The Unethical Bible: A New Guide That Highlights and Tracks the Bible's Edicts and Actions to Decipher its Actual Ethical Worth

By Blaise Moran

The Bible, as written by a non-believer, which tracks the inter-human ethics and actions of the Bible's characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483586021

Book preview

though.

Genesis

The opening lines of the KJB start with the creation of the universe, which it claims is done by an all-knowing and all-powerful god, and the book supposedly goes until about 1700 B.C. It tells of the first humans acquiring knowledge (Adam & Eve), of God drowning everyone in a world-wide flood for being horrid to each other (Noah’s Ark), and of the family squabbles of a land-grabber named Abraham. It continues with his successors Isaac and Jacob, and then of God destroying a tower in Babel and the two towns of Sodom & Gomorrah. It concludes with Jacob’s son Joseph being enslaved by his brothers, and how, in turn, he’s responsible for the enslaving the entire Hebrew populous in Egypt.

Insofar as this particular god creating everything, well…all cultures have such myths, and insisting that humanity believe this particular story just because some superstitious ignoramuses decided so is pretty ballsy.

Genesis 1: The universe appears in a poof out of nowhere

Day 1: On his first day on the job God creates the heaven and the earth, but the earth was void of anything. Then he makes light and separates it from darkness. On Day 2 he constructs something called the firmament (heaven), which now lies between water that’s above and below it.²³ On Day 3 God invents land, sea, herbs, and fruit-yielding plants. When Day 4 gets here, God forges the sun in addition to the moon and stars,²⁴ and on days 5 and 6 he composes sea-life, then animal life including cattle and whales, and then male and female humans. He says, "Let us make humans in our image [emphasis added] and tells them to make a lot of babies who after replenishing" the earth can rule over and use all the other animals as they wish, and puts them on a vegetarian diet.

Boy, all that in just six days. Those 13.8 billion years following the unmentioned Big Bang, and the 4.3 billion years of earth history from the Precambrian to the Ordovician eras sure flew by fast. There’s no mention of the countless animal species that preceded mammals and became extinct millions of years prior to 4,000 B.C. including the dinosaurs, nor of the existence of microbes, which are the most dominant for of life on earth. Also, notably, our bipedal human ancestors such as Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, and Neanderthals are also unmentioned. This Bronze Age it appeared in a poof out of nowhere story, which has been totally disproved by multiple modern sciences, is believed by many folks to this day, but skeptics have some teensy-weensy problems with it. As a matter of fact, we, or at least I, have a problem on the very first line. God can’t create heaven. He’s in heaven. Where’s he been staying the whole time? Also, heaven is not made of anything, so there’s nothing for it to be created into. There could not have been light without a sun being there first, light is not separated from darkness; darkness is an absence of light, and how do they know how long a day is being that it’s measured by the earth’s rotation which didn’t exist yet? Also, humans can’t replenish what didn’t previously exist. Another slight problem here: if God is outside the realm of the physical he can’t be made of anything and therefore would be invisible. Since we are visible, we can’t look like him. In reality, God didn’t make us in his image, we humans made a god in ours. And who is he working with on this construction project that the words us and our are used in the text? This creation story made sense when ignorant people believed in myths because no other viable options were known, but then a guy named Charles Darwin came up with one for biology that has been proved as true as anything can be in science, modern cosmologists explained how planets and stars are formed, and theoretical physicists have explanations for how matter can be created from nothing. The sole reason people believe this biblical story today is that they’re brainwashed by their parents and church. Of course, the real question is why God took 6 days when he could have done it all in one millisecond. If this first chapter is indicative of the whole book, we’re going to have a rough ride down the ol’ logic road, but as I said in my OT introduction, logic never appears in the Bible.

Genesis 2-3: The first man and woman screw it up for everyone else

To elaborate on Day 6, after misting the ground God plays in the dust (not clay, I note) and creates a man whom he gives life and a soul by blowing up his nose. (That’s proof of a soul’s existence? Humans are made from the dust bunnies, like those under our beds? Also, it said in the previous paragraph that God created male and female simultaneously, now here it’s him, then her. Which is it?) Anyway, God plants a garden and has four rivers flow out of it. One of these rivers leads to gold which is specifically noted as being good (thus setting a precedent from only the second page of the Bible that money is worthy of mention). God sticks a fruit tree in the garden that, if eaten from, has the ability to give humans knowledge. He then tells Adam not to eat from it or he’ll die that day.²⁵ Adam next has the arduous homework assignment of naming the millions of earth’s animal species. God then realized he better give Adam something to screw or he’ll have to build a fence between him and the sheep, so he knocks him out, rips out one of his ribs, and constructs a female from it whom Adam calls Woman. Adam says that she is of his flesh and that a man should leave Mom and Dad, stick to his wife, and they’ll become one flesh (This is absurd. Sex doesn’t merge two bodies. Reproduction does, but it doesn’t say that. Also, Adam wouldn’t even know what parents are being that he didn’t have them and hasn’t been one yet.) Adam and Woman aren’t ashamed to scamper around in the buff; which is completely fair as there’s nothing shameful about nudity, unless you intentionally let your body got to pot.

One day a talking snake convinces Woman to eat the forbidden fruit and to get her man to have a bite too so they can be smart. The moment after that first nibble they realize they’re bare-assed.²⁶ Curiously they don’t die that day, which means God was wrong, lying, or manipulative about that. Later, while strolling, they hide from God after hearing him call, Come out, come out, wherever you are. God asks, Why are you hiding? Because we’re in the buff, they respond. Knowing he’s busted them, God asks, How did you even know what that is? You ate some of those bananas I told you to keep your grimy hands off of, didn’t you? For disobeying God once (no second chance here) women have to scream like banshees during childbirth, men have to farm their food, they get thrown off the resort, and the snake has to crawl around on its belly (as if it didn’t do that already).

Now, if at this stage they have the I.Q. of children, God shouldn’t have expected him to obey. Being that they didn’t know what evil was, they weren’t aware it was bad. In order to have more intelligence than a sea-monkey, they would have to understand its concept. Doing evil is the bad thing, not knowing about it. God shouldn’t have tempted them by putting the tree and the snake there in the first place if he didn’t want anyone to eat from it. After all, telling children not to touch a hot stove only makes it more interesting, at least until they burn the crap out of their fingers. Also, being that no human had yet been born there was no way of Eve knowing what childbirth was, if it wasn’t going to be painful anyway, or what pain even is. Lastly, of course, the mere idea that eating a kiwi can instantaneously instill intelligence is completely absurd.

Genesis 4: Cain rubs out Abel

Adam and Woman (now named Eve) have two sons, a farmer and a shepherd. For some reason they feel they have to sacrifice some of their wares to God. (Who knows why, being that he doesn’t need them and no one, including God, told them to.) God tells Cain that his grain isn’t as good as Abel’s meat, so he isn’t as special as him. Cain gets miffed at this slight and murders Abel. When God finds out, he makes Cain a fugitive, causing him to whine, But everyone will want to kill me. Okay, says God. I’ll put a ‘don’t kill’ stamp on your forehead, and if anyone does, I’ll take it out on them sevenfold.

What on earth is this about? First of all, why isn’t grain just as good as meat? There is nothing that reads Cain didn’t work equally hard in the fields and that his grain wasn’t good; it just implies that God thinks meat is better. Why the favoritism? And why is God protecting a murderer from justice, and from whom? There’s no one else on earth except Mom and Dad. Cain then gets a wife, (where did she come from?), and their sons take wives, (where did they come from?), and their descendants establish cities, become metal smiths, and make musical instruments, including the organ²⁷. Cain’s great-great-great-great-grandson Lamech takes two wives, thus introducing polygamy to the story, and admits to murdering some guy saying, "If God was tough on Cain, he’s really going to ram it up my nose." (God let Cain off scot free, so what’s he talking about?) Adam screws Eve who births Seth, whom she says God made so they could have another lineage instead of Cain.

Another point I’d like to cover here at the outset is the issue of sacrificing; particularly animals. A key ritualistic element in the worship of the OT god is that when the Hebrews are looking for his forgiveness, all they do to assuage the penalty for their sin and make God happy is slit some poor animal’s throat, let it bleed to death, and burn it. Seldom does it say they are actually required to pray for forgiveness for their own actions, or, more notable, truly feel bad about doing them. As a matter of fact, 18 of the 39 OT books do not contain any reference to this activity.²⁸ The inclusion of animal sacrifice, a blatantly pagan ritual, is absurd, which you’ll find I state throughout this book. Many religions of the ancient world sacrificed to their gods, and the faithful seem to think this is a universal proof of a god’s desire for them to do so. I, however, see things differently and am offering a more rational explanation of this inadvertently learned behavior that starts in the cradle. Babies are happy when they get food, and as they grow, they enjoy receiving other material things. They slowly learn that giving things can gain favors from others and use gifts as peace offerings, to assuage anger, woo potential mates, and most importantly they learn the act of bartering. I’ll give you this, and I’ll get something. They naturally assume that since this works for other humans, a god can be bought the same way. Gods, however, would not need or use any material things; and since they don’t exist anyway, the sad joke is that sacrificing ends up being nothing but a complete waste of resources. The other element of that, as you’ll discover later in Leviticus 16-17, is that the Hebrews thought blood contained a life-force and must be involved in order to merit God’s approval. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist of figure out that they came to this conclusion by noticing that when too much blood drained out of an animal, it died. The notion that blood is sacred because of this is, however, utterly ridiculous. There is absolutely nothing holy about it; it just transfers oxygen from the lungs to the body. This is the official opinion of this book. Remember one thing…these folks were only a few steps away from being cavemen.

Speaking of being holy, what needs to be pointed out here is that, in reality, nothing is! Holiness is just a descriptor assigned to objects, places, and people by fiat. One can tell a blessed object’s temperature, color, shape, weight, or what it’s made of. A person may act holy and sound that way, however, there is no experiment to prove it is outside of a person being told so.

Genesis 5-8: God says, Screw it, I’ll start over

The nine generations of mankind, from Adam to Lamech, live an average lifespan of 907 years! (That’s pretty amazing being that the average human life span today with medicines they didn’t have is about 75. Can you imagine how wrinkly they must have been? Biblical authors evidently claimed this to make for up lost time.) Next, the sons of God find earth girls hot so they come down, get hitched to them, and have a bunch of kids, which pisses God off enough to say, I don’t like these little turds, so I’m going to limit their lifespans to age 120. After 2,000 years of them reproducing, God tires of humans bullying each other and decides to wipe the slate clean by committing world-wide genocide and drowning all 26,000,000 of them.

How nice. Excuse me, but where’s the parenting here? If you raise a passel of brats, it’s your responsibility to straighten them out. Why didn’t he teach them goodness? This is the equivalency of a spoiled, impatient child tearing up a drawing that didn’t turn out as well as he’d like, even though he drew it. On top of all that, God has never given them any rules to live by, so he shouldn’t be complaining that his kids are unruly. Whoa…hold on a minute. Who are these sons of God? I thought Jesus in the NT was God’s only son. Now we find out he had an entire clan of them? Why isn’t there any elaboration on this?

God does manage to find a guy named Noah, who’s not a complete turd like the rest, and has him build a floating zoo. He is to fill it with seven of each sex of the clean animals, two of each sex of the unclean animals, and install only one window (which certainly created a suffocating environment for all). (Being that there’s been no discussion about which animals are clean and which aren’t, or indeed what clean and unclean even is, Noah must have had to guess.) So, Noah and a smattering of relatives, who for all we know had never even seen a boat before, manage to build a 3-story ocean liner out of wood. When it’s completed, God says, You’ve only got one week before I dump an ocean’s worth of water on your head because it’s going to rain for forty days and nights. God doesn’t tell him how long they’re going to be on this pleasure cruise once this torrent is over, how much food to bring, or how much manure he’s going to have to shovel out of that one tiny window. (Two elephants alone would eat tons of food in that time, drink thousands of gallons of water, and produce 64,000 lbs. of poop!) God has it deluge for the promised forty days, fountains of the great deep flood from the ground up (a tsunami) and eventually enough water accumulates to cover Mt. Ararat, which is 17,000 feet high. After ten months that mountaintop is seen; later still everyone leaves the ship, and God promises not to smite all life on earth again. (How big of him.) Noah then sacrifices some clean animal in thanks.

If you’re curious where I got 26,000,000 people, it was figured this way. In 1630 Archbishop James Ussher calculated earth’s age from the birth dates of the biblical figures and assumed it was created in 4004 B.C.²⁹ Although this is 20 years after the publication of the first edition of the KJB in 1611, I’m assuming it was generally accepted as about that timeframe. Adam’s descendants reproduced for 1,656 years, and some time elapsed before the flood. (Although it doesn’t say exactly how much, so I’m estimating another 400 years.) This brings the flood date to about 2000 B.C. Several Google searches done on the day of writing concur on a world population estimate of about 26,000,000 at that time. This estimated flood date is rather odd, of course, as it’s an established fact that the Chinese and Egyptians were around for thousands of years before this, as well as other cultures that existed throughout the world and continued on without being washed away. Of course, the real origin of this tale is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh from about 2,600 B.C., which tells the same story; as well as being similar to that of Lord Krishna who rode a whale which pulled an ark-load of animals to safety.³⁰ Knowing this, I think it’s safe to say that this Ussher guy and the numerous scribes who wrote this part of the story weren’t world travelers, didn’t bother to consult any, and neglected to pull their heads out of asses before putting pen to paper.

Genesis 9-10: God’s deal with Noah and Noah’s family tree

God sets down some guidelines for humans here and forms a covenant with Noah. He tells Noah that all animals will fear humans; when actually it’s we who fear many animals. (People jump at the sight of mice, and they’re tiny.) The wonderful covenant is "Re-populate the earth (he just committed genocide upon); I need your blood (he’s not saying for what); you can’t eat anything bloody; and if you kill another person, you’ll get the chop.³¹ In return for all this, I promise not to kill everything on earth again, and you’ll see a rainbow as a token of this new covenant. (God doesn’t make the color spectrum visible, prisms do. The odd thing is that this isn’t a covenant, which is an agreement between two parties. God did the negotiating for both sides. And the deal again? Clean up my dirty work, and I won’t kill you; I’ll just let you die normally." Gee…thanks.) The only men who leave the ark are Noah and his three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and everyone on earth is a direct descendant of one of these three. (Can you imagine the mutants that limited inbred gene pool would produce?)

Later on, when Noah passes out drunk and naked, one of his sons covers him up without looking at him. Noah, ever grateful and just, blames that son’s innocent kid for seeing him in the buff and condemns him to servitude to his uncles for the rest of his life. (If this is an indication of how good and fair of a man Noah is, it would have been better to drown this loser along with the rest.) Noah then kicks the bucket at the age of 950. Chapter 10 lists multiple generations of Noah’s sons, (one of whom is amusingly named Nimrod), while inadvertently displaying the Bible’s sexist disregard for women by completely ignoring any daughters they might have sired. (As a matter of fact, various forms of son appear six times more often in the Bible as any form of daughter.)

Please note that Noah’s brief story is contained within only 2½ KJB pages. In addition to the one unethical and one evil pronouncement in the previous paragraph, he proclaims only one fair rule, (death penalty for murder), while not advocating or doing anything loving or generous to others. Also note that he doesn’t establish a single religious rule. He is the first of many biblical characters that are famous even though they contribute virtually nothing to the Bible’s ethical practices or religious beliefs. Others will include Abraham, Solomon, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalene. The amount of literature written about these mythical characters based on only a handful of vague and historically unprovable incidents clearly shows the extent to which authors can elaborate. Remember: if a character’s thoughts and intentions are not clearly stated in the text and are subject to speculation, anything additional that is written about them is utter supposition.³²

Genesis 11: The skyscraper of Babel

Some decades or centuries after the flood, everyone speaks one language and a group of guys decide to build a tower as tall as heaven, slap their names on it, and make themselves famous. God realizes that humans have gotten to the point of being able to accomplish anything they set their minds to and screws with them by making them speak different languages so they can’t finish the job. Nowhere does it say why God felt threatened by this venture or that people were getting uppity enough to think they can reach him, which is frequently the interpretation. There’s nothing wrong with constructing a tall building, so he’s only slapping down human ingenuity. This story is a feeble attempt to explain why there are many languages. Note that the tower wasn’t destroyed as is frequently implied in films; it’s just not completed. If God was offended at the arrogance of men, then why are so many skyscrapers still standing today with the owner’s names brazened across them? The chapter closes with Shem’s family tree.

Genesis 12: Abram claims God gave him other people’s land

In this inspirational chapter, God demonstrates the fine art of favoritism. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, God picks a guy named Abram to be his teacher’s pet, or so Abram claims. God offers to build him a nation, bless him, and make him famous. Anyone who likes Abram earns a blessing too, but anyone who doesn’t gets a voodoo curse put on him. Abram leaves Mom and Dad, packs up the family and friends and leaves for Canaan, the land he says God gives him. As luck would have it a famine breaks out, so Abram dashes off to Egypt with his smokin’ hot wife Sarai. Fearing he might be killed because she’s is a looker, this chicken-shit tells her to pose as his sister. When Pharaoh’s minions meet them, they tell him how much Pharaoh would like her. Abram lets her be taken into Pharaoh’s palace in return for livestock and servants. (This is called adultery, prostitution and fraud.) Then God tells Pharaoh what’s up, blames him for it all even though he’s innocent, sends plagues on his house, but shows favoritism again by neglecting to reprimand Abram and Sarai. Pharaoh, obviously annoyed, asks Abram why he didn’t tell him she was his wife, and kicks them out of Egypt under armed guard. (This story is unbelievable because Sarai was over 70 years old at this point, unless women back then aged horrendously by 25.)

*This passaged contained the first of ten instances to come of a Hebrew claiming ownership of someone else’s land by divine right. There are multiple issues with this. First of all, it’s rather funny that God gave Abram land that a famine would break upon instead of an eternally fertile paradise. Second, note that Abram deserted this land and left it unoccupied the second things got tough instead of staying to protect it. By moving to Egypt, they disregarded God’s gift, and shouldn’t have demanded it back centuries later after barely, if ever, occupying it in the first place. Third, and most importantly, these claims of his, and others, are complete and utter hearsay as they only come to one individual. If God told Abram, and later, his descendants, they were getting these lands he should also have told the rest of the world; notably the ones who were losing it. A landlord’s eviction notice to the current inhabitants would go: Fellas, I’ve rented this unit to my relatives, but although you’ve got to vacate I have another place lined up for you. God then could have influenced them to peacefully move to another uninhabited and fertile land; that way, no one would have to get hurt and everyone would be happy. This would have done the trick a lot easier than sending those relatives to kill them. God could also have spelled it out in flaming letters 10,000 miles high across the sky for the entire world to see day and night for 100,000 years, but did he? No. He told one person, or so that man claims. Think of it this way: if someone walked up to you and said, "I was standing alone on your land the other day, and the funniest thing happened. A voice that no one else heard told me it’s mine, so I’m entitled to take it." If a man said that to you, you’d probably feel completely justified in telling him to go screw himself.

This single, ancient, unsupported claim by a potentially mythical individual has caused unimaginable strife in the Middle East. Think of all the wars that have been fought just because someone wrote a story in which a guy claimed an invisible man said he could have some land; it defies the imagination. What’s ultimately astonishing is that modern world leaders still claim divine messages as an excuse to go to war, and they are not challenged on it, notably George W. Bush who claimed God told him to invade Iraq; a message no one else in the world received, notably the Iraqis.

Exactly how much land is Abram talking about? Under ideal circumstances, without obstacles blocking one’s view, a person of average height at ground level can see a maximum of about 3 miles to the horizon on very flat terrain, even less if it is hilly, which that area is, so Abram was really only claiming entitlement to a few dozen square miles. In reality, the land he’s claiming would be circular, as that’s the shape you would see as you turned to look in all directions. As Canaan is not that shape, something is amiss here…

This land claim raises a curious point. Modern Jewish people own property worldwide. Part of a prayer they say yearly includes the words next year in Israel. If they still lay claim to the land in the Middle East would every one of them sell their holdings, pull up stakes in these lands and move there? Are they so miserable in France, the U.S., England, and Switzerland that they’d give up their long family histories there to relocate? If not, why on earth are they clamoring for it? I personally have no idea, and I’ve been there; believe me, it’s not all that.

Genesis 13: Abram and Lot split up

After wandering north out of Egypt, Abram and his nephew Lot have both grown so rich that their herdsmen constantly argue. They decide to part ways, with Lot going east and Abram, west. Then Abram, who’s totally alone at the time, claims God gives him all the land he can see in every direction (something he hasn’t earned by any type of ethical virtue or religious devotion he possessed.)

Genesis 14: Some kings go to war

A bunch of warring kings fight each other for years. One of them captures Lot and takes all his stuff before Abram rescues him. A king named Melchizedik blesses Abram (an insignificant event that’s feebly referenced in the NT book Hebrews). The king of Sodom comes to thank Abram and reward him with all the spoils, except the captured people. Abram says, I couldn’t take anything from you as I don’t want you to say you made me rich. A little food for my men is fine. (Well, that’s a complete 180° from whoring his wife to Pharaoh for livestock and slaves. It’s nice to know he learned some ethics. This passage calls Abram a Hebrew for the first time.)

Genesis 15: Abram says God thinks he’s special

God again offers Abram protection and great reward, although just why he’s doing this is still not made clear as he’s yet to merit any praise. During a vision Abram gripes to God that he can’t knock up his wife, so God allows any kid he produces to be his heir, gives him the land he’s on and promises that his descendants will populate it. When asked for confirmation as to how he’s to know the land is his, God has Abram sacrifice some animals. (If the Hebrews truly believe that killing a pigeon establishes land rights they are ridiculously desperate for a way of legitimizing it. They’re simply assigning divine intervention to a remote ancestor and stating, without proof or evidence, that he was given the land by God. Well, anyone can say that, but expecting the other inhabitants to go along with it is a bit naïve, especially when their gods might well have said the same thing.)

Genesis 16: Abram knocks up his maid

Sarai can’t bear children, so she tells Abram to commit polygamy and marry her maid Hagar. He does this, and after Hagar is pregnant she starts hating Sarai for some reason. (As you’ll see numerous times throughout the Bible, having more than one wife frequently causes them to compete with each other.) Abram kicks the maid out after Sarai bitches to Abram about her, which is desertion. The maid returns because an angel tells her she has a bun in the oven, as if she wouldn’t have figured that out by herself, and she births Ishmael.

Genesis 17: Abram’s Wiener Rule

Abram, whom God has renamed Abraham, says God has decided to strike a deal with him. "I’m going to make your people breed like flies and am giving you Canaan to rule as well. Through your decrepitly ancient, ninety-year-old wife, (now called Sarah), you will father nations of people including kings, but there is one tiny stipulation. All the guys including all future generations, adopted guys, and slaves have to take a sharp knife and slice off their foreskins. (Did I read that right? They can have this land and make lots of babies as long as they shave the skin off the ends of their wieners? What possible association could there be between those things? Couldn’t they just pierce their ears? Aside from that, why is the divine promise all about kingship, instead of worldly goodness and peace"? God should be more concerned with those attributes than who gets to be the boss.) Anyway, everyone in his house has a circumcision party; though what powers of persuasion he used to get them to agree to that is a conversation that would be worth hearing.

Genesis 18: Three guys come to visit

God shows up one hot day in the form of three men at Abraham’s tent. He assumes they’re God because he calls them My Lord and the narrative switches back and forth between the men and God talking alternately to Abraham. (This could be sunstroke.) To make a long story short, they/he tell Abraham and Sarah that, despite the fact that they’re so old their wrinkles have wrinkles, Sarah will have a baby. Sarah laughs her ass off at this thinking, Yeah, that’s going to happen. I’m like 900 years old! Then God snaps at Abraham and says, What’s that bitch laughing about? I can do anything I want. Sarah, realizing she pissed off the boss, tries to downplay the laughter, but God retorts, Don’t say you didn’t laugh, I heard you!

That night the three guys want to take in a night on the town of Sodom, which causes God to say a curious thing: If Abraham is going to be so important, shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do. (What is God doing he doesn’t want him to know about? Is he personally responsible for some previously unmentioned gross goings on?) Anyway, God says he’s going to check out if all the sinfulness they’re crying about is happening. (Wouldn’t he already know?) Abraham asks him, Are you going to wipe out everyone, good and bad, or just the sickos? God promises to not to kill everyone in Sodom if there are any nice folks there. He’ll only commit genocide if they’re all sinful. (Why is mass-murder the only punishment?)

Genesis 19: Two towns get nuked and Lot’s girls rape Daddy

When two angels show up at Sodom’s gates, Lot lets them crash at his pad, cooks them dinner, and gives them a bath. However, a rowdy gang comes to the door and demands to do them in the butt, or else they’ll try to break down the door. Lot says, Strangers whom I met an hour ago are more important to me than my own children, so please, gang bang my innocent virgin daughters if you want.

Excuse me, but what is with this sexist maniac committing child abandonment, child abuse and neglect? Any father worth his salt would not only have never taken them into a seedy burg like that, but would protect his daughters against rape. Why didn’t these angels offer to take the brunt of the assault in place of the girls to protect them? Oh, that’s right. Women were only considered property back then, like farm animals. It’s unlikely the girls said, Gee, thanks, Dad. We don’t mind. All this is unnecessary because the angel blinds everyone anyway. (If they can do that, why couldn’t they make them realize that gang rape is bad?) The angel tells Lot, Get the hell out of town before I torch it, but don’t look back, after which God destroys Sodom and a city called Gomorrah. On the way, his wife looks back at the blazing city and ends up providing the family with a year’s supply of table salt by turning into it. Lot is afraid of hiding in the mountains, so they flee to a town called Zoar.

Multiple scientific theories abound as to what really might have happened in this mythical story, the most common being that an asteroid hit the cities, or near them, and virtually incinerated everything. Ancient scribes who associated disasters with human sin simply assumed that the Sodomites must have been depraved sickos and assigned such activity to the story as the cause after the city’s destruction. What is curious about this story is the absence of a single mention of anything gross that the Gomorrahites were doing to deserve being fried alive, as the text only mentions the Sodomites. It seems just God tossed in another city for good measure.

Lot is scared of going to Zoar, so he camps in a cave with his two daughters. The girls assume there are no men left in the world, so they get Pops drunk enough to rape him in order to get pregnant and preserve humanity, thus introducing incest into the story, twice.

If you think about it, there are much more plausible reasons the girls would have done this. It’s highly doubtful they were just dumb bitches who thought the entire world populous lived in two cities. They probably figured, If dad is willing to let us get gang-raped by strangers because we’re virgins, we’d better get screwed, fast! Or, more likely, "So…you think you can just pawn us off for a gang-bang like that, do you? Well buddy…who’s screwed now?" Remember; hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Genesis 20: Abraham scams Abimelech

Just as when he fleeced Pharaoh for some goodies, Abraham and Sarah try the same fraud again when he whores out wifey to another king named Abimelech (pronounced Ah-BIM-ah-leck). However, this time God decides that once was enough and comes to Abimelech in a dream saying, You’re a dead man; that woman is his wife! Abimelech retorts, I never touched her! They said she was his sister so don’t blame me. God is a little gentler with him than he was with Pharaoh and only threatens to murder his entire family if he doesn’t give her back. He also says since Abraham is a prophet he’ll have Abraham pray for him. Abimelech rakes Abraham over the coals, asking him why he pulled this stunt. His feeble excuse is that he didn’t think God was in this place, and he’d get killed for his pretty wife. (As I noted earlier, the only pretty thing Sarah would have been was pretty old. We now find out that she is in fact his half-sister, so technically he’s not entirely lying.) Abimelech then gives these two incestuous liars silver, slaves, livestock, and invites them to live on his land, even though they don’t deserve this largesse. Lastly, God makes the women in Abimelech’s house barren because of what Sarah did, but Abraham prays so God changes his mind and undoes it.

Why did God blame the innocent for the sins of this teacher’s pet? It’s like he’s saying, "Oh, okay. These two con artists came into your house, and you fell for their scam. You wouldn’t have agreed to it if you’d known what was going on, but I forgive you anyway." Where’s the punishment for Abraham and Sarah? This display of favoritism toward them is unjustified, and God totally ignores their shortcomings like a father who can’t accept the idea that his daughter, whom he thinks is a good girl, is really the town slut and blames the teenage boys for taking the free sex she’s doling out. I’ve composed a little ditty that Abraham might have sung on his way to visit Pharaoh and Abimelech. You probably know the melody from Snow White, sing along!

Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho! To Egypt we will go

And scam some cash from Pharaoh’s stash

Then turn…my wife into a ho’.

Pha…raoh…won’t know that she’s my own

I’ll make a buck while those two f*** and then…

Be rolling in the dough.

I know…a lie’s not good, although…

If he gets wise to all our lies, off to…

A-bim-a-lech we’ll go

*As Genesis 20 contains the first use of the word prophet in the KJB, and there is an army of them to follow, I’ll make a pertinent point here, which is this: anyone can be one. I looked up prophet and prophesy in the Webster’s College Dictionary, and nowhere does it say that the prophecies must to true every time. It reads they foretell, (which implies they do happen), or predict (which doesn’t). Ancient rulers must have considered the input of various political and military advisors. Even God adheres to angelic advice in 1 Kings 22 (repeated in 2 Chronicles 17-18) and takes Moses’ suggestion in Numbers 26-27.³³ War, for example, may only have four basic possible outcomes: losing and being killed, losing and being enslaved, winning, or a draw. These could easily be proposed by multiple advisors, but the man with the best political and military acumen would most often be correct, and therefore remembered by history. Assigning divine intervention to this tactical military insight was incidental, and could easily have been attributed to them later on by scribes. The awe of a handful of men who incidentally successfully prophesied desirable results also neglects to consider the astronomical number of long-forgotten ones who accurately prophesied unrecorded undesirable results, as well as inaccurate prophets, which were therefore omitted from the Hebrews’ stories. More importantly, the Bible ignores accurate predictions made by pagans that disprove God’s supposed lone ability to communicate with humans. If you have hundreds of people making various predictions, someone is bound to chance on the correct outcome. Using another example, the prophecies of astrology are believed in the Bible, as well as to this day, but only because its proponents apply its vague predictions to suit their desires. (As to why it is not considered to be as rude to belittle astrology in public, as it is with religion, is curious.) That’s all that really needs be said about prophets.

Genesis 21: Abraham sires Isaac and ousts his 1st son and 2nd wife

Sarah births a boy named Isaac when she’s almost 100 years old. Then Hagar’s son Ishmael, whom Sarah had Abraham sire with her maid a while back, mocks her baby. Sarah gets pissed because she doesn’t want this elder son being more important than her younger one, so she again hen-pecks Abraham into kicking them out into the desert with only one lousy bottle of water (as if booting her ass out of the house once wasn’t enough). God tells him this desertion and child abandonment is okay because Ishmael will be the father of a nation too. The water runs out fast, but an angel directs her to a well, and God blesses the kid. They then leave for Egypt. Abraham runs into Abimelech again who tells him not to pull any crap, and Abraham agrees. There’s some pointless arguing over well water here, then they make a covenant, but it’s not quite clear what over, either who dug the well, or No more lying, or both. Nevertheless, Abraham gives him seven sheep as witness to this covenant, which assumingly is some sort of payoff. Then Abraham visits the Philistine’s land.

Genesis 22: God plays a dirty trick on Abraham

One day, God is sitting up in heaven and thinks: Hmm, I wonder just how far I could push Abraham’s devotion. He’s been obedient so far, but exactly how heinous of a thing would he be willing to do to kiss my butt. I know…filicide! I’ll tell him that if he really loves me, he’ll sacrifice and burn a child. I’ll go one further, and make it his only son Isaac. So down to earth he goes to deliver this chore and sure enough, without batting an eye, Abraham ties up Isaac, plops him atop an altar, raises a dagger over the kid’s body, and prepares to slit his throat. Just before running him through, an angel tells him, We were just testing you. You can forget it. Good boy. Since you were so willing to slaughter an innocent child for God, he’ll make sure your descendants breed like rabbits. A ram happens to wander past, so he sacrifices it instead.

For reasons that defy comprehension, most Christians and Hebrews think this displays a strong character in Abraham, but any ethical person’s reaction is "Are you nuts? This threat of murder from God and attempted filicide from Abraham is also unspeakable emotional child abuse from which a kid might never recover. Why didn’t God tell Abraham to commit suicide, or chop off his own shwanky? No one should worship a God that says to murder children. An admirable response from Abraham would be, Screw that! I’d rather burn in hell for eternity. Instead, Abraham is so selfish that he’s willing to kill children to look good to God, and God’s egocentrism is so colossal that he freely subjects his followers to psychological trauma so he can feel important to himself. Any father or parent today that finds this story admirable should have no qualms with laying his own kids down, brandishing a long sharp knife over them, and saying: Just so you know, at a moment’s notice if an invisible man tells me to, I’m going to kill you by slitting your throats. It’ll hurt like hell as you die screaming in agony, but only until you pass out from blood loss. That’s a way of proving devotion. Sleep tight." I challenge any preacher to encourage their congregation do this with lawyers and the police present. Outside of the atrocious behavior in this tale, there is one technical problem with it. Isaac is not his only son; there’s Ishmael, his first one from his second wife Hagar that God told him was just as important as any from his first wife Sarah. (Ishmael wasn’t on hand for this particular escapade, but only because Abraham had already sent him to die in the desert.) It’s odd that these biblical men always sacrifice the indefensible. If a stranger on the street walked up and said God told him to sacrifice you, it’s doubtful you’d willingly volunteer. If a murderer did sacrifice a child his alibi of, A voice in my head told me to, would land him in the loony bin.

What really happened here, if indeed it happened at all, is that Abraham was probably a nut-job devoid of any empathy or pity. Lacking the ability to truly discern right from wrong, he adhered to the rules without question. One day when no animals are around, he thought, "I have to kill something to make God happy. I guess he’s telling me this kid will have to suffice." At the last second a ram walked up, so he slaughtered that instead with the justification that God changed his mind. Remember, the biblical text never once says he feels bad about doing this. With some elaboration from later biblical authors, this horrible story is turned around to look like a morality tale. Well, not in my book it isn’t.

Genesis 23-25: Sarah and Abraham croak, Isaac weds, and Jacob and Esau feud

Sarah croaks, and Abraham buys some land to bury her in. Abraham tells his butler not to let his son marry any of the local Canaanite girls, even though he’s been living among them for years. He sends Jeeves to town to find Isaac a wife. He evidently didn’t want to spend too much time on this errand as his only selection criterion is that whichever girl gives him and his camels some water first is it. He meets a girl who ends up being Abraham’s grand-niece Rebekah who gives him the water, for which he gives her $5,500 in gold jewelry.³⁴ Stunned at this generosity, she takes him to meet her parents, and he relates the story, adding, Abraham told me an angel will ensure this all happens. They have no idea who this man is but say, If you’re telling us God said so, that’s good enough for us. (All the gold, silver, jewels, and clothing they also got for her in no way influenced their decision, or maybe they just wanted her out of the house. It’s funny how the angel didn’t mention paying her off with five grand in gold.) Jeeves takes her back home, walks up to Isaac and says, Here, I got you a wife. Abraham gets another wife named Keturah and sires yet more kids, including a passel of bastards from the hookers he houses, and gives his estate to Isaac before kicking the bucket at age 165. His kids make a lot of kids, who make a lot of kids.

*As Abraham exits the biblical text here, it’s astonishing to realize how little he contributed to the story; or indeed to Hebrewism at all. He’s touted as this monumental religious figure, but he’s really only known for two things: absurdly claiming four times that an invisible sky-god gave him land, and for the abhorrent idea that murdering a child is an admirable way of showing godly devotion. Most people don’t realize that of his 26 inter-human edicts and actions, not a single one is fair or loving, and his only generous act (3% of his total) was, via his servant, giving a girl a dowry. He established no rules for worshiping God, and 19 of his actions (74%) are evil and unethical, including twice committing fraud when whoring out his incestuous wife, supporting prostitution and polygamy, and abandoning his second wife and his first son. The remaining 6 of his tally (23%) are ridiculous. He recommended mutilating male sex organs, stated that land rights are established by killing a bird, claimed that God changed his own mind, and believed in angelic messages. Just how he achieved such world-renown and respect based on these scant story elements is something that will hopefully become one of this religion’s great mysteries.

To continue; Isaac knocks up Rebekah who squeezes out twins: Esau followed by Jacob who holds onto Esau’s ankle on his way out of his mommy’s tummy, as if that’s humanly possible. Jacob is Mommy’s favorite, but Isaac prefers Esau because he ate his venison, which is hardly justification for favoritism. These two boys must never have gotten along because one day when Esau is weak with hunger, he asks Jacob for some vittles. Sure, I’ll feed you, Jacob replies, I have some food right here. Doesn’t it look tasty? Oh, did I mention…there’s a price: your birthright. Are you kidding? Esau screams. You’re screwing me over when I’m starving to death? Esau takes the food and hates his birthright from there on. (Jacob’s extortion in this story makes him quite a jerk.)

Genesis 26: Isaac visits Abimelech

Isaac visits Abimelech during a famine. He claims God says, Don’t go to Egypt. If you go where I say, I’ll give you more land and make your offspring fertile. (Who says they won’t be fertile anyway?) Then, like father-like son, he tells Abimelech that his wife is his sister and for the same reason. Upon glancing out a window and catching Isaac boinking Rebekah, Abimelech asks him what he’s doing. The explanation is oddly reminiscent, and Abimelech is pissed: Didn’t you realize that you’d bring guilt upon my house if one of my guys screwed her? Attention everybody! Don’t screw this woman, or you’re in deep shit! (It’s far from funny how there’s no mention of how the girl might have felt about being raped.) Eventually Isaac acquires lots of livestock and servants and becomes too important, so he leaves Abimelech’s area and sets up camp somewhere where his dad had dug some wells years ago. Then some guys who used to hate him suddenly want to be friends since he’s now powerful. He says okay, and they dig another well. About this time, his son Esau marries two girls his folks don’t like, the first named Judith and a polygamous wife named Bashemath.

Genesis 27-28: Esau steals Jacob’s blessing

Isaac eventually grows old, blind, and probably senile. He tells his favorite son Esau to kill a deer for dinner so he can bless him. Rebekah, overhears this and tells her favorite son Jacob to get a goat so she can cook a meal and have him pose as his brother so he’ll get the blessing instead. But Dad knows I’m not hairy like Esau, so he’ll figure out it’s me if he checks, says Jacob. I’ll take the heat for that, now get moving, retorts Mom. Even though Isaac is suspicious because it doesn’t sound like Esau, this fraud works due to some goat hair on Jacob’s hands and neck. He gets blessed and will get to push all his brothers around when Dad croaks. When Esau returns, he and Dad realize Dad has accidentally screwed his favorite son out of his inheritance and that Esau will only get the scraps. Rebekah finds out Esau is going to kill Jacob for this, whereupon Jacob heeds Mom’s advice and takes an impromptu vacation to see his uncle. Later, Isaac sends Jacob out of town to get a wife. Esau marries his polygamous first cousin Mahalath. On the way out of town, Jacob dreams God promises him land. (A claim that’s hearsay.) God also says he’ll have lots of descendants.

Bronze Age people really were simple-minded. They didn’t know the difference between reality and a dream state, and they are the foundation of Christianity and Judaism?

Genesis 29-30a: Jacob marries two sisters

On his journey Jacob meets his first cousin Rachel. He plants a kiss on her and meets her dad Laban, who has an older daughter named Leah. Both are cute, but Rachel is the babe. In order to marry Rachel, Jacob has to work for Laban for seven years. (He must have wanted to bone this girl pretty badly to work that long for it.) When the wedding day comes, Laban does the ol’ switcheroo and has him marry Leah because the older daughter needs to get hitched first. Obviously pissed at this fraud, he gripes that he still wants to marry Rachel, so Dad says as a consolation prize for taking on the older baggage, he can have both for another seven years of work. (Polygamy) Next may be the first recorded instance of a woman thinking, I’ll get pregnant by him, and that’ll make him love me. Jacob and Rachel hate Leah, for obvious reasons, so God makes Rachel barren. (Once again, God is blaming the innocent and rewarding fraud.) Jacob doesn’t hate Leah enough to prevent him from doing her enough times to have four kids though. Rachel is annoyed that she can’t give him any children. Jacob says, Talk to the hand, God is the one who sewed you up, not me. She tells him to marry her maid and have kids with her, which works, twice. Rachel says a curious thing here: God…hath given me a son. (No, her maid had a son, and she’s taking it as her own. Obviously, servants had no legal rights to their own children back then if the man of the house knocks them up.) Leah then hits menopause and, not to be outdone, does the same with her maid, thus adding two more counts of polygamy to the stack. (Evidently, being a maid back then was quite a job. The help wanted ads must have read, Maid wanted: young, fertile female for light dusting, cooking, dish washing, general chores, and occasionally squeezing out a baby for the boss.) Leah overcomes menopause, Rachel becomes fertile, and they both crank out some kids, scraping and clawing their way to the top of the heap. (This passage once again assigns God as the cause for women’s inability to conceive, which is just as supportable as saying Zeus didn’t want her to. The fact that she overcame menopause clearly shows that she never hit it in the first place and that chance eventually ended up on her side.)

Genesis 30b-31: Jacob’s dealings with his father-in-law

By this time, Jacob was done working for the man and wants to be his own boss. He asks if he could take his share of the livestock, the spotted and speckled ones, and Laban agrees. Jacob then commits fraud by having them drink water with dye in it so they’d reproduce speckled and spotted offspring (which wouldn’t work in reality). In time this scam artist ends up with most of the herd, and when Laban’s sons report this, Jacob goes to the top of his shit-list. Once again God displays favoritism by siding with the dishonest when he tells Jacob, Skip town and I will be with thee. Jacob tells his wives that God speckled the livestock, not him, which is a boldfaced lie. When the girls ask what’s left for dear old Dad now that he’s taking everything, he simply packs up everything that’s his and not his and leaves without a word. Laban catches up with them and asks why he skipped town. Jacob says, Because I’ve slaved night and day for you for twenty years, you cheap bastard. You owe me. God wanted me to have all your stuff, at least that’s the way I’m seeing it. Somehow, they come to an agreement and build a pillar as a witness. They kiss and make up after a dinner, Laban goes home, and Jacob goes to visit Esau. (It looks like Laban ended up with nothing after all.)

Genesis 32-33: Jacob makes up with Esau

Jacob sends messengers to tell his brother Esau that he’s back after twenty years with a boatload of livestock. When Jacob finds out that Esau, who Jacob screwed out of his inheritance, is coming to greet him with a couple hundred guys, he gets scared and divides his flock so if half gets stolen, at least he wouldn’t lose it all. He awakens in the middle of the night, gets his family on the safe side of a river, and for some reason has an all-night wrestling match with some stranger, disjointing his thigh in the melee. After a bout that would have made Hulk Hogan cry uncle, they decide to call it a draw if the stranger blesses Jacob. This cocky stranger tells him his name is now Israel because, I’m such a strong sonofa-bitch, only with God’s help could someone to whup me. Later, in a drawn-out story, Jacob and Esau kiss and make up. (As to why Jacob would agree to let a total stranger change his name, that’s left unexplained.)

Genesis 34: Dinah gets raped then proposed to

One of Leah’s daughters gets raped by a guy named Shechem, but he digs her and wants to get hitched. Hamor, Shechem’s dad, brings a delegation to apologize and proposes inter-marrying the two clans. Jacob’s clan says, We can’t do that because you guys still have skin covering the ends of your dicks. Hamor agrees and circumcision party #2 takes place. Then a few days later, Jacob’s offspring avenge their sister by slaughtering all the townsmen, stealing the cattle, and enslaving the women and children, instead of just killing Shechem. Jacob chides them because this might get him killed by their powerful neighbors in retaliation. (Now, one would think that Jacob would have told these boys that slaughtering innocent people, raping, and pillaging was naughty, but he didn’t. After all, the men had graciously apologized, and a truce was called. They even let their shwanky skins get sliced off, which is the ultimate apology. What’s truly sad is how the girl has no say in having to marry her rapist.)

Genesis 35-36: Jacob and Rachel croak

Jacob builds an altar, has everyone turn in their pagan icons and, for some reason, their earrings, and hides them under a tree. The towns they pass by on their way back to Beth-el are scared of God, so they leave the Hebrews alone. At this time God renames Jacob Israel, even though I’d swear the wrestler just did that, and gives Isaac all the land he gave Abraham. Rebekah’s maid dies, then Rachel dies giving birth, and then Isaac dies. The next chapter is Esau’s endless family tree.

Genesis 37: Joseph’s relusion

Joseph, Jacob’s second youngest son, is Daddy’s favorite, and all his brothers hate him for it. He tells his family about a couple of dreams in which they’re all bowing down to him, including Mom and Dad, which increases their hatred. Mr. Popularity eventually gets on his brothers’ nerves so much that they decide to rub him out for having cocky dreams. (The fact that these guys believe dreams are messages and use that as justification for killing someone makes them complete morons.) One of the brothers suggests tossing his ass down a deep hole, but another comes up with the bright idea of making a buck off him by selling him into slavery. They get twenty pieces of silver for him, and he’s carted off to Egypt. They bring his Technicolor dream coat back to Dad smeared with goat blood and lie that he must have ended up a main course for some beast, which upsets Dad greatly.

Genesis 38: Judah and Tamar

The ringleader of the murderous brother-for-money scheme has a couple of kids by a gal named Shuah. He gets a wife for his firstborn son, but God murders him because he’s evil, with no clarification as to why. Then Judah tells his other son to sleep with his dead brother’s widow. He doesn’t want to screw this gal so he beats off instead, and God murders him for it. (Let’s get