God Hates You: Making Sense of the Bible Read online

  “You shall crawl along your belly for the rest of your life.” (Genesis 3:14 NIV)

  Are you serious? Well, call me stupid, but that hardly seems much of a punishment for a snake, that had no legs in the first place! And I’m sure the snake made a big sounding sigh of relief before slithering off to wherever it came from. Which poses an interesting question doesn’t it? The snake came from God and God put him there in the first place, whether intentionally as a ploy to tempt Eve or not. So, why punish the snake if God created him and used him for that purpose? Oh well, it seems Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the Serpent and the Serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on!

  Adam & Eve – The Aftermath

  Adam and Eve, now mere mortals like you and I, were also shouldered with the punishment of knowing they would now no longer live for eternity. God says to Adam, that because of his error, human beings will live only to a maximum age of 120 years.

  Adam and Eve married and kept their clothes on at all times because they were now ashamed of their nakedness, due to the awakening as a result of eating the forbidden fruit, which meant that outdoor sex in broad daylight was no longer kosher but lights-off coitus would be the sex du jour. Shortly after formalizing their union as man and wife, Eve gave birth to two sons named Cain and Abel.

  Cain, Abel and Noah

  On the surface this appears to be a story of an insecure son and a God who played favorites.

  “Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.” (Genesis 4:2-5 NIV)

  It seems highly suspicious to a moron like me that God would play the favorites game with the very first family he ever created, and for reasons given that hardly warrant so. That reason being that Abel offered a more worthy sacrifice, animals, in worship of the Lord. But Cain grew vegetables, thus it would hardly make any sense to offer your first carrot as a sacrifice to the Lord, would it?

  This passage provides us with our first insight into God’s insecurity complex, in that he plays favorites to those that worship or praise him better. And more importantly doesn’t it seem somewhat ‘human’ to show partiality towards one over another?

  Over time Cain gets the shits, his jealousy consumes him and in a remote field he murders his brother, Abel. But since God is subjected to the human emotion of jealousy too, he opts not to punish Cain, and leaves the judicial process to his parents who decide to banish Cain to an undisclosed location.

  What of Adam and Eve? God helped Eve, at 130 years of age, to become pregnant with another son to replace Abel, his name Seth. Adam died in his prime at a whopping 930 years of age. The death of Eve is not mentioned, but needless to say both lived more than 800 years past what God had said was man’s expiry date. Which poses the question, when do we obey God with certainty or when do we second-guess his bluffs? He is one mean poker player.

  We learn that Cain survives his banishment and lives a prosperous life. He finds a girl, marries her, and together with his new wife produces a son named Enoch. Enoch had two children and more grandchildren, until approximately 600 or more years later one of Adam and Cain’s descendents gave birth to Noah.

  Now, just in case you missed the flaw in the above story, like I did on the first go around, where the hell did Cain’s wife come from? As it is written quite clearly that God created first Adam and then later Eve. The two hook up and produce two sons of their own. The start of the human race! Abel is killed and Cain is banished but marries some broad. Who created her? I guess the author of Genesis doesn’t include any mention of her lineage or creation because to do so would either discredit his original Genesis story, or make it one of incestuous beginnings.

  At the grand old age of 500 years (and In case you didn’t notice, I just made that coughing sound that intentionally, feebly conceals the sound of ‘bullshit’) Noah became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

  The Flood

  God didn’t stay happy with his creation for very long and in his heavenly loneliness he became irate that all of mankind seemed to be having too much of a good time enjoying guilt-free sex, drinking wine and smoking whatever they could get their hands on:

  “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth and his heart was filled with pain.” (Genesis 6:5 NIV)

  And judging by the proceeding words of God, this pain must have been a little more uncomfortable than a slight burning sensation of reflux:

  “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals and creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7 NIV)

  So, he wants to start all over again? This is the intelligent designer we are talking about and he wants to get rid of the entire human race on day one of the honeymoon.

  Now, notwithstanding the obvious human blunder of applying human emotions to a celestial spirit, we are now witnesses to the fact that God is a genocidal maniac.

  Is this not mass-murder on the grandest level? Does it not beget the obvious question: Why do believers worship a mass murderer? Surely, if God, the all-knowing creator, created man, would not he have foreseen this so-called evil coming? This is nothing short of a senseless atrocity of the highest order, to destroy millions of people because he was displeased at the moral performance of ‘some’ of those that he created in his own image. If we are the mirror of God, as the Bible claims, does this mean that he too has a natural, instinctual urge to participate in drunken orgies? And if not, why did he fail to program us without these so called wicked desires? And more significantly, God hadn’t prescribed any rules or commandments at this stage, so why were we being punished for breaking the rules when there weren’t any yet to follow? To punish by death for violating invisible rules seems a little harsh doesn’t it? This is certainly not the act of a God of love, peace and mercy. And so much for free will, huh?

  If this event were true, then this is a violent, unforgiving, celestial dictator who requires unquestioning obedience, to not only follow his rules, but to guess what he is thinking too.

  Fortunately, the rationalists amongst us can be thankful that not only is God a character of wicked fiction but we can also take comfort that our ancestral forefathers did not meet a watery grave, as there is no evidence that Mt Everest was ever covered in flood water, nor do indigenous civilizations such as the Australian Aboriginals have a pause in their history that would denote such a catastrophe. Thus another bogus fable, and a fable with similar tenets told in almost every religion since the dawn of time.

  Furthermore, the credibility that all species of animal, insects (of which there are more than 1 million species of beetles alone) and man alive today are a result of the miraculous efforts of a 900 year old man, Noah, corralling two of every living thing onto his 450 foot long boat, and then successfully encouraging all these species to mate with one another after spending 150 days trapped on a timber barge, is too stupid to imagine. The comical improbability of this story can be pictured with the mind’s eye - a man that is nearly a millennia in age, wearing nothing but a flimsy sheep wool robe and a pair of ancient thongs probably held together by no more than a couple pieces of leather hide, prancing around the world trying to collect two of every species. Imagine his difficulty in getting a male and female Sumatran tiger. He had to clip clop his way all the way down to Indonesia, set traps in the Sumatran jungle then catch two of these powerful cats that could kill you with a playful swipe of their paws. Not only catch them but also imagine Noah carrying them all the way back to the Middle East, only to discover that both tigers had a set of testicles.

  Or picture Noah, there standing proudly before the completed Ark with most of the animals on board, including the dinosaurs, asking his sons, “Alright lads, are we sure we have got all the animals on God’s list?” His sons reply, “No Dad, there’s a small problem. None of us have heard of a kangaroo, nor have we heard of a place called Australia.” Noah then replied, “Must be one of God’s typos. Ok, what is next on the list?” “A Koala.” “Shit!”

  As a teenager I recall looking at a picture of an Aardvark and thinking that if ever there was animal that named itself then it must have been this mammal. There’s Noah standing in front of the Ark, the rain pouring down, he’s holding a clipboard and asking that all animals assemble in alphabetical order. Noah looks down at this strange looking creature and asks, “What is it that you are?” “I am an Aardvark,” came the reply. “Ok well go stand behind the antelope?” To which Noah is hastily informed by the four legged critter that his species is spelt with two a’s. As in a double stroke of animal genius!

  American columnist Judith Hayes also pondered these kind of comical questions in relation to this childish story that frighteningly more than 60% of Americans believe to be literal truth when she wrote:

  “The biblical account of Noah’s Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?”

  Not only do we know that it would have been impossible to house all the millions and billions of living species on this boat, but we also know there is no DNA evidence to show that all animals on earth came from single breeding pairs just a few thousand years ago.

  Final thoughts on this, where would Noah have kept the woodpeckers and the termites? With all these millions of animals, reptiles and insects on board this boat for months how big was the poo-room?

  God’s Covenant with Noah

  As the floodwaters receded Noah set forth to ensure all the animals were busy mating. He also encouraged his sons to mate with their wives so that mankind could begin to multiply once more. God made the following promise to Noah:

  “Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ‘I now establish my covenant with you and your descendents after you and with every living creature that is with you….Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.’” (Genesis 9:8-11 NIV)

  This promise was sealed with a rainbow:

  “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” (Genesis 9:16 NIV)

  Once more, the Biblical explanation of the rainbow, as God’s covenant with Noah, demonstrates that the Bible was indeed written by 2000BC man, without crucial information we know to be true today, to explain things that were inexplicable to man 7,000 years ago. We now know, thanks to Isaac Newton in 1665, that the scientific explanation for a rainbow is a result of the passing of light from air into water, or water into air, where the different colors are refracted. Thus, the colors are separated into a spectrum, or rainbow.

  A further question worth pondering in relation to this chapter of Genesis and its claim that all mankind are in effect descendents of Noah and his sons, is how does this explain from where Asians and Blacks descend? And if you argue that they too came from Noah and their features adjusted to their respective climatic locales, then aren’t you now arguing the case for evolution?

  Once more this chapter raises more questions than the zero answers it provides.

  The Tower of Babel

  As the authoring committee were piecing together the story for the genesis of civilization they quickly realized they would have to deal with the question of explaining how it was that different cultures spoke different languages. You had the Egyptians speaking Egyptian, and the Greeks speaking Greek, for example, all the while God was speaking only in fluent Hebrew. So, they pondered an explanation for this whilst sitting around the campfire in the middle of the Canaan Desert. The Bible reconciles this in a manner that is arguably the most ridiculous of all.

  The Bible has it written that the entire world, post-flood, spoke a single language. The world’s inhabitants gathered together on a flood plain in the land of Shinar, presumably somewhere in what we know to be Israel today. All citizens of the world united to build a new city, with what would be an iconic tower, being so magnificent that its pinnacle would seem to touch the heavens. Working together in solidarity and with a common purpose, the ‘world’ built this impressive tower made of brick and mortar, and indeed, according to Bible lore, it reached into Heaven.

  Was God happy with this engineering feat of human endeavour? Was he happy that man had united after the virtual elimination of his species as a result of God’s flood? The answer is no he wasn’t. In fact, God was furious that man would do such a thing without it being, specifically, a monument in his honor. God travelled down to Babel, and this is what he said:

  “‘Behold, the people is one and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:1-9 NIV)

  The inference being, that the Tower of Babel was not built for the worship and praise, but was dedicated to the glory of man, with the motive of making a ‘name’ for the builders. God, seeing what the people were trying to achieve by working together, was not only pissed but evidently concerned that if man could create such an impressive structure without his input, then man could achieve any number of things via human solidarity. I wonder what man could pull together by collaboration? Science or medicine, maybe? Rational thinking? Anyway, in his fear and fury he confounded their languages and scattered the people of Babel throughout all four corners of the earth.

  This being the Genesis explanation of the diversity of languages we know today. What nincompoop really believes this to be true? I can’t go on, but I must!

  Wouldn’t you think it a little insightful if God kept all of mankind to a single language so that the Bible could’ve been written in a single language rather than have to be translated from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to English? I guess the principle of ‘lost in translation’ never occurred to the ‘Great One’.

  Introducing Abraham

  The name Abraham translates in Hebrew to ‘father of nations’ and as is revealed in the writings of Genesis he is a critical figure as the founding patriarch of the Israelites. According to the Bible, Abraham was brought from Mesopotamia, or Iraq-Iran as it is known today, to the land of Canaan. God had said to Abraham, in a dream, to leave his country, his people and his household to go to the land that God would reveal to him, in return he would be blessed with all of mankind.

  Abraham was led into Egypt due to a severe famine, but upon entering Egypt he was concerned that the Egyptian Pharaoh would kill him and take his wife, who was said to have been stunningly beautiful. Thus he deceived the Pharaoh into believing that his wife, Sarah, was his sister. The scheme backfires somewhat as the Pharaoh takes Sarah and includes her in his harem and bonks her, anyway, along with tens of other willing sex slaves, at any time of his choosing. But before you think to yourself, “Hey, it’s good to be the Pharaoh”, Sarah was seventy-five years of age at this point. I mean c’mon, how hot could she really have been?

  What’s further interesting about this story is that Abraham lied and deceived a Pharaoh with God’s endorsement. What kind of moral teaching is this? I think all believers should find it somewhat unsettling that the human father of the Judaeo-Christian faith was a blatant liar. The Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormon faith, was likewise founded by a convicted fraudster in Joseph Smith, but at least the Mormons got magic underwear for following him.

  Somehow, the Pharaoh learns that Sarah is Abraham’s wife and he reunites the couple before banishing them from Egypt. Upon returning to Canaan, Abraham enters into a covenant with God. This covenant was based on a deal that in exchange for recognizing God as supreme universal deity and authority; he would be blessed with innumerable progeny. The Lord appearing to Abraham in a vision, told him,

  “Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield, your very great reward.” (Genesis 15:1 NIV)

  Abraham complains to God that his wife can bear no children and expresses his concern that should he die his inheritance will be left to one of his slaves. Yes, the Patriarch of Israel, the chosen one of God is seemingly oblivious to the moral bankruptcy of slavery, but more on this later.