Challenging God

Oh noez- an actual building resembles an artist's rendering of something that never existed- it must be Saytan!
god, yhwh, bible, genesis, babel, tree, christianity

There are two instances in the Bible in which man challenges Yhwh. I'm not surprised at the concept of man challenging god because human history is filled with stories of people fighting against impossible odds, and the odds don't get more impossible than going up against omnipotence. What does surprise me is that in both of these stories it is implied that had Yhwh not taken decisive action against man, man could have won.

The first takes place in the Garden of Eden. Yhwh, for no explained reason, puts two very dangerous trees right in the middle, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge and Yhwh freaks out. He says outright that if Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life as well, they would be as "us", as gods, in other words*.

The second instance of man challenging Yhwh occurs when man builds the Tower of Babel. Yhwh has this to say about it:

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

Now that is an impossibly strange thing for an omnipotent being to say. There is "nothing" we humans couldn't do if only we all spoke the same language? That's . . . odd. The only thing holding us back from being a threat to the creator of well, everything, is a lack of a common language? Just how omnipotent is this Yhwh fellow, anyway?



*This isn't in every translation of the Book of Genesis. It is in the one I have at home, which is a Tanakh printed in 1905 by the Rabbinical Council of New York, translated into English for "the new modern Jew who knows only the language of his adopted country and not the language of his ancestors." I'll trust that the Rabbinical Council would know the proper translation of their most important text.

Wrecking Cranes to Wayward Facades

doug giles, townhall, god, religion, christianity, isrealite, yhwh, cthulu, necronomicon, stupid
And the winner of Hell's First Occasional Award for Worst Metaphor in Recent Memory* goes to Doug Giles of Townhall.com for the following:



When Old Testament Israel strayed from following God, Yahweh had unique and painful ways of getting the Hebrews’ attention. killing people isn't unique. prophets are not unique. painful i will grant you. His first line of attack for the people that he loved was to send in His prophets—who were not the shiny ??, happy-clappy ??!?, cliché-spewing actually, how do you know? we don't have the original texts, and you aren't an ancient israelite, so for all you know Moses talked entirely in cliches., aphorism-addicted the bible is full of aphorism. chock full of aphorisms, to spew a cliche. mega church pastors who are were more interested in hawking their books the ancient israelite tribes had a thriving book economy? than bearding the priests of Baal. i don't even know what to say about that.


No, the prophets were wrecking cranes to wayward Israel’s facades. worst metaphor in recent history. congratulations. They were imperfect, difficult dudes seriously? dudes? really? who called a spade a shovel i thought spewing cliches was bad. for a perfect God. so perfect he couldn't figure out a way to get the israelites to obey him for more than 5 minutes at a time, even with the commonplace and painful attention getters. They didn’t give a crap who you were, who your mommy was, is this guy a professional wrestler or something? if you were the King or Pastor Whoop-Dee-Frickin’-Do. worst writing ever. not in recent history. ever. this makes Twilight look like Shakespeare.** They were fiercely devoted to God and His ways. Janet Napolitano would call these truth-tellers “terror threats” 1) the DHS report was begun and researched during the bush administration 2) the first DHS report was on left wing nutjobs. reality fail. because they loathed godless governments you're not selling me on a theocracy, asshat. and butt-kissing priests sigh and had no problem whatsoever letting those entities entities? um, entities? is this whole post the result of an accident involving a thesaurus and some mislabeled psychiatric medication? have it verbally. scary. verbal wrecking cranes, i suppose.



Yep, if you were out of sorts with God because of practicing whacked stuff i'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. or preaching Oprah instead of Obadiah, wow, Oprah's been in syndication forever, huh? you were about to be publically roasted via the prophets’ sizzling invectives. i'm going with laughter. BWAHAHAHAHAHA


Need a mental image? Imagine Rush, Beck, Coulter, Miller or O’Reilly on steroids. in rush's case, the steroids are probably better than the narcotics, and in beck's case, any medication would be a good start.


This skewering, to be sure, was about as fun for the rebel recipients as watching Nancy Pelosi do an interpretive dance of “Riders on the Storm” (the extended version) would be for Simon Cowell. weirdest, least communicative simile in history.


A humiliating open rebuke, however, was a mere love tap when compared to an eternity of misery and the coming decades-long national butt kicking Israel was in line to receive should they remain contumacious. apparently i was right about the thesaurus. and what is with this guy and "butt"?



The prophets’ messages were never complicated. has he read the old testament? These gruff and holy critters i've lived in the south. a "critter" is a small animal, such as a skunk or a squirrel. offered God’s people two choices: turn or . . . burn. no, actually. the ancient isrealites didn't have a concept of hell, or even much of an afterlife concept at all. the whole eternity of torment thing is purely christian. If Israel obeyed, they’d be blessed. If they disobeyed, well . . . let’s just say things didn’t go that well for the next four decades. which really sucked for the people who actually were obeying god. they got punished as much as anyone else. which would be like throwing everyone in my zip code in jail because my neighbor murdered someone.


You see, if Israel turned from their profane BS (belief systems) oh, dear, he's trying to be cute! and back to God, Yahweh would chill and relent from the attention-grabbing calamities He was heatin’ up on heaven’s back burner. please, make it stop! The prophet, unfortunately, was officially out of a job if the Hebrews went the repentant route. Yep, Amos had to go back to fig picking. god has a worse retirement plan than my boss?



However, when Israel blew the prophets off by condemning the messenger, categorizing the message as hate speech, how dare we ask you to be polite to gays and women and blacks and muslims? it's just wrong, and god will get us for it! jailing the prophet(s) or, as in some cases, killing the prophetic salvo, how does one kill a salvo, anyway? God would in turn switch to plan B to get His insubordinate group’s good ear.


God, not the one to run out of advanced repentance techniques, would allow Israel’s economy to go to hell, plagues to ravage their land, nature to convulse, and enemies the ability to pulverize them. again, punishing perfectly obedient israelites along with disobedient one. god is all powerful- but he can't pick and choose.


Yep, unless I’m reading the Bible upside down, i can read upside down with no difficulty- it doesn't change what the words say. it seems that when the nation went astray from God’s law and wouldn’t listen to the prophets’ calls to repentance and instead vilified the saving voices, God allowed one (or more) of the four aforementioned hammers to pound them until Israel became all ears. "four aforementioned"? do you suppose he reads what he writes, or is this some sort of stream of consciousness bullshit?

This is, at least to me, a plain prophetic pattern within the Scripture. The $64,000 question you gotta ask yourself is this: If there is a God unproven assertion, and if the Bible isn’t a bunch of fairy tales unproven assertion written by a stack of whack jobs one word, then does God still roll roll? today like He did with Old Testament Israel as He interfaces interfaces? with 21st century nations that spurn His values to His face? so, assuming cthulu exists and the necronomicon was written by a mentally unbalanced man of arabic descent, then do the invisible pink unicorns in my basement still get down like it's 1999?

I’m guessin’ God hasn’t had an extreme makeover stop that! and that He is the same yesterday, today and forever, which could mean in our current culture—where evil is good and good is evil murder is kindness, rape is love!—that we might be in line for grave negative sanctions well, if yhwh gets down like the United Nations, we've got nothing to worry about because, apparently, America’s new favorite pastime is whizzing seriously, STOP. THAT. on that which is holy, just and good. hating gays!







*There's a reason nobody calls me for name suggestions.



** Sorry, CN.

What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden

garden, eden, adam, eve, justice, genesis, bible, ray, comfort, god, yhwh, humor
Ray Comfort's latest post brings up the standard fundamentalist explanation for death, suffering, disease and the general uncomfortableness of life: it's your fault. Oh, it's my fault, too, well, it's really Adam and Eve's fault, and, yeah, let's let Ray explain it:

When God made Adam and Eve He made them perfect. There was no disease, suffering, pain and death. When they rebelled against Him, He cursed them and the earth, and we now live in what is commonly called a "fallen creation."

See, Yhwh put a tree in the center of the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Actually, it was two trees. He also put the Tree of Life in the center of Garden of Eden. Now, being omnipotent, if he didn't want anyone to eat of the fruit of either of those Trees, he could have put them outside of the Garden of Eden, or put them on top of a mountain, or put a fence around them, but no, he just leaves the Trees right there where anyone can get at them.

Then, Yhwh puts two people, two completely innocent people, who have been alive all of one day, who have no concept of right or wrong, who have never seen or heard of death, in the Garden with the Trees. The Trees he didn't want these two people to touch. Then he told them they would die if they ate the fruit.

Did I mention Yhwh is supposed to be omniscient?

Yhwh: You can eat anything you want, but don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Eve: Why not?

Yhwh: Because I'll fjwuieruthf you if you do.

Adam: What?

Yhwh: I will fjwuieruthf you if you eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

*Adam and Eve look at one another*

Eve: Ummm . . . what's fjwuieruthf?

Yhwh: You know, I'll fjwuieruthf you if you do it.

Eve (to Adam): You've been around twice as long as me, what's fjwuieruthf?

Adam (shrugs): I dunno. Maybe it's one of those furry things I haven't named yet?

Yhwh: Look, you eat that fruit and I'll fjwuieruthf you! End of discussion.

Eve: That fruit looks pretty tasty. What do you call it again?

Adam: Snorg.

Eve: Snorg? Really? Are you sure you don't like apple better?

Adam: What's wrong with snorg?

Eve: I let you have platypus.

Adam: I guess apple's okay.

Eve: Well, that apple looks pretty tasty, and we don't know that fjwuieruthf is bad. Maybe it's not bad at all.

Yhwh: I can assure you that fjwuieruthf is very bad. Very, very bad.

Adam: Yeah, but what is it?

Eve: Maybe you could fjwuieruthf something else in the Garden and then we could decide if fjwuieruthf is bad enough to make us not try the apple.

Yhwh: I can't fjwuieruthf anything! This is the Garden of Eden, nothing ever fjwuieruthfs!

Adam: So, wait, will you or won't you fjwuieruthf us? We're in the Garden. Why can we be fjwuieruthfed?

Eve: Screw this, I'm eating the apple.

There you have it, the fundamentalist version of justice.