God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (5 page)

This part of the Bible also provides our first glimpse into the malevolent, brutish, vindictive, uncompromising and unforgiving character traits of God. As God says to Eve:

What a wonderfully chauvinistic command, “He will rule over you”. I have repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to point to this passage whenever my wife has forbidden me to join my mates on a night trolling strip clubs. I still haven’t given up. Even now.

Ok, that’s Adam and Eve punished. Of note is the fact that God promised Adam that he would “surely die” upon eating the apple, but God has proved already that he is not a man of his word, as Adam went on to live for another 900 years.

And what of the snake, you ask, the instigator of fucking things up for all of us? Well, here is the punitive measure God dishes out to the snake. Are you ready for this?

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 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.

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

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, like Mississippi.

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.

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:

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

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? Free will must come with a honesty donation basket. I hate those!

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:

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? Ha, poop!

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:

This promise was sealed with a rainbow:

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.