Christians tell us that God created people so imperfect that He blamed them for their imperfections, and therefore sent His Son down to be tortured and executed by these imperfect people, to make up for how imperfect they are and how imperfect they inevitably will be. It's crazy, but that's essentially what it's all about. Jesus is kind of like the Ultimate Scapegoat.

Leviticus Chapter 16 talks about the 'scapegoat', a ritual where all the sins of the tribe are placed on a goat and then the goat is taken out to the wilderness. I'm going to skip the ritual, as it seems pretty damn superstitious to me, and extremely uninteresting. That's my secret so far. In order to read the Bible, make sure you skip the parts that are boring.

Chapter 17 is just more regulation on sacrifices. These priests are not you average laissez faire capitalists; they want a complete monopoly. Chapter 17 is also significant because God says explicitly that it's the blood that atones for the sins in a sacrifice.

• If a man kills an animal and DOESN'T bring it to the tabernacle as an offering, he shall be cut off from the people. Presumably, this is because the man was going to offer this to some other god.
• Any person that eats blood will also be cut off from the people.
• If you eat an animal that died of natural causes, or was torn apart by other animals; you'll be unclean until evening.

I'm going to stop here because I want Leviticus 18 to stand alone. That's where we get into some of the debate about homosexuality. Please keep in mind some of the arbitrary rules we've read about up to this point, and how random they are (like boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk).

Exodus Chapter 17 is very quick and easy. Basically, the Israelites are still in the desert and they're pissed that there's no water. In fear of them, Moses asks God what's going on with the water supply and God tells Mo to tap a rock. Moses does so, and behold, water comes out of it!

The authors of the Bible don't really care about transitional material. After the watering episode, the Amelekites attack the Israelites. In the battle, as long as Moses holds both of his hands up into the air, the Israelites are winning; but if he lowers his hands, the Amelekites are winning. The battle goes on for so long that Moses is propped against a rock and his two homeboys held the hands up for him.

Chapter 17 lays out the case about how superstitious people were back then, and by extension how superstitious people are today. Superstition means a belief that isn't based on reason. If Moses actions were repeated today (lifting your hands affects the outcome of the battle), the general doing so would be thought of as eccentric at best. If Generals Patton or Petraeus held their hands up during a heated battle, most folks today would think they were crazy. In fact, they'd probably get fired.

But still, there are people today who let stories like this slide, believing that these events happened back then but can not be replicated today. That's an irrational belief itself, and I'd venture to say that it is superstitious as well.

Next time, the 10 Commandments. Are the ones we are familiar with the 'correct' ones, or are they even moral?

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!