The bald, brutal Bible
Greetings, fellow dot Calm Readers, Freedom fighters, and Truth Crusaders!
As you know, I'm interested in the Bible because so many of its followers want to use it to run MY life, whether I believe in it or agree with it or not.
So I'm back again today with a little more targeted commentary on the bald, brutal Bible.
Stick with me--by the end of this essay, you should be convinced that Christianity is no less primitive and brutal than the old Aztec religion, in which they cut hearts out of live people as sacrifices to make sure the sun would come up the next day.
Let's review our last session in Sunday School, shall we?
1. The Bible is God's perfect word. That means that you must believe every word on every page as being literally true. You are not free to interpret the Bible to ignore parts you don't like, to harmonize the hundreds of obvious internal contradictions among themselves, or to rationalize the obvious contradictions with reality as described by science.
Proverbs 30:5
Every word of God is pure
Psalm 12:6
And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times
Psalm 18:30
As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD's word is flawless
Psalm 33:4
For the word of the LORD holds true
Psalm 119:89
Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens
Isaiah 40:8
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever
And Jesus is God's word:
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
John 1:14
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us
...which, according to GotQuestions.org, also means that Jesus is God. So God is God, God's Word is Jesus, Jesus is God, God's Word is God. Does your head hurt yet? Dunno about you, but I am not my words, nor are my words me.... But, hey, it's not reality we're talking about here--it's the Bible!
2. God is perfect, which means that God DOES NOT change.
Malachi 3:6
For I am the Lord, I change not
Psalm 55:19
God, who is enthroned from of old, who does not change
Numbers 23:19
God is not human, that he should lie, nor a human being, that he should change his mind
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever
(since we've already established with John that Jesus is God)
This means that Old Testament (OT) God = New Testament (NT) God = today's God = future God = same God for all time. God's character DOES NOT change according to the Bible, which means that humans are not allowed to redefine God or His character to suit changing times and religious agendas. And Jesus is God, and Jesus DOES NOT change, either. Get it? Got it? Good.
3. Since God is perfect, His laws and commands are perfect. This means that God's laws and commands DO NOT change. This means that God's OT laws and commands = God's NT laws and commands = God's commands for us today = God's commands for us forever.
Psalm 19:7
The law of the LORD is perfect
Deuteronomy 11:26-28
Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day: And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Luke 16:17
It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
(Sorry, Tea Party Christian friend--there is no context around these verses, which are Jesus Himself speaking, that reads "JK, LOL! I didn't really mean that--you can follow the laws you like, like hating teh gayz and subjugating women and minorities, and ignore the ones you don't like, like divorce, eating pork and shellfish, getting tattoos, etc.")
Romans 2:13
The doers of the law shall be justified.
Romans 3:31
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Wasn't that fun?
It's important to keep these biblical facts in mind as we discuss the Bible to give our discussion the proper context.
So, then, why this discussion, and why am I calling the Bible bald and brutal?
The reason for this discussion is the language of the Bible. The entire Bible is written in such a way that readers miss how lurid and violent the stories are. The language is bland, making it too easy to miss the sheer horror of it all. And the book is presented as a bald list of statements that resolve into stories that move from one into the next, without ever pausing to allow the reader to absorb or consider the emotional impact of what he or she has just read.
Consider the story of Jephthah's daughter in Judges. First, Jephthah promises God that he will sacrifice unto Him as a burnt offering whatever comes to greet him if he returns home successfully from battle: "And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: 'If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.'" Naturally, Jephthah is upset when what greets him after his victory is his only child--his daughter whom he loves. But he sacrifices her as a burnt offering to God just the same: "...and he did to her as he had vowed." (If you remember the story of Abraham and Isaac, the fact that an angel steps down to stop Abraham from slaying his second-born son reads like an after-market add-on--since God had no trouble talking with Abraham, why didn't He just tell Abraham himself? Also, Abraham and Isaac went up the mountain together, but Abraham came down alone--another hint that Abraham really did murder Isaac in an earlier version, but later editors "cleaned up" the cruelty and gave Abraham's lineage a place to grow through Isaac--apparently, someone realized after the fact that Abraham wouldn't have given rise to the tribes of Israel if they killed off his only legitimate son.) If you click the Judges link and read the passage for yourself, you'll see how easy it is just to move onto the next thought and the next story because that's how the language flows. It's too easy to miss the real horror of the story here: according to the Bible, Jephthah murdered his own daughter and burned her as a sacrifice to his God. He tied her up hand and foot, placed her on the altar, slashed her throat, and burned her body to create a sweet savor unto the Lord--that's what God commands, and that's how it was done. And then Jephthah, covered in their daughter's blood, went home to his wife and had to tell her that he had murdered their only child to appease their God. How do you think she reacted? How did she feel, what did she think? What would you think if you'd been Jephthah's wife or daughter? What would you say if your father told you he needed to murder you as a sacrifice to God? Would you think he was honorable, crazy, or evil?
The baldness of the Bible lets the reader gloss over its brutality.
It is important to be clear on what the Bible is and what the Bible says because the entire cult of Christianity claims to follow it--whether literally like the evangelists or loosely like the Catholics. No matter how you slice it, Christianity is based on the Bible. It's nice that Catholics follow it less stringently and, thus, tend to be more reasonable than their fundamentalist brethren, but the fact remains that they follow it at all. Even worse? The fundamentalist literalist hypocrites who claim to believe the Bible literally but don't (because it's too factually flawed) and who claim to follow the Bible literally but can't (because it's too atrocious).
Why do I call the Bible brutal?
Because the book revels in man's inhumanity to man and in God's inhumanity to man.
To see what I mean, let's look at God's laws.
Here is a list of criminals and capital offenses God says deserve death:
Adultery, animals (kill an animal that kills a person), bestiality (kill the animal, too), blasphemy, breaking the Sabbath, disobedient children, homosexuality, incest, murder (except when God does it or orders it), rape victims who don't cry out loudly enough, slave stealing, women who aren't virgins on their wedding nights (meaning that intercourse didn't draw blood), witches (imagine--being put to death for an impossible crime), worshiping other gods (another imaginary crime)
Could you imagine murdering your children because they disobeyed you? What would you think if President Obama laid down that law and insisted you follow it lest you be punished?
God loves the smell of burning flesh--burning animals makes a "pleasant savor unto the Lord"...
Leviticus 3:5, Leviticus 3:16, Leviticus 17:6, Exodus 29:18, Exodus 29:25, Numbers 29:2
...and, in the NT, WE are the "pleasant savor unto the Lord": 2 Corinthians 2:15. Yikes!
Yup--God sure loves burning not just animals but people--including most of us eternally in hell. From Skeptic's Annotated Bible:
What the Bible says about Burning People to Death
Some crimes are so heinous that the guilty must be burned to death.(Like when a man has sex with his wife and mother-in-law, the daughter of a priest behaves like a whore, or someone touches the accursed thing.)
- "If a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt
with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you." -- Leviticus 20:14
"And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." -- Leviticus 21:9
"Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt." -- Genesis 38:24 -
"He that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath. ... And Joshua ... took Achan ... and his sons, and his daughters ... And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire." -- Joshua 7:15, 24-25 -
- Sometimes God burns people to death.
(Like when they complain too much, burn incense without a license, dabble in astrology, or make God angry or jealous or something. And sometimes God burns people to identify a prophet or to identify himself, and sometimes for no reason at all.)
- Sometimes God burns people to death.
- "And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. -- Leviticus 10:1-2
"And when the people complained, it displeased the LORD: and the LORD heard it and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the LORD burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp." -- Numbers 11:1
"And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense." -- Numbers 16:35- "They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God ... For a fire is
kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume
the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
... They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with
bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the
poison of serpents of the dust." -- Deuteronomy
32:21-24
"Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them." -- Psalm 21:9 - "Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand
up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they
shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves
from the power of the flame." -- Isaiah 47:13-14
"If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty." -- 2 Kings 1:10, 12 - "Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; As the vine tree among the trees of the
forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants
of Jerusalem. And I will set my face against them; they shall go out from one
fire, and another fire shall devour them; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
-- Ezekiel 15:6-7
"Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left." -- Isaiah 24:6 - "And the people shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up shall
they be burned in the fire." -- Isaiah 33:12
"I will cause an alarm of war to be heard in Rabbah of the Ammonites; and it shall be a desolate heap, and her daughters shall be burned with fire." -- Jeremiah 49:2
- And God will burn most people forever in hell after they die.
- "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered;
and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." -- John 15:6
- "The Lord Jesus ... in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God ... who shall be punished with everlasting destruction." -- 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9
- "The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God ...he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone ... And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever." -- Revelation 14:10-11
- "The fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." -- Revelation 21:8
- "The Lord Jesus ... in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God ... who shall be punished with everlasting destruction." -- 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9
- So remember to pray that God will burn your enemies to death.
- "Let burning coals fall upon them: let them be cast into the fire; into deep pits, that they rise not up again." -- Psalm 140:10
Need I go on? Do you really need to be reminded about God's orders on how to sell your daughter into sex slavery for life? The terrible, cruel violence, genocide, misogyny, bigotry, ignorance that God both commands and commits Himself? Need I tell you of the many times God deceives people (e.g., 2 Chronicles 18:22, Jeremiah 4:10, Jeremiah 20:7, Ezekiel 14:9, 2 Thessalonians 2:11) or controls them (e.g., Exodus, Chapters 4 and 14) just to give Himself an excuse to smite or obliterate them? God even gives His people bad laws: Ezekiel 20:25-26 states that "Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; and I pronounced them unclean because of their gifts, in that they caused all their firstborn to pass through the fire [editor's note: this refers to sacrificing your firstborn (sons only, I think), as God commands] so that I might make them desolate, in order that they might know that I am the LORD." In other words, God's perfect laws are bad. And Jesus is no less cruel than OT God, who is no more cruel than NT God because OT God = NT God because, since God is perfect, God DOES NOT change.
The Aztecs flourished in Mesoamerica between 1345 and 1521 CE and were infamous for lurid, bloodthirsty human sacrifice, including ripping the beating heart from the still-conscious victim. They, like the people who wrote the Bible, believed that the heart was the seat of the intellect and emotions (Psalm 14:1, "The fool says in his heart..."). So, tell me--what's the difference? Why do Christians condemn the Aztecs as "savage" while worshiping God as "perfect" and extolling the brutes of the Bible as "noble"?
If, as GotAnswers.org insists, God Himself wrote the Bible, then not only is God woefully, laughably ignorant about His creation, but He is also a malevolent, vicious brute--deserving of scorn, not worship.
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Peas, friends. Hug yourselves and each other for me--please and thank you! Oh, and treat yourselves to a shot of Fireball whiskey and a hunk of dark chocolate for me--I lurves each and every one of you!
Kisses!!
- Dot Calm's shadow
Consider the preemptive Blogger phuqued-up phormatting to be in effect. I am in no mood to deal today...AGAIN.
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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HuffPo: North Carolina Governor Says His Anti-LGBT Law "Had Nothing To Do" With LGBT People...oh, yeah, Pat McCrory? You look like you need a few boxes of prunes before your cardboard face cracks and falls off. OF COURSE it's about LGBTQ+ people, asswipe--what about THEIR privacy and THEIR rights? And who the phuque do you think you're fooling by being so OBSESSED with what LGBTQ+ do with their genitalia? Don't you get any from your wife? Or are you frustrated because you really want men but your religion tells you that's wrong? So, North Carolina's Pat McCrory thinks it's an "invasion of privacy" for the government to want to put NC's anti-LGBTQ+ laws on hold (because those laws violate civil rights), but McCrory doesn't think it's an invasion of privacy to legislate which bathroom people use?! Here's a hint, Governor Cardboard-Faced Asswipe: LGBTQ+ people already use the bathrooms they identify with--just as they always have. All you've done is prove that you're a cardboard-faced asswipe.
MSNBC unearths Trump's relationship with Putin. Trump has a relationship that he apparently alternately affirms and denies.
Vox: Donald Trump's fight with the Khans is a reminder of his greatest weakness
Newsweek: Donald Trump's Criticism of Khan Family Sparks Bipartisan Rebuke. Donald Trump insulted Khan's family, but Republicans--who own him--won't own his comments.
Vox: watch John Oliver lose it over Trump’s Khan attacks: he’s “a damaged, sociopathic narcissist”
Vox: A writer kept a blog for 10 years. Google deleted it. Why? Scarier than a Halloween story! Yikes!!!
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Ugh...are they talking about
my Tea Party Christian friend or #benedictdonald?
...Porque no los dos?
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Mailbag
Free pocket-sized U.S. Constitutions from ACLU! Get yours now!
Khizr Khan, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant and father of a fallen Muslim-American soldier, held up his pocket Constitution from the stage at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night and asked what many have been wondering:
"Donald Trump… Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy."
Today, we’re giving away pocket-sized Constitutions for free. Use the coupon code POCKETRIGHTS when you order. Don’t get caught without the Constitution – everyone in the U.S. should know their rights.
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From UltraViolet--what HAS Hillary accomplished? Quite a lot, actually--I was surprised! The expression "shit ton" came to mind...
Donald Trump and his supporters love to attack Hillary Clinton. It's literally their favorite thing to do.
And one of their main attacks is that she has never accomplished much.
Well....uh....that's not even a little bit true.
So we put together this fun, tongue-in-cheek, interactive site to help people learn more about what Hillary Clinton has accomplished over the years.
Check it out--it might surprise you.
--Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Karin, Adam, Holly, Kaili, Kathy, Onyi, Susan, Anathea, Audine, Shannon, Megan, and Libby, the UltraViolet Action team
Want to support our work? UltraViolet is funded by members like you, and our tiny staff ensures small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
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If you tell another nation to spy on your own, don't get your panties in a wad if there are serious consequences
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"Withhold all classified national security briefings from Donald Trump."
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This is almost too moving for words.
Earlier today, I let you know that we’ll be in court TOMORROW.
And Public Citizens like you have been rushing in donations from all over America!
Because they know that winning this lawsuit would be a major victory in the fight to take our elections back from the billionaire and Big Business forces that have been exploiting Citizens United to undermine our democracy.
But this is a major legal battle.
We can’t fight corporate power alone.
We need your help to make sure we have the real-word financial resources to win.
Please chip in today.
You’ve heard it before, and it’s true: Every dollar counts.
Donate now.
Thank you!
Robert
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| Stand with Sen. Warren: Investigate Airbnb-style rentals | |
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Petition to Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez:
"Investigate the extent to which the short-term rental market on services like Airbnb consists of people running businesses by renting multiple residences simultaneously, potentially exacerbating housing shortages and driving up rents."
Add your name:
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From Change.org--Judge Persky's day in court
Today is the day! |
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Aug 01, 2016
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In just a few hours we will be walking over to the Santa Clara Superior
Court to deliver your signatures. We have signs, and t-shirts, and a
whole lot of energy ready to challenge a judge who lets rapists off the
hook.
If you are joining us today, make sure you are RSVPed on the Eventbrite
to stay up-to-date: http://bit.ly/2afIwij. We’ll be meeting at 191 North First St. in San Jose.
If you...
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Democracy Now!
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Daily Kos
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AlterNet
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Movies!
Secular Talk: Bernie on the Green Party and Jill Stein. As I've been saying, Bernie is eminently practical. It is not selling out to point to the reality that either Trump or Clinton WILL become president. So you have to decide: which would you prefer? Dodging the question does not count. Which would you rather have: Trump or Clinton? That's what reality boils down to.
Trump's ghostwriter: Trump is not in it for you, pee-ons
TYT: Father Of Fallen American Soldier Delivers POWERFUL Speech Against Trump
Holy wow--Jon Stewart borrows Stephen Colbert's desk to truth-tell it to Trump and his FUX Noise supporters with their divisiveness and flaming double standards.
I love me some Trae Crowder. Damn, son, I coulda just skipped all the other RNC vids I watched and just watched Trae instead. Not while sipping beverages, though, for obvious reasons.
Here's Trae on Hillary's e-mails. Did I say I love me some Trae Crowder?!?? W00t!!
Trae on BLM
John Oliver to Stephen Colbert on Tim Kaine. I just lurves John Oliver's dimples.
Colbert on the lesser of two evils--definite LOL!
'Til next time, check out these great channels:
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posted by Dot Calm @ 5:45 PM
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