Tag: bible

God’s Wicked Sense of Humor

 

God has a wicked sense of humor. He really does. Adam and Eve eat a fruit (it was probably a fig by the way, not an apple) and they get the death penalty, not just for themselves, but for me and for you and everyone else. That punishment sure is severe. I don’t think we would be allowed to eventually kill everyone on earth because mom and dad screwed up by eating a fig.

Yes, some of the religious persuasion do not see this story quite as I do. They will say that Adam and Eve were punished for their disobedience by eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that’s why you have to die. Okay, just a second: “Timmy, my son, you disobeyed me and ate Daddy’s orange. For that you die and so does everyone in your second grade class!” Shouldn’t all parents be allowed to do this? After all, I had a part in creating Timmy.

I think it is quite hilarious that God chose Moses to be the liberator of his people when Moses, while being humble as all heck, couldn’t speak a lick. He had to have his traitorous brother Aaron speak for him. So God speaks to Moses and Moses speaks to Aaron and Aaron speaks to Pharaoh. Why not just select someone who was good at public speaking?

In the New Testament the joke becomes amazingly weird. God impregnates the Virgin Mary and then she gives birth to, well, God. So God is his own father.

It gets weirder still.

When Jesus (who is God) knows he is about to get the hell kicked out of him by the Romans, he asks God (meaning he asks himself) to take this “cup” (meaning his upcoming torture and death) away from him. But then he says, “Not as I will but as you will.” Wait a minute Jesus is praying to God, who is himself, to take away his upcoming death but then he tells himself that he will listen to himself and have himself horribly tortured and then killed even though he doesn’t want to go through with what he has created for himself.  Huh?

There is also a scene in the New Testament where Jesus says he doesn’t know when the end of the world is coming and that only the Father knows. Wait a minute. Jesus is God and the Father is God, therefore God knows and God doesn’t know? Does that make sense? Yep, someone is pulling our leg and that someone has to be God. “I’ll tell them this and that and let’s see how long they can take it,” says God. “Ha, ha, ha! That’s hilarious,” says God back to himself, slapping his knee.

Even today, we can see God’s wild sense of humor. We are now experiencing horrible mass killings in churches, schools, movie theatres and the like. To prevent this, The First United Methodist Church in Tellico, Tennessee had a gun expert teach a lesson on guns. One 81-year-old parishioner bragged to all the audience that he always carried a gun on him. He postured himself as an expert. “Yup, I know everything there is to know about guns.”

When asked to show the gun, he took it out and accidentally shot himself in the hand and shot his 80-year-old wife in the stomach. Yup.

Then there was this Ohio legislator known for fighting long and hard against the gay community’s agenda, and a few days ago was caught in his office having sex with a man. Oh, and this legislator’s name is (wait for it) Goodman.

You see, God certainly does have a wild sense of humor and trying to make sense out of the Bible certainly isn’t going to enlighten us at all. My wife says we have to wait until we “get to the other side” (meaning snuffing it) to find out what all of this means. Perhaps she’s right, but I prefer to simply enjoy the chaos while I can.

Frank’s latest books are Confessions of a Wayward Catholic; I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps, and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack. Available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.

Ban the Bible!

 

My name is Veritas Honesto, PhD. I am the leader of W.A.T.E.R which stands for We Are The Ever Righteous.

Our goal is to eliminate all evidence of slavery in the world since the dawn of humanity. We believe all Confederate statues and pictures should be removed from public displays and that private displays of such statues and pictures should be cause for the elimination of public funds for the private institutions (such as private schools and private museums) showing such statues and pictures.

We also believe that statues of anyone who had slaves in the past such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and famous people such as Teddy Roosevelt who made indigenous peoples feel bad and Franklin Roosevelt who enslaved Japanese Americans during World War II  (I could add many more!) should never have any statues or pictures celebrating them in public places and that private showing of such statues and pictures would mean the cutting off of any public funds for those private institutions. We would recommend strong protests of such institutions, perhaps even ones where we wear our ski masks.

***Christopher Columbus should never have his name said even at Italian functions.

But these sanctions do not go far enough in W.A.T.E.R’s view. There are so many incidents of slavery among different types of people, yes, even here in the Americas.

Let us examine a specific book and the movement based on that awful book. I am speaking about the bible, a book that not only condones slavery but even has laws for such abuse of human beings—a book that must be destroyed. The Jewish Torah contains laws regarding how to handle slaves; some stayed in slavery for about seven years (usually Hebrew slaves) but non-Hebrew slaves were slaves for life.

Christians believe in what they call the Old Testament books, which are essentially the Torah and the Jewish scriptures (with some minor changes here and there), which, as I already stated, contains guidelines for slavery. Nowhere in the New Testament is slavery condemned by Jesus Christ, who many Christians believe is God, or by any of the Gospel writers. Slavery was acceptable to those Christians. It was acceptable to Jews. It was acceptable to Muslims too. 

Do not be fooled by biblical apologists who claim that “servant” and “slave” have different meanings in the bible. There are no nuances to those two words; they are synonyms. Slavery flourishes in the bible. In fact, in many passages God condemns people into slavery.

So what should we do to those who use this book as the bedrock of their belief system?

Ÿ ***No churches or temples that owe their allegiance to the bible (in any of its forms) should receive tax exemptions unless they publically renounce the book and to show their love of non-slavery, they must have mass burnings of bibles

Ÿ ***Catholic, Protestant and Jewish hospitals should receive no public funds

Ÿ ***The bible should be banned in all public libraries and public schools

Ÿ ***Any statues, symbols or quotes from the bible should be outlawed on public property

Ÿ ***Christmas should no longer be celebrated as a national holiday

Ÿ ***No schools or public libraries should be closed for any religious holiday

Ÿ ***Revoke tax exemption status to all religious institutions that rely on the bible

And what about areas still practicing slavery? There are now about 25 to 40 million slaves in the world; although just about every country claims they no longer use the practice. Any area that still allows slavery should be punished.

W.A.T.E.R would be happy to send our ski masked legions to such countries to teach them in a non-violent way about human rights, although violence might break out.

But slavery goes even deeper than this. Too many Americans celebrate the people they call “Native Americans” who were immigrants who came to the north and south continents earlier than the Europeans. Such foolishness! Such ignorance!

Native North and South Americans used to enslave each other; some slaves would work, some would be sacrificed to the gods after being viciously tortured. Some of the slaves would be eaten during religious rituals.

When black slavery was brought to the continent by Europeans, Native Americans happily owned black slaves and participated in the black slave trade. They even sold other Native Americans not of their particular tribe into slavery!

What should be done with these people?

Ÿ ***No tribes who participated in the slave trade should be given public funds or public schools or hospitals, etc., unless they renounce their slave trading heritage

Ÿ ***No statues of prominent Native Americans of the slave era should be allowed on public property.

Ÿ ***Native Americans must condemn their slave-owning pasts.

The African slave trade went on for centuries, long before any Europeans set foot on the continent. Many African kingdoms sold members of other tribes to the Europeans to be brought to “civilization.” Those kingdoms must renounce their slave trade and ask for forgiveness. No aid should be given to these countries unless they destroy all vestiges of their slave-trading past. Those areas still practicing slavery should be protested.

What else should be done?

Ÿ ***African-Americans must renounce all areas of Africa that engaged in slavery.

Ÿ ***African-Americans must find another name to call themselves since most of them came from slave owning and selling countries.

Now what about Europeans who may be the biggest villains in history? What about the Asians? What about every single human being on planet Earth that came from cultures that practiced slavery – which means probably every single human being?

W.A.T.E.R will happily picket all of them! Our ski masks are ready! We are ready, willing and able to protest all of this everywhere. Down with statues! Down with offending pictures! Down with the bible! Down with religion! Down with all cultures that practiced slavery!

Frank Scoblete’s latest books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps, Confessions of a Wayward Catholic and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack. Available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.