by Scott Kaelen
Verse 30 states that a man must not have sex with his father’s wives or ex-wives, as doing so would bring dishonour to his father. “A man shall not take his father’s wife, nor discover his father’s skirt.”✞
DEUTERONOMY COMMANDMENTS REWRITTEN
If the Deuteronomy Commandments were written today for the first time by a quantum-displaced Moses who had learned the English language and taken a crash course on modern living, this is what they might look like.
MORALITY
1A – Be honest.
1B – Don’t be a thief.
GOOD ADVICE
2A – Adhere to Health & Safety guidelines in your place of living.
2B – Don’t mix your crops.
2C – Don’t have sex with your parents, step-parents, or in-laws.
ANIMALS
3A – Help injured or imperilled creatures.
3B – Leave mother bird alone, but by all means take her young, except where such actions would contravene 1B.
3C – Don’t assign different types of work animal to the same task.
FASHION TIPS
4A – Don’t be a transvestite.
4B – Don’t mix materials when making an item of clothing.
4C – Consider sewing on bits that look nice.
INFIDELITY
5A – A man who does not tell the truth about a woman’s infidelity must pay her father for the insult.
5B – A woman proven to have lost her virginity before bedding her husband must be killed.
5C – If you commit adultery, you will be killed.
RAPE
6A – If a man rapes another man’s wife, either within a city or in the wilderness, he will be killed.
6B – A wife raped in a city by a man who is not her husband will be killed if she does not cry out.
6C – Raped virgins not due to wed must marry their rapist and stay with them until they die.
KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY
Deuteronomy 28:53: And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave.
God’s sage advice is that if we don’t stock up on tinned goods, then one day we might find our city being besieged and we won’t have enough food for ourselves and our families to survive. God therefore surmises that some of us will eventually conclude that we’ll have to eat our own sons and daughters in order for us to live out the siege.
Of course, the stronger men won’t resort to filicide or cannibalism, but the sensitive ones, according to God, will snack on their children and rather than shoulder the guilt of their actions they will blame everyone else instead – their brothers and wives, and, incredibly, the inedible remains of their children.
I’m not saying this tongue-in-cheek. I’m literally giving you a modern translation of Deuteronomy 28:53, which states that the tender men will eat their offspring and blame their actions on the bits they couldn’t chew. This might be the sickest part of the Bible, although there are many other strong contenders. And let us not forget how modern church-going Christians still simulate eating and drinking the body and the blood of their so-called saviour, a man referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, whose historicity is extremely questionable at best.
LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS
It’s time to dive into the stagnant and murky pool that embarrasses many Christians and Jews by its very existence. Metaphor or no, Ezekiel 16 is a steaming pile of wrongness, whichever way you shovel it.
♰Ezekiel 16:17: “You also took the fine jewellery I gave you, the jewellery made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.”
The verse Ezekiel 16:17 is found in the middle of the gratuitous and troubling Ezekiel 16, whereby God goes off on a rant to the lady “Jerusalem” (the nation apparently expressed as a simile of a human female), reminding her how he found her as a mewling newborn writhing in her own afterbirth, whereby he claimed possession of her. God kept her somewhere naked until she reached puberty, at which point he had sex with her before finally giving her something to wear.
God’s rant continues about how she later prostituted herself everywhere. Then there’s the jewellery line, where he reinforces his assumed ownership of her by accusing her of committing adultery against him by having sex with jewellery. Then he accuses her of killing the children she bore him, and (this is the most bizarre and disturbing part) feeding her dead children’s flesh to the idols she has sex with.
So, this metaphor-loving deity found a newborn baby, took her with the pretence of care, and kept her in a cellar (it’s the Old Testament; don’t expect comfort.) He kept her imprisoned, and the baby grew to a toddler, then a young child. Finally, when she was somewhere between 8 and 13 years old, God had sex with her. Afterwards, he chucked some rags at the young girl and told her to get dressed; this was the first clothing he’d ever allowed her to wear. Perhaps he felt sick with what he’d just done. Perhaps not; it’s just a metaphor, after all. Or is it?
Metaphor or no, any girl who went through such an ordeal – or any nation’s worth of suppressed and oppressed women – would be mentally damaged for life. Have no doubt about that. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? Oslo Syndrome? And this allegedly all-capable deity also exhibits, by throwing the rag at the girl, classic psychological projection/transference of his own unpleasant impulses onto the girl-child he brutalises.
It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see such a girl later in life putting herself through the same torment by prostituting herself. It’s a neurological minefield. The lady “Jerusalem” probably gave birth to her children on her own in a darkened room. Her life-long ordeal unhinged her so badly that she— Well, whatever she did with those poor babies doesn’t bear thinking about, literally or metaphorically. Suffice to say they were secondary victims of a much deeper, depraved atrocity. This stuff is seriously creepy and disturbing. Not even George RR Martin or Piers Anthony could write it.
Ezekiel 16 sheds a lot of light onto God, or rather onto the men of that time, portraying him/them as abductors, oppressors, rapists and paedophiles; not a far cry from certain atrocities that are still occurring today on a national scale in certain parts of the world…
LIKE A DEITY SCORNED
EZEKIEL 23:19: Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys, and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions.
God really is a jealous deity. One of his countless concubines regales him with stories of her prodigious Egyptian lovers, with their legendary members and ejaculations like tidal waves, and God responds throughout Ezekiel 23 with a hissy fit, threatening to send armies on horseback against the harlot. Good thinking, God; almost as great as planting a tree of Knowledge where everyone can be tempted to pick from it. Every one of God’s so-called omniscient choices seems to be a recipe for disaster.
Worth noting is the breaking of the Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness. How many of these soldiers are likely to have witnessed the woman’s infidelity? Probably some, seeing how she’s such a monumental whore, but still, a Commandment is being ignored, and by several army legions.
The soldiers have instructions to kidnap her children, cut off her nose and ears, and set fire to her. As if all that wasn’t enough, God also threatens to remove her clothes and jewellery. I’m no expert, but surely her ear-rings went the way of her mutilated ears, and surely her clothing has been burnt off in the fire (which very likely killed her) or melted to her skin in the process. I doubt she’d be too worried about the staggeringly anti-climactic after-thought of unburdening her of her adornments.
Well done, sir; there’s nothing like ending on a high note.
CHRIST’S BIRTH EXPOSED
Every year, on December 25th, some 2.5 billion Christians and a disturbingly large number of non-theists (of which there are currently around one billion on the planet) celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ the Saviour of Humanity, et cetera, so on and so forth. What they don’t know is that history has got it very wrong. But, like sheep being led to pasture, they’re all happy to just go along with the flow of celebrations without bothering to question or care about their validity. Not me, though; it’s not enough for me to just shrug and say, “Christmas is for the kids, that’s why I celebrate it.” That just doesn’t cut it.
I’m all for end-of-year festivities, but not festivities that have become anachronisms. I say that the non-Christians of the world ought to remove the redundant Christmas from their lives and replace it with, well, how about Hitchensmas? I’m sure the late and great Christopher Hitchens would be proud for atheists the world over to celebrate his life and his words (as long as such a practice didn’t end up deifying him.)
How do we know there are inconsistent beliefs about the baby Jesus’s birthday? How can I, as an atheist, dare to make such a bold statement? How dare I be so arrogant and so flippant? Hey, I didn’t write the New Testament, I merely read it. It is the ‘Good Book’ itself that exposes the time of year of Jesus’s birth as the hoax it is. Let’s look at the evidence.
Luke 2:1-6: In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born.
Such censuses were not taken during the freezing winters in Judea, but during the warmer months, most likely in the summer.
Luke 2:7-8: And she gave birth to her first-born, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
No sane shepherd would have watched his flock by night during a Judean December, in sub-zero temperatures, and likely with ice-cold rain or snow. If shepherds were in their fields, it would indicate the time of year to be between the end of Spring and the beginning of Autumn.
Admittedly there is evidence within the studies of tree rings dating back to the Roman Medieval era which suggests the world was warmer 2000 years ago, especially during the supposed time of Jesus’s later life, though not necessarily at the time of his birth. But this would only make a difference of roughly 1 or 2oC at the most, and I’m still certain no one except perhaps for a misplaced Wonko the Sane would be sleeping under the stars during a Roman-era Judean winter.
Luke 1:28-31: In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.”
The above exhibit is far from obvious during a casual read, but bear with me. Elizabeth was John the Baptist’s mothe, and was at the end of her second trimester when Mary fell pregnant with Jesus. Zacharias, John’s father, was a priest in the temple of Jerusalem during the course of Abijah, which corresponds with the middle of June. When Zacharias went home after his service, Elizabeth became pregnant. The ballpark figure for John the Baptist’s consummation is the end of June. Fast forward six months to when Gabriel spoke to Mary, and the rough date would be the end of December (sound familiar?) This means Mary became pregnant at the end of December, not that she gave birth at that time of year.
Presuming that Mary ran full-term, if we add nine months to the rough date of consummation we arrive at the end of September, which, by this logical deduction, would be when Jesus was born, if indeed he existed at all. With so many historical errors in what is purportedly the “Book of God”, it’s difficult to not consider most of it chaff rather than wheat.
Personally, I don’t care when Christians want to celebrate the birth of their guy. What bothers me is that the end of the year really is a time when festivities should occur, but unfortunately it’s so hugely dominated by this overbearing tradition that suggests a virgin birth occurred at the coldest, harshest time of year, long before the invention of electricity and gas central heating, because a stranger told a woman she was going to get pregnant by… Wait for it…
Luke 1:34-35 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, (wait for it…) “The Holy Spirit will come on you.”
I jest ye not.
If the Bible itself holds such clues as these which highlight inconsistencies in the Christian belief system, surely it holds even more of them. Author and scientist Isaac Asimov got it right when he said, “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME
Christians believe – or, rather, they insist – that there is only one god, and that his name is God. Isn’t that correct? If there are any Christians reading this, some of them are no doubt nodding vigorously right now. Of course there’s only one god; how preposterous to think that Odin could ever have existed? How ridiculous to suggest that Brahman might be fighting the Abrahamic deity for superiority of the Earth and the heavens.
If there is but one deity in the whole of existence, and if his name is God, then answer me this: When God said “You shall have no other gods before me”, to exactly which gods was he referring? God’s words, by their very nature, seem to be accepting that he is not the only deity. If God can accept the existence of other gods, why can’t his followers do likewise? All God has ordered is that his followers must not worship those other gods more than they worship God himself. They’re still allowed to accept the existence of these other gods. They’re even allowed to worship other gods, but only a little bit, and only as long as it’s not more than they worship God. Christians who refuse to accept the existence of every god that came before (and after) their own chosen deity are making one huge, arrogant presumption: they presume themselves to be better than God, as if they’re saying to him, “Look here, big fellow, you can believe what you like, but I don’t have to believe in these other gods, regardless of whether you do or not.”
Now, if you’re a Christian, do you really want to have that discussion when you reach the pearly gates, or would you rather grudgingly accept that Odin and Zeus, Ba’al and Brahman and a few thousand other gods do in fact absolutely exist? Go on, reach for your Bible and check to see if I’m right or wrong. And then cherry-pick and warp the words you have read to convince yourself that I’m wrong. Alternatively, do what you do best and don’t bother reading the one book of your chosen religion.
Of course, I say all of this ironically. Not a single one of those gods has ever existed outside of the minds of the men and women who dreamed them up, and outside of the minds of those who were indoctrinated into the faiths that emerged from those initial dreamers.
GOD ON SUICIDE
(THEISTS BEWARE)
Picture the scene: You’re a Christian, a follower of God. You’re also a soldier. You’re standing on the battlefield; to your left and to your right is a long line of your fellow soldiers, each holding a sabre. Across from you, a hundred yards away, is the enemy; a long line just like the one you’re in, ten men deep, each man brandishing a sword and a shield. You’re about to fight
a battle for your god. The horn sounds. A great battle cry fills the air and you charge to meet the enemy with your sabre held high. As steel clashes against steel you feel an agonising pain lance through your chest, but as your vision fades you smile because you know you’ve died in the name of your god. Right?
Wrong.
What you’ve actually just done is commit suicide. Come on, you knew you’d never walk away from this fight. You were willing to give up your life to defend your beliefs. You came here to die. Now, I’m not about to split hairs; I’m not playing with semantics here, but suicide is suicide, whether it’s charging towards a legion of swordsmen, throwing yourself out of an aeroplane, climbing a dangerous cliff face unaided, willingly travelling to another country to engage in deadly fire-fights, asking for your life-support plug to be pulled, giving up your share so that your friends might survive…
You get the idea.
According to most Christians, if you willingly relinquish your life you will not get into Heaven. You want to argue the point? Let’s do that, then…
Samson killed himself, bringing down a building he was in, in order to destroy thousands of Philistines.
King Saul, filled with insanity, his family dead and his army defeated, killed himself by falling on his own sword.
Judas Iscariot hung himself with remorse for how he had betrayed Jesus.
Zimri, not wanting to be taken prisoner, set the palace on fire and died in the flames.
Jesus willingly relinquished his life, saying, “No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself.”
All the above chose to die. But which of them did God allow into Heaven? Well, Jesus, obviously. Samson, too. Not the others, though. It seems God is as much a cherry-picker as most of his followers.
Deuteronomy 23:1: He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.
