If I Was God...#6

If I was God, I would never let an evil man like Joshua be a spokesman for me.  This man dared command in God's name that a child be murdered and laid at the foundation of Jericho after Israel had laid it to waste.

Joshua laid an oath on them at that time, saying, “Cursed before the LORD be the man who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. “At the cost of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates" (Joshua 6:26).

Yeah, well if you're not understanding how I'm getting a murder and body-laying at the foundation of Jericho from that, I understand.  I'd read the book of Joshua at least a couple times through before, and I'd never realized what this meant.  Let's skip to the future during which time Jericho is rebuilt.  Ahab, king of Judah, was reigning. 

In his days Hiel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun (I Kings 16:34).

If you're still lost, all you need to do is look into history to learn about something called foundation sacrifice.   It was common in ancient times for peoples to sacrifice individuals and lay them at a city's foundations and/or gates.  They believed it would bring good fortune.  Archaeologists have unearthed remains of bodies that were laid in the walls of cities. 

The god Joshua served who called Joshua a good and faithful servant was a god who apparently spoke through Joshua his demands that human sacrifices were to be carried out if Jericho was to be built again.

Are you appalled yet?

This has been "If I Was God...#6."

If I Was God...#5

If I was God I would never have allowed Sodom to become wicked and would never have considered Lot to be righteous when he was willing to allow his virgin daughters to be gang-raped.  No decent person would want to deliver their guests out to be sexually assaulted, but they sure would not send out their innocent daughters to instead be raped. 

Seriously, you mean to tell me that Lot was the last righteous man to live in Sodom?  What would any of you wives reading this think of your husband if he answered the door to face the rowdy neighbors, and he sent out your teen daughters for the neighbors to do with them sexually as they please?  What would you think if your father did that to you or your sister?  What if your husband worshiped the god of Abraham and did these things?  What if other worshipers of this god agreed that your husband was a very upright, righteous man?  Would you love such a god?  Would you love your husband or your father, if he was such a man? 

Lot’s wife is the one who was turned into a pillar of salt during the family’s evacuation of the city.  They were all instructed by one of God’s agents not to look back, but Lot’s wife did.  She was punished for looking back at the city, because temptation got the best of her.  Yet Lot was delivered from the city after having offered his daughters to his horny neighbors.  Nearly all of us have seen movies that depict natural disasters or horrible invasions that force people to flee from their city of residence.  We’ve all seen people stop and look back in shock and horror.  We’ve all thought or shouted aloud, “Go!!!  Just go!!!”  It’s not because we think their looking back is immoral, but we want them to make it out alive.  Maybe Lot’s wife missed her home and her possessions that she’d put so much labor and time into producing—blankets, clothing, eating and drinking vessels and utensils, etc.  Maybe she was experiencing grief over lady-friends she had in the city.  Maybe her lady friends were decent characters and would never want their daughters gang-raped.  Maybe they just happened to not worship a god who approves of men who do their daughters that way. 

Then what does Lot do after he and his daughters hole up in a cave for the rest of their days?  He lets his daughters get him drunk, then he has sex with one daughter one night, which results in an incestous son.  If anyone of any decency ended up doing something that horrible, they sure as hell wouldn’t let it happen again.  Yet the very next night, that sorry motherfucker—no, wait, make that daughterfucker—lets his other daughter screw his drunken ass.  Lot was a sick daughterfucker.  It really does seem that his daughters would have been better off partying with the rowdy neighbors.

Now, it’s a common misconception that Sodom’s sin was that they loved to engage in anal sex.  That is where our modern word sodomy originated. However, both the biblical book of Ezekiel and the extrabiblical book of Jasher states the reason Sodom was viewed as wicked was their lack of generosity and their downright horrendous treatment of non-resident foreigners.  Jasher goes into great detail, although it’s been over a decade since I’ve read it, so I won’t detail anything here now. 

Lot showed hospitality to his guests.  I guess it didn’t matter to God that he let his daughters get fucked all night long by whomever wanted a round with them, just so long as he didn’t let that befall his guests. That wouldn’t be showing good hospitality, would it now?  I suppose, too, it was very generous of Lot to let his daughters screw him so that they could bear sons. 

I just happen to not subscribe to the same definition of righteousness as Abraham and Lot’s god. 

This has been #5 in the "If I Was God..." series.

If I Was God...#4

If I was God, I would be present on the earth and lovingly guide and spend time with my creation.  This would especially be the case with humanity.

We all probably have heard of instances in which a parent or parents kicked out a child from their home after the child committed some offense that was abhorrent to the parent(s).  Most of us are appalled when we hear such stories.  We ask ourselves, as we wonder in astonishment, "What loving parent would do such a thing?  That is way too excessive!  That is poor parenting."  

Yes, indeed it is, but isn't it the very thing that the bible God(s) did to Adam and Eve?  He lost control and angrily threw them out of the pleasant garden that was their home that provided all their needs.  All the blame goes on Adam and Eve, and they were thrown out into the cold and harsh wilderness.  Not at any point have we ever asked ourselves what blame God should bear for this unruly behavior.  

Not only was God unforgiving of Adam and Eve's supposed transgression, but where the hell was he to begin with?  Why the hell did he fail to do a better job of preventing Adam and Eve finding trouble in the first place?  Why, he's the one who set up the trap!  And then he kicked them out.  

Thereafter he continued to stay away.  He continued in his hard-heartedness, never softening and deciding to forgive, never tracking Adam and Eve down and inviting them back, never apologizing for such excessive punitive behavior and neglectfulness.  He has continued to be the absent parent and to allow chaos to run rampant.  He's left it up to the very species with which he found fault in the first place to pass on supposed guidance as how to live and has left it up to them to convince fellow species members to believe it all.  He won't bother to come down here himself and lovingly straighten it all out, forgive, and go about things a better way.  Maybe he's in his abode, drinking himself into a stupor.

Bravo!

This has been #4 in the "If I Was God..." series.

America the Great and the Widow's Mites

I posted back in February an article in which I shared research I'd compiled regarding how "great" or not-so-great the United States of America ranks in various categories.   The positive thing that America ranks #1 in is generosity, but how generous is it, really?

I started thinking about this.  Are we not the richest nation, or at least live the most richly?  One of the only other two things I successfully found that ranked us at #1 was gross domestic product (GDP).

So it follows that the richest nation damn well ought to be the most generous.  It's got far more ability to do so.  It's much easier to give and to want (or not mind, at the very least) to give to help others when one is able.  Many nations' people cannot afford to do so.

This reminds me of the Jewish prophet Jesus' parable of the widow and the two copper mites (See Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:3-4 in the Christian New Testament).

She would have been cast in the lot with the "least generous" if ranked by how much she gave. But she had given all that she had.  The rich men gave what appeared to be much, but really it was little if seen in accordance with the status of wealth.

How would our great nation of the United States of America rank if generosity was calculated Jesus-style?

How would the rich nation with the #1 world ranking of GDP who boasts about its "most generous" ranking face under Jesus' judgement, if he was elected a judge?  Hmm... What was that saying that Jesus is well-known for saying?  Something about how hard it is for a rich man to do something...

Why Do Atheists Insist That the God of the Bible Be Bound to the Same Moral Code?

I just answered the following question on Quora:

Why do many atheists insist that the God of the Bible must be bound to the same moral obligations which He places on His creations?

Well, I don't insist such as an atheist, as I don't believe there is a god. I did, however, insist that when I was a Christian. It's the same principle of parents living the proper example for their children or a law enforcement officer setting the precedent for fellow citizens. As a child of God—as I believed I was—I fully expected God to be better than I was, to set the right example, to certainly not ever sin. If he was to sin, to break his own law, and I supposedly deserve to die and stay dead for breaking any statute of any commandment of that law, then he surely deserved to die, too.

During my last two years as a commandment-keeping Christian, I started seriously questioning, if I knew I felt guilty after yelling at my kids when I'd lost my temper, because it was wrong of me to act that way, then why was it ok for God to feel remorseful and repent of his wrathful and destructive outbursts against his children (including murdering large numbers of them and worse) yet not deserve to die forever without forgiveness? And who must forgive him? I puzzled so much over all the passages of the Hebrew God feeling guilty and repenting each time of the evil he had done. I knew it was not ok that he could get away with it but that we all deserved to die for much, much less (most of us don't send enemies to rape and kill our own children and destroy all they have).

No one should be above the law, and that most certainly includes any God that has the audacity to create us and expect us to follow a law of his/her/its own making.

That is why I also seriously started questioning the supposed rebellion of angels. Rebellions are often waged by the righteous against tyrants.

If there really was a god, no one should want to bow to tyranny and condone tyranny. Of course, we only need to look back through human history and our present to recognize only tyrants demand worship—strict honor and obedience from their subjects. A righteous leader serves his or her people more than they serve him or her. Jesus even taught this wonderful truth. If you scrutinize the best parents and the worst parents, you'll notice the best parents serve their children far more than the children serve them (which does not mean always doing everything for them, as the best parents train their children to become capable adults). The worst authoritarian parents will sin left and right without consequence but expect perfect obedience from their children; the worst permissive parents will neglect proper care and training of their children. The same goes with the best and worst governments. Governments should be made up of model public servants to serve the citizenry.

Tyrants never bother to apply the law to themselves, but they carry out the most severe punishments to those they force into subjection who break the statutes.

I implore you never to find yourself excusing a tyrant from keeping his own law that he forces upon his subjects.

Bill O'Reilly's Broken Home Hypocrisy

I've been pointing out Bill O'Reilly's hateful hypocrisy for over a decade now, along with some of the other very un-Jesus-like individuals on Fox (like Sean Hannity) with their sickening extreme right views of hatred, war-mongering, support of torture, lack of grace, lies and all manner of deception, and so on.  And now this...

...but intelligent people believe in God