise and took a step back. He approached me again and repeated the whole thing all over again. I didn't know what to do, because I didn't really feel like I had to fall down, and he stopped after that, moving on to someone more versed at what to do.

Admittedly, I almost passed out because of his breath, which reeked of halitosis and garlic. We eventually left this church because they began putting too much emphasis on speaking tongues, and were beginning to claim those who don't speak tongues will go to hell. "It's becoming too much like a cult," said my father.

So, we went on to another church that was part of a mainstream Pentecostal denomination, and it was called Calvary Assembly of God. As I had already been acquainted with the intensities of Pentecostal Christianity, all the erratic behaviors I encountered at Calvary were taken in stride. I really "grew in the Lord" at Calvary, became baptized, and began reading the Bible regularly. I was often found with my nose in the Bible, reading as much as I could of it.

I gained some great friends, and we regularly went on field trips, ranging from huge multi-church winter camps up in Lake Arrowhead, or surf trips with the youth group down in San Onofre. We'd become politically active and were involved in numerous pro-life protests and even one anti-gay counter-protest.

We'd regularly witness to complete strangers as well, as the Bible suggested we profess the Good News to all.

It wasn't until my junior year in high school that the first doubts crept in, and by this time I had moved to Lakewood, but would still try to attend church in Lomita as much I could.

None the less, there was a physical barrier of distance between me and the church I had grown to love. My parents divorced, I took my first hit from a joint, I had sex for the first time, got drunk, and other taboos were occurring regularly.

After committing or witnessing each sin, hellfire and damnation still seemed as far away as ever, and yet doing these things actually brought me closer to people, sex of course with my girlfriend at the time, and smoking and drinking with my friends, most of whom I am still in contact with today.

That said, I never really doubted the divinity of Jesus Christ at this time. Rather, it was the doctrine of sin that I began to doubt. How can these behaviors be evil? They were fun, they brought camaraderie, and sex brought on, for me at least, an emotional maturity that I couldn't have had should I have remained a virgin.

Another crack to my system of beliefs occurred while I was in the Navy. While overseas, spinning laps around the Persian Gulf in a brand new, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, I would sit on the fantail (or the rear of the ship) and ask myself the old chestnut, "Why was I here?"

And not just in the philosophical sense, but also in the social-political sense as well. This line of questioning led me into an inquiry that caused me to question one of the things I had taken granted for so long, and that was that America was an "innocent" country. In 1998, we were still bombing Iraq on a regular basis. It seems that the decade between the first Gulf War and the second was more like a siege than anything.

The United States prevented supplies from reaching the desert nation, and we enforced a no-fly zone, all the while bombing various targets while we were there. This notion of America as the best country or even an innocent one, actually goes hand in hand with my religiosity, as it is in fact a symptom of ethnocentrism. I've learned that the reason that I love America is not because it's the best country, it's just that it's the one I'm the most familiar with, and is the one I have always called home.

After I got out of the Navy, I attended Cypress Community College and it was there that I took my first philosophy class. This class fed some of my suspicions that began festering in the back of my mind. This is where my doubts about the Bible's validity and divinity of Jesus really began to manifest.

Initially, I was a militant agnostic, and was very hostile toward Christianity. It's very much the same as when I first became Christian and became very anti-secular, anti-"other religions", etc. There is an initial fanaticism that occurs each time a new belief sets in.

Around this time, my father went on to become a preacher, and my mother converted to Protestantism as well. My father and I get into some very interesting conversations at times, as one could imagine, but we always engage in these conversations with respect toward each other. We still have these conversations, often when we camp out in the desert.

I never completely gave up spirituality, and so I actually turned to eastern religions for a while. Buddhism in particular drew me in, though I did find Hinduism to be quite fascinating, too. However, Buddhism is steeped in alien mythology, and I decided to extract from it the things I thought made the most sense. Ironically, this is actually advice imparted from Siddhartha Gautama himself.

In Buddhism, for example, I thought much of the philosophy behind it was quite sound, such as Siddhartha's argument for extinguishing suffering. Meditation, too, is very practical, and can produce amazing spiritual insight. I have also learned through further Biblical research that the Old Testament is just influenced by numerous myths from Sumeria, Babylon, and Canaan, and that these myths were perpetuated by the Israelites, who had come out of these people.

If I were to sum up my personal belief, I'd say the concept of God is kind of like the mirrors placed in the upper corners of markets. They're not necessarily there to help store employees watch a theft; rather they are there to prevent the theft from happening.

When the shoplifter looks up at himself, he sees himself in a third person perspective, and the person he is seeing is a bad guy. Likewise, the concept of God is like an internal mirror.

This isn't even a new idea. Plato called it the form of the Good, Sigmund Freud called it a Super Ego, Christians and Jews call it Yahweh, and Muslims call it Allah. I just call it the "Ideal Self", which we strive to be like, and its standard is set largely by the society or culture we live in.

Similarly, there is a competing force, and this is our physical body's needs and desires. Plato might have called it natural urges, Freud called it the Id, Christians call it the Devil, and Muslims call it Shai'tan. I just call it the Animal Self.

The struggle between the two competing forces is basically the situation we are constantly in. I just drop the supernatural description and see it to be a natural part of being a social animal.

There's a reason there are mirrors high up in the corners of markets, and it's not necessarily what you think it is. They are there because they prevent crime.

No, it's not that they provide an angle that allows the store clerk to see a crime take place, and its not that they are one-way mirrors. When a potential thief sees himself in the mirror, he is more likely not to steal. He sees himself from a third person perspective, and the person he is seeing is the bad guy.

In one social psychology experiment, an experimenter put 150 candies on a table with a sign that said "Take one candy."

After an allotted period of time, and recording how many kids approached the candy bowl while hiding inside the house, the experimenter took the candy bowl and counted how many were taken. He then refilled the bowl with 150 candies but this time he put a mirror behind the bowl. After the allotted amount of time, he took the bowl and counted the candies again.

This experiment has been done repeatedly by psychology students all over the world, and every time the result is roughly the same. With the mirror there, children will usually take only one candy, and without the mirror, they will take more.

To answer the question, "What is God?" I'm going to say it is something of an internal mirror. Freud called it the Superego, Plato called it a Form, Christians call it YHWH, Muslims call it Allah. It is the ideal self, that perfect man or woman we would like to be, and sometimes we even actively strive to be like it.

While we were growing up, we pick up on various social norms like 'stealing is bad' and internalize it into our proper behavior. The social pressure that stems from this becomes our foundation for morality.

There is another force at work here that determines our behavior. Freud called it the Id, Plato might have called it 'natural urges', Christians call it the Devil, Muslims call it Shai'tan. I'll call it the Animal self. Having evolved from animals, we have much of the same basic urges that they do. We have the need for air, food, water, space, and sex. And if we don't get the right amount of these things, we suffer.

And so it is, that we are in a constant tug-of-war between these two things; our higher Ideal Self which proscribes what morality is, and the Animal Self which dictates our physical needs and desires.

Unfortunately, in the material realm, the realm of practicality, it is nearly impossible to be like the Ideal Self, and it is socially reprehensible to be like the Animal Self. Both are essential to our being, and so we find some kind of balance between the two extremes. The balance of the two, the actuality of what we are, has been called many things, but I will call it the Actual Self.

I would like to reiterate that there is nothing new that I'm proposing here. This has been noted many times throughout history and by people of conflicting beliefs. What might be different to you is applying these things to the question of what God is. There is a kind of universal experience that we all share just by virtue of living, thinking, remembering, and interpreting.

Collectively, this amounts to a certain expectation that is put on the individual, and this expectation is reinforced through parenting, by the school system, by our religions, philosophies, culture, and history.

God is the mirror that reflects the sum of all these mental constructions back at the self. God doesn't exist outside of our minds, He exists as a result of them. God is the mental reflection of all the things we think are Good; and His antithesis, call it the Devil, call it the Id, or call it the Animal Self, is the thing we don't want to accept as a part of our selves.

And so we demonize it. We don't want to see it in ourselves.

My suggestion is that we don't have to embrace the Animal Self, nor should we reject it. Rather, we should just understand the Animal Self and accept it. It is an inalienable part of who we are.

Most of us should know by now that the ancient Hebrews were pagans, and borrowed their concept of Yahweh from older gods like the Babylonian Marduk and the Sumerian El.

While the mythology of the Babylonians account for most of the worldview of the Hebrews, it is the Sumerian god El from which Yahweh (or YHWH) comes from. Briefly, El was Father of the Gods, Creator of Created Things, The Kindly, Kodesh. El wears bull horns on his helmet and resides at "the Source of Two Rivers" upon Mt. Lel.

El also had a wife named Asherah, who was considered the Queen of Heaven.

In the Bible, we see that Yahweh (the Hebrew's adaptation of El or Elohim) actually had a wife named Asherah. I'm pretty sure that much of the Hebrew's earlier history was lost or forbidden after the reforms of King Hezekiah and King Josiah.

But there are still parts of the Bible that allude to Asherah, especially in complaints from reformist "prophets" like the author of Jeremiah or in the historical accounts of 2 Kings. For instance, the "high places" or "groves" were places where Asherah was specifically worshipped, and she is referred to as the "Queen of Heaven".Check out these Bible verses: Jer. 7:17-18Jer. 44:17Deut. 16:212 Kings 18:4 .

It's strange to think of Yahweh being married. Isn't it?

We can also see how later reforms actually eliminated one earlier concept of god and replaced it with another. First it was the Sumerians and Babylonians, then it was the Hebrews, then it was the reforms of the kings Hezekiah and Josiah, later the various sects that formed out of Judaism, Christianity and its myriad of sects, and finally Islam.

People create and mold the concept of God to suit their needs, political or otherwise, and so religion is forever changing.