God is an Accomplice to Burglary… New at 11

It’s been a while.  I know.  But hey… we have new subscribers!  Hello heathens!  Get ready to either laugh or throw things at your monitor… and… ACTION!

So when we last left Jacob and his wenches, he was spreading his seed like a field full of dandelions and his various wives were popping out kid after kid and thanking him for it.  (And we wonder why some people consider religion to be a cult… hmmm).

But then something interesting happens… and it was really about time because I was getting sick of trying to make boring stuff sound interesting.  Jacob asks Laban, the father of two of Jacob’s wives, Rachel and her less hot sister Leah, to let them all leave.  Send me on my way so I can go back to my own homeland. ²⁶ Give me my wives and children, for whom I have served you, and I will be on my way. You know how much work I’ve done for you.

But Laban, who’s an old softie, says “If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay.  Name your wages, and I will pay them,” adding, in a whisper, “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Jacob says “Easy… see those sheep you own?  Let me take the dark and spotted ones.  That’s it.  Easy peasy.  I’ll stick around for that.”

Laban agrees and everyone’s happy… except there’s a twist!  Now, for those of you new to science, pay attention.  It’s about to get completely realistic and not at all weird up in here.  Jacob, who was a science wiz in high school and just won’t shut up about it, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. ³⁸ (so far so awesome) Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, (like ya do) so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, ³⁹ they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted.

What?  You didn’t know that sheep who mate near strips of naked almond tree branches have spotted young?  What are you, stupid?  How are you even reading this?  How were you smart enough to type in my long-ass url?  Dumbass.

For those of you who knew about this fact… good for you.  You obviously paid attention in WHAT THE HELL THAT DIDN’T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL!

Oh but it’s okay because later we find out that he didn’t actually get the sheep to be spotted based on that old superstition with the branches and the whatnot.  Noooooo.  That would be crazy.  No, what actually happened is God made the sheep speckled and otherwise confused about their race… which is such a God thing to do, right?  I mean, helping a man deceive another man for his own personal gain… basically being an accomplice to burglary for months if not years on end.  Oh God, you scamp… when will you learn.

Soooo… the thing is… I wouldn’t doubt most of this is based in reality.  Basically it’s about a dude ripping off another dude and then, when he gets caught, passing on the story that God helped him do it.  It’s been going on forever and it always will.  Isn’t that right, Harold Camping?

And as a parting gift… ever wonder what the greatest trailer of all time is about… your impending doom.  Enjoy!

 

So THAT’S Where the Mormon’s Got It From!

So now it’s Jacob, Leah and Rachel starring in their own version of Three’s Company and when they get home Jacob nails Leah (it’s really just his husbandly duty) and she gives him a son in no time flat.  This, by the way, is the first recorded instance of a later scientifically proven fact… the ugly ones are the most fertile (Exhibit A: take a walk through Wal-Mart).

The thing is, Rachel, who knows Leah wouldn’t even be part of the picture if she hadn’t sneaked into Jacob’s tent on what should have been her wedding night, is pissed because she can’t bear Jacob any children.  Apparently she forgot about Sarah’s great lesson, which was, if you can’t have children, believe in God and pray about it and good ol’ God will make some room in your Temple of Doom.  So, not remembering Sarah, she instead gave Jacob her servant Bilhah to bare children for him.  Jacob, who was wondering what jackpot he won, married Bilhah too (a formality, really) and nailed her nightly until she gave him a son.  Now, Rachel was thrilled, seriously (hey, I don’t know what was wrong with her either — I didn’t write the thing, I just make fun of it) and said  “God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son.” Because of this she named him Dan.  

Not sure how he got so freakin’ lucky, Jacob keeps putting it to Bilhah nightly and soon enough, she pops out another son.  By this point, Rachel, who was so busy filling out her application for a weekly spot on Jerry Springer she nearly forgot Bilhah was pregnant, was just overjoyed at an event most Christians would later probably have called an abomination (but we’ll get to that someday) and said “I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.” So she named him Naphtali, which, in Hebrew means, “I’m bat-shit crazy and I’ve convinced myself I have somehow had a child.”

Years go by and Leah stops being able to have children, which is just as well by Jacob, who found himself wishing whenever Leah’s turn in the sack came around that someone would just invent a damn paper bag already so he could put it over that ugly mug.  Not to be outdone by Rachel, she gives her servant to Jacob to marry.  So by now I’m thinking Jacob’s an old Father-Time-looking dude, and here he is handed over another woman of childbearing age to bang.  And honestly, who is he to question the plan of the Almighty God WHO DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE A FREAKING PROBLEM WITH THIS?  Zilpah, the servant, pops Jacob out two more sons and probably said something along the lines of “Hey, now that my vagina’s been ravaged by two children for you, and since you seem to think they’re yours, how about 6 bucks an hour?”  To which the original threesome laughed heartily and said something like “Bitch you bess gets us that cognac we like so we can celebrate the birth of our newest son.”

Now for the fun little end-of-book craziness we have come to love so much.  Leah’s son, Reuben, was out picking some Mandrake (not mandrake root, Harry Potter freaks, that’s your Bible… this is the Bible).  Rachel came to Leah and said “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”  which seemed a fairly reasonable request.  Leah, who would have really benefited from being able a copy of the Old Testament, said, “Wasn’t it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son’s mandrakes too?”

 “Very well,” Rachel said, “he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”  See, apparently, despite all the Jew jokes to the contrary, Jacob knew what the hell he was doing in the bedroom department, so Leah jumped at the chance for another roll in the hay (and the chance to ask Jacob why he never opened his eyes when he was with her).

So Jacob mercy-bangs Leah, who really just wanted one last hurrah before the thing dried up entirely, but was stuck with another kid, which was really Leah’s fault because if you’re living in the Old Testament, you can damn well bet if you sleep with a guy, yous gettin’ preggers.  OT guys were all kinds of potent because no one had yet invented beer or Mountain Dew.  So she gives birth to Issachar and then, later, a daughter named Dinah.

AND THEN!  Rachel gives birth to another damn kid (it was like Jon and Kate Plus Eight up in there, except with far less drama and better haircuts… come on Gosselin, step your game up).  The kid was named Joseph (not that one) but at this point do you really care?  Are you even still reading?  Why?  Waiting for some sanity?  READ A DIFFERENT BLOG… IT ONLY GETS CRAZIER FROM HERE.

(I’m only kidding, baby, don’t read a different blog.  thebiblicalatheist loves you… don’t go)

 

Rachel’s Diary: The Day My Father Made Me Marry My Brother-in-Law

Dear Diary,

I have had the strangest day.  I left father this morning thinking it would be a day like any other.  Walk with the sheep.  Talk to the sheep.  Water the sheep.  Take the sheep home and go to sleep under a wool blanket after a nice pork chop dinner.  Boy was I wrong.  I got to the well today and was just about to move the rock off of its mouth (why the men standing around it waiting every day can’t do it themselves I don’t know) when a man I’d never met barged in front of me and moved the rock for me.  What a gentleman, I thought. I said “Thank you.”

Then, it was like he’d never spoken to anyone but his parents and maybe a twin brother he possibly screwed out of a blessing before.  Words just poured out of him.  “Oh hi,” he started, “I just had a dream last night that there was a great ladder starting at the earth and reaching to Heaven.  It was awesome.  Like this great… I don’t know… like a stairway to Heaven.  It made me wonder.  It really made me wonder.  And God was at the top of this stairway and said ‘I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’  And then I woke up and renamed the place I was sleeping, which I’m sure was cool with the people who lived there, and then I came here to find a wife.  Soooo… that’s what’s up with me.  And how are you?”

So I figured this guy had eaten a few of those mushrooms out on the hills (I once ate some and dreamed of a showtune singing hermaphroditic chinchilla, so I get it) and went on about watering my sheep.  I figured maybe he would sweat it out and become a normal human being again, but for the moment I didn’t want anything to do with this psycho.  But then, without even asking or having the courtesy to rape me and then ask my father for my hand in marriage (a growing trend these days) this weirdo just up and kisses me!  It turns out those dudes by the well told him we were related, so he figured that was his opening to make a move.  Before I can say I’m not one of those chicks who goes around banging her cousins, he starts weeping for some reason, and whisks me away to see my father.

So, I think Daddy is going to come to the rescue here and tell this loser to hit the road, but instead he tells Jacob, the loser, that he can have me if he works for him for seven years.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Seven years later

So yesterday Jake finished his seven year sentence.  I thought this would mean I would have to sleep with him, which I was totally dreading because every time he tries to kiss me he starts weeping… it’s just his way I guess.  But then Daddy does me a solid, at least that’s what I thought.  He puts my sister Leah, who is butt-ass ugly, into Jacob’s tent, and Jake, probably because he can’t see her through the tears in his eyes, has sex with her!  I thought I was off the hook!  Now Jake is married to Leah and I can finally tell my father that I would like to explore my sexuality with a semester abroad in Amsterdam, when Jake and Daddy strike another deal!

Now, Jacob has to finish out the marriage week with Leah, which apparently means that even though he loved me enough to be a slave for seven years, he cannot control himself enough to not have sex with my sister.  And my sister’s just happy to take it where she can get it, so I can’t really blame her.

The second part of the deal is that, after this week, I am Jake’s wife too, and he has agreed to work for another seven years in order to earn me.  Somewhere a Penthouse Forum is being written and I am one third of the cast.

**************************************************************************************************************************************

Here’s the thing.  Once again I am struck by just how unbelievable the Bible is, and by those who claim everything in it is absolutely true.  Here, we are supposed to believe that Jacob, who worked for seven years for the opportunity to marry a woman he was madly in love with, so in love that a kiss from her reduced him to tears, could not tell the difference between her and Leah on their wedding night.  Listen, I don’t care if it’s dark or not, you spend seven years with someone, you would probably know you were screwing someone else.  What, they didn’t talk?  And if they didn’t what kind of man was Jacob?  Horny, I guess, and I can’t really blame him after seven years of watching the woman you wanted nothing more than to take to bed, knowing you can’t have her for years to come.

Oh!  And then, after he has worked for a total of 14 years, he still winds up having sex with Leah, even though he only loves Rachel!  Sounds like a WTF soap opera, but it’s what happens in this book.

 

News

Hey guys I just wanted to let you know thebiblicalatheist has been added to The Atheist Blogroll.  The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world and is provided by this all-around cool guy, Mojoey.

Also, thebiblicalatheist was added to The Atheist Blogmap, which is a pretty cool site that does pretty much the same thing as The Atheist Blogroll, but puts our blogs up on a… you guessed it… map!  As to how wise it is to put inflammatory stuff up and then tell people where you live… well it’s been nice knowing you all.  (It just shows the city… and the blog gives my name… oh God it’s all over… time to start praying ).

Finally, I started another blog which I will write while this one is up and running (not going anywhere).  It’s called Work and Dare and is just a general blog about life, the universe, and everything.  Not necessarily a humor blog, but we’ll see what happens.  Check it out if you get the chance.  I’ll put a link up in the sidebar.

Thanks, and a new post should be up on this blog tomorrow or the next day.

 

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Pimp

Now that Isaac’s mom and dad have kicked the bucket he decides to take his life insurance money and go travelling (oh, and there was a famine, which probably helped move things along).  So God, not one to let important things happen without letting himself be known, comes down to Isaac and makes the same old promise he’s been making lately.  Count the stars and that’s how many descendants I will make of you yadayada.  By the way, didn’t almost anyone who lived then end up having a ton of descendants?  In five thousand years I would think the number of descendants I have will be pretty high.  Just a thought.

So Isaac takes his wife Rebekah and gets the hell out of Dodge, to that well-known paradise, Gerar.  The king of Gerar is Abimelech.  Now, Rebekah is wicked hot.  So hot, in fact, that Isaac is sure every man in Gerar will kill him to get to her.  So he tells everyone that Rebekah is not his wife, but his sister, which makes complete sense because… WAIT A MINUTE!  I’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE!  You know what they say: Like pimp like son.

Anyway, Abimelech is pissed because he’s been duped (and because he was thinking about tapping that ever since he saw Rebekah) so he tells Isaac, after Isaac has amassed quite the fortune in Gerar, to get out.  Then there’s this weird period of time when Isaac goes around trying to reopen wells from his father’s day and that’s the end of that part of the story.  I told you this book is weird.

In the next chapter, Isaac is old and blind and is pretty sure that any day now he’s going to that great Studio 54 in the sky, and he calls his son, Esau, to him.  He says, “Now then, get your equipment—your quiver and bow—and go out to the open country to hunt some wild game for me.  Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat, so that I may give you my blessing before I die.”   Esau, knowing that “blessing” means dad’s Camaro, heads out to White Castle to get dad a bite to eat.

Now Rebekah, who regarded Esau as a general black sheep of the family, overheard the whole thing, so she calls to Jacob.  ”Now, my son, listen carefully and do what I tell you:  Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats, so I can prepare some tasty food for your father, just the way he likes it.  Then take it to your father to eat, so that he may give you his blessing before he dies.”

Jacob says to Rebekah his mother, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man while I have smooth skin.  What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him and would bring down a curse on myself rather than a blessing.”  

“Whatevs”, says Rebekah, “just do what I say.”

So Jacob does this, and Rebekah gives him one of Esau’s hoodies, which smelled like blood and death and generally manly things, which makes Jacob, who was always more of a musical theatre type, gag.  ”Gross,” he says.

“How the hell did I raise such a girl?” says Rebekah.  ”Just go.”  And she went for a drink at Applebee’s to forget her problems.

So Jacob goes into his father’s room with some tasty treats.  ”How did you find it so fast?” asks Isaac.

“The LORD your God gave me success,” he replies, apparently having no issue with the fact that he was lying in the name of God.  But then, he was righteous, so what did he have to worry about?

Later, Esau came back and his father informed him that Jacob had deceived them both and taken Esau’s blessing.  Esau says “Haven’t you reserved any blessing for me?  I mean, couldn’t you just tell me that all that stuff you said was mine in the first place, that stuff you thought you were giving me when Jacob tricked you, that stuff you said when it was just he and you and when he freaking tricked you, couldn’t you just say that stuff is mine?”

“Um, no.  No I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said so, young man, that’s why.  But I reserved a little blessing for you and it boils down to this.  You will live by the sword and serve your brother but eventually you won’t anymore.  How’s that?  You’re welcome.  Now go.”

So Esau is pacing back and forth and saying how one day he is going to kill Jacob for what he has done, which really isn’t all that bad a response to something like this, when Rebekah, who is apparently an eavesdropper of biblical proportions (see what I did there?), overhears him.  She then tells Jacob to go visit his uncle, her brother, a while so that Esau has a chance to cool off.

For a dramatic interpretation and a great example of why so many Christians scare the blessing out of me, watch this, and remember, these are all good church-goin’ folk:

Okay.  Has anyone noticed yet how generally awful the supposedly righteous people of the Bible were?  I mean, seriously.  This is the second time Jacob has taken from his brother what was rightfully his, and is eve willing to sell his father down the river for the sake of his own personal gain.  Isn’t there something to be said, especially in these times, for knowing your place, for supporting those above in order to make the best of your life in a righteous way?  I know Moses hasn’t gotten the Commandments yet, but shouldn’t God have said something here about not stealing?  Shouldn’t he have smote Rebekah at least for coming up with the idea?

 

And Crazy Begets More Crazy: Abe’s Son Isaac is Born

Well here we are again.  I took a week to get some articles done and finish the latest chapter of my novel and when I came back to the Bible lo and behold the crazy was still there… just waiting for me.  Gotta love this stuff.

Well, Abraham is coming to the end of his life, and like so many men before and after him, he goes ahead and marries another wife.  He learned, from his century and a half of experience, a great truth: The best thing for improving your marriage is another marriage.  Apparently his new wife, Keturah, cannot keep her hands off old Hugh Hefner, because they have six little Abe’s together.  A-freakin-dorable.

In preparing for his death, Abraham gives away all his stuff (Playstation, Hello Kitty hand mirror, etc.) to his son Isaac, and somewhere in the distance Ishmael, Abe’s firstborn son, could be heard repeating “Seriously?” over and over.  Abe is just about to die when, as a result of an attack of conscience, he sends gifts to the sons of his concubines (to which his concubines said “Finally some damn child support… deadbeat”) and then keels over at the far-too-young age of 175.

The Good Book then goes on to talk about Ishmael and the things he managed to accomplish in his life.  He had a bunch of kids and died.

Moving on to Isaac’s family (has anyone noticed Isaac is like Ray Barone to God while Ishmael is Robert?  If not, just watch Everybody Loves Raymond) it turns out Isaac’s wife Rebekah can’t have children.  Isaac pulls a few strings with the man upstairs and voila! old Gloom Womb becomes Fertile Myrtle.  Now, because God has a sense of humor, God gives them twins (take that suckers!).  God then comes down and tells Rebekah “The sons in your womb will become two nations,” to which Rebekah responds “Great, now get them to stop kicking me.  And by the way, good call on the size of certain babies and certain exits for them.”

So the babies are born and Isaac and Rebekah name them Jacob and Esau, because they liked Jacob and, apparently, hated Esau.  Who the hell names their kid… never mind… unimportant.  The point is Esau and Jacob grow up, Esau becoming a talented outdoorsman and all-around badass, while Jacob has “a quieter temperament, preferring to stay at home.”  They later were reincarnated as two suburban children from upstate New York, one a hardworking, driven, ambitious young woman who is scared of nothing and is perpetually grabbing life by the horns and could beat her older brother at basketball by the time she was thirteen not that it mattered to him I mean he’s totally let it go and it has no effect on his self-esteem as he continues to grow and mature as a man, a stupid man with nothing to offer the world and who could stand to lose a few pounds, and the other becoming a smart-ass writer who thinks somehow he has gained enough knowledge in the general under-achievement of his life to make fun of a sacred book.

Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a skilled outdoorsman?” asked Jacob.  ”And by the way, why wouldn’t you come to me for some food before you were literally starving to death?  Just a question, don’t worry your little brain about it.  I’m sure some genius will ask the question again in a few thousand years.  Maybe someone who doesn’t believe we ever had this conversation… the moron.”  Jacob was just about to hand Esau a bowl of stew when behold! he became an asshole.  “First you must swear that your birthright is mine,” he said, meaning all the cool shit Isaac was going to give Esau would now belong to Jacob.

Esau, who wasn’t as dumb as his name made him seem, said, “Look, I’m dying of starvation.  What good is my birthright to me now?”  Then he took the stew and ate it and walked away saying “Yup… that should bite me in the ass pretty damn soon.”

So there you have it, siblings at their best.  Ya know, brothers don’t have much luck in this book… just look at Cain and Abel.

A note: What always catches me off guard in these stories are those little lines, those two or three lines in the middle or end of the story which make you go WTF?  It has come to my attention through an email and help of my adoring fans (thanks, Mom, sister, and sister’s boyfriend) that people may find it funny or odd or downright insulting that I quote so little from the Bible and paraphrase or just make up most of the rest.  To those who appreciate the humor (previously mentioned people especially) my many thanks.  To those who get upset over it, especially my emailing friend… this is a humor blog.  It wasn’t supposed to be one, but that’s what it became because when confronted with the ridiculous I revert to laughter.  The fact is, I’m cool with about 98% of the words in this book.  Every once in a while, though, like once a chapter, I come across words that meet my criteria for quoting them.  First, they’re way out there.  Second, they cannot be made funnier.  And third, it actually benefits the reader to know that this crazy thing is, according to Christians, straight from the mouth of God.

Next week:  The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Pimp.

 

Abe’s a Redneck… and a Pimp… and a Terrible Father

Okay so we know Abraham’s a pimp and something of a less than desirable father, but to this point he had kept his most admirable trait under wraps.  Turns out he’s also a cross between that chick from Westborough Baptist Church and Larry the Cable Guy.

The first instance of Abraham’s redneckism occurs in chapter 24.  Abraham’s hanging out with his servant, the man in charge of his household, and says “Take an oath by putting your hand under my thigh.”

“Yeah,” said the servant, “I could do that.  Or I could just do what you say because I’m your servant and God doesn’t seem to have much of an issue with slavery and I could keep my hands as far from under your thigh as possible.”

Abraham continued, “Swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not allow my son to marry one of these local Canaanite women.  Go to my homeland, to my relatives, and find a wife there for my son Isaac.”  Then, “You know, because these Canaanites are great and all, but, as the Good Book will eventually say, the thrill is gone if you’re not drilling your cousin.”

So the servant goes to Abraham’s homeland and finds a well just outside of town.  He stops to water his camels and, because the motto to Abraham’s homeland was “What happens in Abraham’s homeland stays in Abraham’s homeland… but nothing ever really happens,” he prays for God to get him the hell out of there.  ”See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water.  May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’–let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”

Now, the Lord, who always answers prays in immediate and direct ways and who waits for prayers to be prayed before doing anything at all, sends a woman named Rebekah to the well and she, because she has no free will of her own and would have never done anything without the Lord first pulling her strings, comes to the well and does exactly what Abraham’s servant prayed she would do, which was a total coincidence.

As it turns out, again, pure coincidence, Rebekah just happens to be Abraham’s niece, which makes her the perfect candidate for Isaac (cousins… ah, young love).  Now, Abraham’s servant goes to Rebekah’s parents, Abraham’s brother and sister-in-law (see how complicated shit gets when you find wives in a land with a 2:1 banjo to women ratio?).  They all talk and Rebekah’s father is just thrilled that his brother’s son wants to nail his daughter and they sign her up faster than a drunk step-father signs up his redheaded step-son for Little League.

Rebekah hops on the first camel out of Abraham’s homeland (which she always thought was a weird-ass name for a town) and marries Isaac.  ”He loved her deeply, and she was a special comfort to him after the death of his mother,”  which is really a nice sentiment and one of the more common sense things so far, so I have nothing bad to say about it, but just give me time, I’m a machine.  Oh yeah… Sarah’s dead… but she had a nice life.  I mean, not everyone gets their husband’s permission to be a prostitute twice in their life… though it’s not always for a lack of trying (damn wife with her self-respect… women’s rights really set us all back).

 

Abraham: So Not Invited to the Father-Son Picnic

So I’m just going to go ahead and summarize what happens in the next chapter so I can get to the good stuff.  First, Sarah gave birth at ninety to a son, Isaac, which really wasn’t that big a deal since at ninety a child will kind of slide out of a woman in a scene which looks remarkably close to this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3O52gK6c2A#t=01m44s

Next, Sarah pulled a Real House Wives of the Bible on Hagar, who was the mother of Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, which sounded something like this (in Real Housewives speak):  Nu-uh!  Ain’t no way that skanky-ass tramp gettin’ near my baby’s inheritance.  Abe!  You best get that bitch gone ‘fore sump’n happen to her.  Now, I gots to get my hur did, and by the time I get back she best be gone, ya heard?

So Abraham, who was admittedly torn up about it, sent them away and God, who told him to do it, promised to make a great nation out of Ishmael, which is a promise he seems to make pretty often.

Some time passed and God said to Abraham (who was just getting used to having only one son around), “Take your son, your only son –“

“Um, God, so sorry to interrupt, but I have two sons.  Remember?  Ishmael?  Tall kid?  Bad teeth?  Going to make into a great nation?”

“—Yes, Isaac whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah,” said God, who, as a man, was biologically incapable of speaking and listening at the same time.  “Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”

Now, the day before, Isaac had stolen Daddy’s rum and tried to replace it with flat ginger ale and when that night Abraham found out he said “I’m gonna kill that kid,” so he thought God was just doing him a solid, and he didn’t ask any questions.  “I owe you one,” he said, winking at God, and he strapped some wood to Isaac’s back for the trip.

“But Daaaaad,” whined Isaac, who was still a little hungover, “I’m supposed to Skype with Lauren later!”

“That girl’s so dirty, Skyping with her will give your computer a virus, now march!” said Abraham, adding, “So sayeth the Lord and thebiblicalatheist who is actually kind of proudeth of that joketh.

So they get to the mountain and Isaac, who was freaking tired from carrying the very wood on which his father was going to offer him up as a human sacrifice, said “We have the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the offering?”

“God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” then, under his breath, “and maybe next time you won’t try to convince Daddy his Captain Morgan magically became Schwepps, jackass.”

Finally, they got to the mountain and Abraham told his son to lie down on the wood.

“But, why?” asked Isaac.

“Because, um, I need to practice my knots.”

Isaac, who, in his ignorant bliss hadn’t let the idea cross his mind that his father would try to kill him, allowed Abraham to tie him up.

Abraham then holds up his bowie knife and, just before piercing his son’s chest, yells “Time to get a little Captain in you!” but before he could do the deed, an angel of the Lord came down.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” said the angel, “You’ve been punked!”

Then God and his posse came out from behind trees and bushes, playfully pushing Abraham, who then had to say into the camera “This is Abraham, and I’ve been punked God-style.”

God then tells Abraham he is proud of him and his absolute faith.  He says he will make a great nation of Abraham (told you) because of this faith, and they all have a big laugh about the look on Isaac’s face when he realized his father was a raging lunatic.  Adorable.

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This story is another instance of why I cannot be a Christian.  I would never have enough faith to do what Abraham almost did.  I wouldn’t want to have that much faith.  The thing is, I have to wonder how many Christians have that kind of faith, and whether it should really be considered a strike against those who don’t.  Then again, as much as I don’t have enough faith to be a Christian, I don’t have enough to be an atheist either (I really need to change the title of this blog).  This brings me to tonight’s events.

I went to the last of a lecture tonight by Frank Turek (after going to a lecture by John Patrick Shanley, playwright of Doubt, on whom I have now developed a semi-serious man-crush), co-author of the amazing book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, and I realized something about my own faith.  It’s something I kind of already knew, but something that was more an abstract thought than a concrete doctrine.  I’m not an atheist.  Once the Q&A portion of the lecture started, there was a line of atheists at one mic, a line of Christians at the other, each one of them thinking they had the evidence to support their claims at Truth.

Listening to them, listening to each side get angrier and angrier until finally we had to leave because the hall had to close, I realized I have no dog in this fight.  I don’t care which one of them is right in this because I think I really do believe there is something greater than me out there.  Turek’s book, which I read about three years ago, had a lot to do with that and was instrumental in my faith because it reminded me that the ideas of creation and of a Christian God are, to me, mutually exclusive ideas.  Turek’s research is too great to refute in its entirety, so I won’t.  The same can be said for a lot of atheist research, so I won’t refute that either.  The fact is, I’m not smart enough to refute most knowledgeable people in physics or apologetics, and so what I do is try to show you why, while I believe there probably is something greater than me, it isn’t the God of the Bible.

I wish it was.  I wish it was that simple to me.  I wish when I read the Bible I didn’t see the work of Man, but every reading of this book makes me more and more certain that this flawed, moody bully of a character called God simply cannot be divine – He’s too human.

 

Abraham’s a Pimp… AGAIN!

So Abraham decides to take off with his 100 year old wife, Sarah, and they wind up in the vacation capital of the world, Gerar.  Now, by the time Abraham was this old, he’d developed a fairly permanent set of beer goggles, and as such he thought, even at 100, Sarah was still so hot men would kill him to be with her, so again he told Sarah to tell everyone in Gerar, where they would be living for presumably the rest of their lives, that she was his sister.  ”Surely,” he thought, “this won’t become an issue in the years to come.  I mean, how could it backfire at all?”  Which was true.  All he had to do was pretend to be the brother of the woman he’d been married to for almost a century.  Easy peasy.

And here’s the story of Abraham’s second turn at the pimp game.  Abraham and Sarah get to Gerar, check in at the hotel, and decide to lay out by the pool.  Sarah is spacing out playing Angry Birds on her iPad when the King of Gerar saunters up to her.

“Sup?” says the king.

The king is what Gerar women call “gorgeous” and what the late men of Sodom referred to as “scrumptious,” so Sarah gets up from her chaise lounge.  “Hell-oh,” she says, showing a little varicose vein.

“You married?” says the king.

Sarah looks over to Abraham, who is busy looking up how much he’s worth on Antiques Roadshow and complaining to no one in particular that his prostate is the size of a grapefruit.  “He’s my brother,” she says, and moves in closer. “My name’s Sarah.”

“You can call me Abimelech,” says the king, taking a step forward, putting his hand on her ass or upper thigh (at this point everything kind of sags into one mass of flesh).

“Your names Abimelech?” says Sarah, a little weirded out.

“No, Jeff, but Abimilech’s my stage name.  Hey Sarah,” says Abimelech, gathering up his courage, “show me your tits.”

Sarah giggles.  “I would,” she says, “but you’re standing on them.”

“Oh, so sorry,” says Abimelech, stepping back.  “How about we go back to my place?”

So later on, just before the shit gets real, Sarah, who is getting really good at being a cock-tease, says “Abraham’s not my brother.  He’s my husband.”

Then God comes to Abimelech in a dream and says, “You have taken a married woman, and for this you will die!”

“WTF!” says Abimelech, “I haven’t slept with Sarah. Didn’t they say they were brother and sister? I am completely innocent. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Ummm…” starts God.  See, Abimelech was into banging ancient chicks and therefore was kind of kinky, so God had just assumed he’d done the deed.  “I know you are innocent. That’s why I kept you from sleeping with Sarah and doing anything wrong,” God says, adding, “Yeah.  Yeah, that’s it.  Yup.  I’ll tell you one thing, I was paying attention.  Sure was.  Can’t deny that.”

So the next morning Abimelech meets Abraham at Dunkin’ Donuts (he can’t start his day without his Dunkaccino) and says “What is it with you?  I heard about your nonsense in Egypt, now you pull it on me?  What did I ever do to you?”

Abraham, remembering his days in the pimp game, says “Hey man, Abrahizzle don’t give the goodies away free.  Abe-Rod turns tramps into champs and let’s the chumps pay for rumps, so pay up.”

So Abimelech pays Abraham with cattle and silver and tells him he can settle anywhere on his land, which is a completely justified payment for services not rendered.

Oh and get this little note tacked on to the end of this chapter.  “Meanwhile, God had kept Abimelech’s wife and slaves from having children. But Abraham prayed, and God let them start having children again.”

Sooooooooooooooooooo… yeah… gonna have to just let that one slide.  What could I possibly say about that that I haven’t said before?

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Ya know what?  Maybe I should tack on my own note to this chapter.  It’s not that I don’t believe a higher being is possible.  It’s just that I can’t believe the God of the Bible is that higher being.  If I should die before I wake tonight and God throws this blog in my face, saying that because of it (among many things) I have to go to Hell, I will, first, thank him for reading (it’s great to have fans) but then I’ll also be kind of relieved.  Not sure spending eternity with this guy is what I would consider Heaven.

 

 

Date Rape and Incest… Ah, the Good Book

Okay I didn’t know whether or not I should make this into its own post or tack it on the last one, but this is some great shit and deserves its own cyber real estate.

So we’re still in Genesis, chapter 19, just like last post, but, as is the usual for this book, there is an extremely awkward and out of place little ending to this chapter.  When we last left Lot’s daughters, they had recently discovered that as soon as they could find a pay phone, they needed to call Social Services.  If you’re new, they had to call SS because their father had, the previous day, decided that, rather than allowing two strangers to defend themselves against a city full of men demanding fresh virgin ass, he would offer up his two virgin daughters with whom they could do what they wish.  Legend has it he even offered to have someone remove their braces first, but that’s just hearsay.

Anyway, the girls, fresh from their lives in Sodom (a beautiful town, really, with an amazing musical theatre and glee club program) make sure to walk at least a hundred feet from daddy while they mourn the loss of their mother, whom God had, in his Holy Righteousness, killed that morning.

Eventually, they settle down in the mountains and live in a cave, which is totally preferable to staying in a town or city and not weird or creepy at all.  I mean, think about it.  You get to paint on the walls and sometimes bears come and tear the flesh from your bones as you watch them eat your intestines!  You just don’t get that level of entertainment in the hustle and bustle of the big city.

Of course, the downside is, if you’ve narrowly escaped having dozens of men treat like a certain kind of dumpster for an entire night, ravaging you’re lady parts in ways that would make Jenna Jameson say “Well, that’s just crossing the line,” you’re bound to be really horny, and if you’ve recently become an Appalachian nightmare woman, it’s tough to land a fella.  So Lot’s daughters, who, like their mother, really don’t deserve names on account of their gender, decide to do the next logical step.

One day the older daughter spoke to the younger one. She said, “Our father is old. There aren’t any other men around here to make love to, as people all over the earth do. So let’s get our father to drink wine. Then we can make love to him. We can use our father to continue our family line.” “Yeah!” said the younger one.  ”That makes a lot more sense than our father ensuring his family line by moving all of us to an actual city to live in an actual house and meet actual men who are not actually related to us.”  And they laughed and skipped and talked about what it would be like to take daddy to the eighth grade formal and they made sure to pray then and there, thanking God for this wonderful incestuous idea.

So over the course of the next two nights daddy’s little girls get him drunk on wine (lightweight) and date rape him.  And each time he didn’t know when she lay down or when she got up, so he was in the clear.  And when his daughters were each pregnant at the same time and there were no men around to impregnate them he asked no questions, because it couldn’t possibly be him.  I mean, he had only blacked out two nights exactly nine months before he became a grandfather twice over and his grandsons were each born with his eyes and ability to not know the difference between the right thing to do and the absolute worst thing to consider ever doing.

This is of course the first instance of girls liking bad boys, because as it turns out, if you are willing to be complicit in a world record gangbang of your two innocent daughters, it is common knowledge that they will want your body (it’s in the Bible). Coincidentally, this is also the first instance of the term “Who’s your daddy?” being used during sex.

Oh and hey… random side note.  Anyone notice this is the first entire WTF family of the Bible?  What an accomplishment!