As an aside, perhaps she will remove the tax concessions the religions enjoy

I don't think so. Can you imagine the outrage of such a decision? No, I'm afraid the talking snake will still be around for a long time.
And come to think of it, so will the flying horse that took Mohammad up to heaven.

Agrippina wrote:When I commented on this to my husband, that I can't imagine people worshipping this god, he said that it was fear. The whole premise of religion is fear, fear of what will happen to you if you don't and fear of death, and fear of life generally and getting comfort from allowing this powerful god to take responsibility.

Belief and worship, one is based on an idea and the other is based on fear. The fear is real yet entirely within the theist mind. God is the manifestation of their fear. Worship God and you worship your fear. Is this not depression, a deep despair in which you accept that life isn't great, but you have to live it? Is worship basically a coping mechanism?

Your efforts should become required reading for students everywhere. I don't know how there can be rebuttal, it's the bible after all Now if only someone could translate the rules of golf for me.

whoops!

johnbrandt wrote:

angelo wrote:We in Australia have a new PM. A woman at that. She has come out and admitted she's atheist. The morning papers and talk back radio has had a field day with the news. People calling up the radio station saying they cannot ever vote for a person who has no belief in god.
This is the state the world is in today still. A world deluded by the god virus. A people who would rather vote for some idiot who believes in the talking snake of Genesis rather than a rational thinker who will make decisions based on what is best for the country rather than if gawd approves of decisions made.

The comments in letters to the editor are amazing...stuff like, and I quote from todays paper, "For the first time in Australian history we have a leader who says she doesn't believe in God. may God have mercy on us", and "How can we expect Julia to answer to the people when she believes she doesn't have to answer to God?"

This is the standard that we have in the wider community...it doesn't matter if a small (and yes, it is small) percentage of the community is athiest...there is a large section that isn't, and is very vocal about it. They also think that anyone who doesn't believe in god can't be trusted...honestly, they do believe this...not in a "god will show them the error of thier ways" mentality, but they believe that you simply can't be trusted.
Imagine if, during a US Presidential election, a candidate came right out and said he didn't believe in god? He'd be lucky to make it out of the capital alive! For christs sake, over there, they have "In God We Trust" on the damn money. They reckon a black man who was elected President has to watch out for being assassinated...imagine what would happen to an athiest who managed, somehow, to get voted in? I'd bet in his opening address he wouldn't get past "My Fellow Americans" before someone aired out his skull for him...

Gillard, our new PM, is treading a very very dangerous path...she might win a small section of the community over, but she's just shat on the heads of a massive part of the community by saying this. I mean, good on her for having the guts to say it, but jeez...I wouldn't have done it when the polls are so close...

Angelo, I am truly impressed that your PM has done this. Good for her.
John, I could only dream that that would happen.

petwo wrote:

Agrippina wrote:When I commented on this to my husband, that I can't imagine people worshipping this god, he said that it was fear. The whole premise of religion is fear, fear of what will happen to you if you don't and fear of death, and fear of life generally and getting comfort from allowing this powerful god to take responsibility.

Belief and worship, one is based on an idea and the other is based on fear. The fear is real yet entirely within the theist mind. God is the manifestation of their fear. Worship God and you worship your fear. Is this not depression, a deep despair in which you accept that life isn't great, but you have to live it? Is worship basically a coping mechanism?

Your efforts should become required reading for students everywhere. I don't know how there can be rebuttal, it's the bible after all Now if only someone could translate the rules of golf for me.

petwo, what a lovely thing to say. I am trying to get the word out there. I have the link to my blog in my signature and I put my blog updates on my Facebook page.

I'm trying to approach my trip through the book seriously. although I have to admit that it started from the idea of wanting to point out the absurdity of it with laughter. However the cruelty and violence, and the absurdities, are so monumental that they can't be laughed at.

I would like to get more people reading it because I think that I think logically and that there is a lot of it that people simply don't know. Like for instance when one of the people takes up with a Midianite woman and asks to be allowed to marry her, the son of the high priest impales both of them of his javelin but he's not punished? And when people complain about having to eat manna while the priests are dining off the meat that is brought for sacrifice and the leftovers are then burned, the ground opens up and swallows them. How are we supposed to make primitive cultures understand human rights when we encourage them to worship a deity that promotes the glorification of its priests while the population are made to eat what looks like dung for 40 years?

Agrippina wrote:
I would like to get more people reading it because I think that I think logically and that there is a lot of it that people simply don't know. Like for instance when one of the people takes up with a Midianite woman and asks to be allowed to marry her, the son of the high priest impales both of them of his javelin but he's not punished? And when people complain about having to eat manna while the priests are dining off the meat that is brought for sacrifice and the leftovers are then burned, the ground opens up and swallows them. How are we supposed to make primitive cultures understand human rights when we encourage them to worship a deity that promotes the glorification of its priests while the population are made to eat what looks like dung for 40 years?

It's going to take time. What you're doing is furthering the erosion of the one primitive thing we can most do without. Can't fix primitivism with more of the same so your contributions are welcome. Rational opinions count just as much as scientific breakthrough and in some ways they compliment each other. Don't stop your work, if only to satisfy yourself you need to continue. I think people will benefit from it....... It should get you a ticket to heaven but it won't

petwo wrote:

Agrippina wrote:
I would like to get more people reading it because I think that I think logically and that there is a lot of it that people simply don't know. Like for instance when one of the people takes up with a Midianite woman and asks to be allowed to marry her, the son of the high priest impales both of them of his javelin but he's not punished? And when people complain about having to eat manna while the priests are dining off the meat that is brought for sacrifice and the leftovers are then burned, the ground opens up and swallows them. How are we supposed to make primitive cultures understand human rights when we encourage them to worship a deity that promotes the glorification of its priests while the population are made to eat what looks like dung for 40 years?

It's going to take time. What you're doing is furthering the erosion of the one primitive thing we can most do without. Can't fix primitivism with more of the same so your contributions are welcome. Rational opinions count just as much as scientific breakthrough and in some ways they compliment each other. Don't stop your work, if only to satisfy yourself you need to continue. I think people will benefit from it....... It should get you a ticket to heaven but it won't

With a grandchild on the way I need to have my rationality out there. I want him to know that I'm not afraid to put my opinions out there and that the opinions I put out there are not vacuous, sheep-like followings of inane mythology.

Agrippina wrote:

petwo wrote:

Agrippina wrote: On to Leviticus next but I think I’ll relax and return to the world of sanity and realiity, IE televison.

Remember #7....no other gods before Him

meat must not be cooked in its mother’s milk, which explains why Jews don’t use cheease sauce with meat.

Religious banquet etiquette is utterly absurd. People would rather starve than risk upsetting God. I can't even explain how stupid that notion is. It's unbelievably cruel to convince someone that this is what God wants. I'll say it again, theism is not about believing in God but believing in God's messengers (supposed). I swear I'm an atheist not because I don't believe in God but because I don't believe the people who do. The Bible, written or endorsed by theists, with its multitude of errors is proof that the scribes in this case are full of shit. It is blatantly obvious, but they tell a nice story. It's like forgetting a lie and revealing your true self. What a bizarre little world.

Reading through the first part of Leviticus this morning, I've found a lot of explanations for the ritual surrounding food and it makes sense. When you're dealing with what are basically desert nomads, telling them what and what not to eat from a pure health point of view makes sense. The ritual is merely to put the superstition in place so that people will obey. It's basically arguing from the position of authority, and the authority that superstitious people obey will be the thing they are superstitious about, in this case, God.

And if only there were some genuine hygienic reason for the ritual taboos, it would be at least harmless. But it isn't. The prohibition against pork perhaps made some sense when trichinosis was a real threat. But we know how to test for it now, and it's essentially extinct throughout the West. Even before that, well-cooked pork, while not appetizing, was at least not dangerous.

I've forgotten the name of the rabbi (I think it was Kemelman) who wrote a series of detective novels: "Sunday the Rabbi..." and so on through the days of the week. In one of them, he has a rabbi attempting to explain to a group of Jewish teenagers why pork is forbidden. Instead of saying "it's a commandment, so shut up and obey," which is the real answer, he tried to claim that other animals are raised for some purpose other than slaughter. (They give milk or wool, or something that can be harvested without slaughtering them.) But of course, they get slaughtered and eaten as well. To argue that there is something particularly heinous about exploiting an animal in only one way rather than in several ways is a huge non sequitur. It's truly grasping at a straw; one can find something unique about every domestic animal. What has that to do with divine law?

All the way to chapter 11, Leviticus goes on about the consecreation of Aaron and his sons and the tabernacle with lots of meat killing and ritual burning and so on. But then in Chapter 11 it gets interesting and the prohibitions make sense. What makes it interesing is that the person who wrote the rules, obviously knew something about simple hygiene and the danger of eating meat-eating animals, especially in a a very hot climate which is what the ME is. A simple rule of thumb would be to not eat animals, any land or sea animal that eats meat, to wash thoroughly after handling raw meat and to not drink water contaminated by dead animals. I suppose to instill this, they had to say that some God that will “smite” them said so.

Well, that's possible, but it's also possible that some OCDs simply invented a lot of taboos to deal with their own neuroses.

Chapter 12 deals with childbirth. Circumcision on the 8th day and a month of “uncleanness” for a woman who has just given birth. Now while some people may say that women aren’t ‘unclean’ when they are bleeding, it makes sense. Child-bed fever kills. If a woman has sex while she is bleeding she stands a chance of contracting an infection. To tell horny men to stay away from bleeding women, it makes a lot of sense if they don’t understand how germs work, to say she is “unclean.” This is also more hygieene than cursing. I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of circumcision here. It's not up for debate. If someone wants to fight about it,please take the fight elsewhere. This is just discussion of the laws and circumcision for whatever the reason was, was a law. It could simply have been that they knew the Egyptians did it and copied the practice from them.

Chapter 13 refers to infectious diseases. Of course they weren’t able to identify which diseases would heal and which wouldn’t so if the disease appeared to be just a minor boil or dandruff or dry scalp or acne, then the infected person was kept apart in 7 day cycles until it cleared up. This explains the huge numbers of ‘lepers’ in biblical times. Most cases probably weren’t real leprosy but could even have been hives, eczema or some other chronic skin problem. To play it safe a blanket pronouncement of leprosey was enough to keep people from causing real plagues. In some ways it makes sense.

Except that leprosy is really not very contagious or common.

Without the Bible, would we have all of those leper jokes?

Roger Cooke wrote:Well, that's possible, but it's also possible that some OCDs simply invented a lot of taboos to deal with their own neuroses.

Bingo. Mental disorders were not understood therefore deemed a special talent (supernatural). Today we put them in the psych ward, on the psychiatrist couch or offer them a pill. For some strange reason God seeks them out.

petwo wrote:

Roger Cooke wrote:Well, that's possible, but it's also possible that some OCDs simply invented a lot of taboos to deal with their own neuroses.

Bingo. Mental disorders were not understood therefore deemed a special talent (supernatural). Today we put them in the psych ward, on the psychiatrist couch or offer them a pill. For some strange reason God seeks them out.

And a few of them still become Messiahs, even though they are insane. Jim Jones is an example. Reports are that most of the people in his cult didn't want to drink the Kool-Aid, but by the time they realized he was insane, it was too late. Likewise, David Koresh. Probably the same is true of "spiritual" leaders of other kinds, like Edgar Cayce, Raj Nee (or whatever his name is), and others. It seems there is a human tendency to want to follow very self-assured people, and extreme self-assurance, since it is never objectively warranted, is almost certainly a mark of detachment from reality.

(Week before last, the National Geographic Channel in the US broadcast a tale of three men claiming to be Jesus, one in Russia, one in the UK, and one in the Philippines; batshit insane, all three of them, but the Russian and the Filipino have large numbers of followers. All you need, it seems, is self-confidence, and you can mouth banal platitudes, and utter gibberish and have people hanging on your words. Get all the girls you want, enjoy your own private jet plane....)

Roger Cooke wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

petwo wrote:

Agrippina wrote: On to Leviticus next but I think I’ll relax and return to the world of sanity and realiity, IE televison.

Remember #7....no other gods before Him

meat must not be cooked in its mother’s milk, which explains why Jews don’t use cheease sauce with meat.

Religious banquet etiquette is utterly absurd. People would rather starve than risk upsetting God. I can't even explain how stupid that notion is. It's unbelievably cruel to convince someone that this is what God wants. I'll say it again, theism is not about believing in God but believing in God's messengers (supposed). I swear I'm an atheist not because I don't believe in God but because I don't believe the people who do. The Bible, written or endorsed by theists, with its multitude of errors is proof that the scribes in this case are full of shit. It is blatantly obvious, but they tell a nice story. It's like forgetting a lie and revealing your true self. What a bizarre little world.

Reading through the first part of Leviticus this morning, I've found a lot of explanations for the ritual surrounding food and it makes sense. When you're dealing with what are basically desert nomads, telling them what and what not to eat from a pure health point of view makes sense. The ritual is merely to put the superstition in place so that people will obey. It's basically arguing from the position of authority, and the authority that superstitious people obey will be the thing they are superstitious about, in this case, God.

And if only there were some genuine hygienic reason for the ritual taboos, it would be at least harmless. But it isn't. The prohibition against pork perhaps made some sense when trichinosis was a real threat. But we know how to test for it now, and it's essentially extinct throughout the West. Even before that, well-cooked pork, while not appetizing, was at least not dangerous.

I've forgotten the name of the rabbi (I think it was Kemelman) who wrote a series of detective novels: "Sunday the Rabbi..." and so on through the days of the week. In one of them, he has a rabbi attempting to explain to a group of Jewish teenagers why pork is forbidden. Instead of saying "it's a commandment, so shut up and obey," which is the real answer, he tried to claim that other animals are raised for some purpose other than slaughter. (They give milk or wool, or something that can be harvested without slaughtering them.) But of course, they get slaughtered and eaten as well. To argue that there is something particularly heinous about exploiting an animal in only one way rather than in several ways is a huge non sequitur. It's truly grasping at a straw; one can find something unique about every domestic animal. What has that to do with divine law?

All the way to chapter 11, Leviticus goes on about the consecreation of Aaron and his sons and the tabernacle with lots of meat killing and ritual burning and so on. But then in Chapter 11 it gets interesting and the prohibitions make sense. What makes it interesing is that the person who wrote the rules, obviously knew something about simple hygiene and the danger of eating meat-eating animals, especially in a a very hot climate which is what the ME is. A simple rule of thumb would be to not eat animals, any land or sea animal that eats meat, to wash thoroughly after handling raw meat and to not drink water contaminated by dead animals. I suppose to instill this, they had to say that some God that will “smite” them said so.

Well, that's possible, but it's also possible that some OCDs simply invented a lot of taboos to deal with their own neuroses

.

Indeed.

Chapter 12 deals with childbirth. Circumcision on the 8th day and a month of “uncleanness” for a woman who has just given birth. Now while some people may say that women aren’t ‘unclean’ when they are bleeding, it makes sense. Child-bed fever kills. If a woman has sex while she is bleeding she stands a chance of contracting an infection. To tell horny men to stay away from bleeding women, it makes a lot of sense if they don’t understand how germs work, to say she is “unclean.” This is also more hygieene than cursing. I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of circumcision here. It's not up for debate. If someone wants to fight about it,please take the fight elsewhere. This is just discussion of the laws and circumcision for whatever the reason was, was a law. It could simply have been that they knew the Egyptians did it and copied the practice from them.

Chapter 13 refers to infectious diseases. Of course they weren’t able to identify which diseases would heal and which wouldn’t so if the disease appeared to be just a minor boil or dandruff or dry scalp or acne, then the infected person was kept apart in 7 day cycles until it cleared up. This explains the huge numbers of ‘lepers’ in biblical times. Most cases probably weren’t real leprosy but could even have been hives, eczema or some other chronic skin problem. To play it safe a blanket pronouncement of leprosey was enough to keep people from causing real plagues. In some ways it makes sense.

Except that leprosy is really not very contagious or common.

Exactly, but it could even have been simply smallpox which leaves horribly scarring, with the pustules turning in to "running sores" they could have seen it as "leprosy" especially because people died and the ones who recovered were scarred. So they just used a blanket term "leprosy" for all infectious diseases. I suppose separating infectious people is a good idea in some ways. In the 1950s children who had measles, mumps, polio etc were 'quarantined' with big stickers on the door of their homes and their families had to stay inside. The same thing basically.

petwo wrote:

Roger Cooke wrote:Well, that's possible, but it's also possible that some OCDs simply invented a lot of taboos to deal with their own neuroses.

Bingo. Mental disorders were not understood therefore deemed a special talent (supernatural). Today we put them in the psych ward, on the psychiatrist couch or offer them a pill. For some strange reason God seeks them out.

Even nowadays deeply religious people see mental disorders as being 'possessed' and call people who hear voices as being able to talk to god. Hell all of those people, Moses, Aaron and that king from Canaan, Balaam, they all heard voices.

Up to Chapter 24 there is the story of Balaam, one of the minor kings of the region. He is asked by other kings to join an army to defend themselves against the Hebrews who are conquering land all over the area. He refuses to join, even to the extent of going to visit one of the other kings, Balak of the Moabites, where, along the way his donkey speaks to him (the talking animals always get to me)! After journeying from one set of new seven altars to the next and bullocks being slaughtered at each one, Balaam is convinced that the Hebrews are to become a great people, even to making prophecies of ‘biblical’ proportions, and he and Balak part company. What is interesting is that he is not one of the Hebrews but that his ancestors were in touch with them in previous generations. This indicates that the 'God' of the OT is not exclusively that of the Hebrews, or possibly proves a little early involvement with the descendants of Abraham's discarded family, who are to become the Palestinians.

God’s jealousy gets out of hand when one of Simeon’s descendants takes up with a chief of the Midianites’ daughters. Phineas, one of Aaron’s grandsons, goes after them and kills them and he is praised by God. Moses then ‘smites’ the Midianites. Moses is then commanded to do another head count and to divide up the estate of “Israel/Jacob’s” descendants according to the numbers. He is approached by women who are the sole descdendants of their father with no male relatives. Moses discusses the problem with God who instructs him to divide their father’s share among them. Then Moses names Joshua as his heir to be over Eleazar the high priest and to lead the Hebrews into the promised land. Moses is not allowed to go because he is being punished for his own disobedience from long ago.

Some interesting points. There is very accurate census taking and the writers and translators made sure that the numbers add up but they don’t check that the names of some of the descendants correlate with earlier lists, not a big problem but it would seem that numbers are more important when keeping records, I have a feeling that the numbers were added much.much later. Also the idea that women could inherit is pretty progressive. But the idea of punishing Moses for an earlier mistake before all the pomp and ceremony had been worked out seems a little harsh to me.

Psychiatric cases the lot of them unless they were faking.

angelo wrote:Psychiatric cases the lot of them unless they were faking.

I'm having particular fun with the 'smiting.' I have a few people I think it would be fun to 'smite.' And the get plagues, but no one explains what the plague is. And Miriam whines about something so she gets sent outside the campt for a week with some or other plague, again it's not explained.

The end of Numbers:


Comments on Chapters 28 to 36. This is where it is said that Moses wrote all of this down.

There seems to be confusion about the date of the Passover.
In Ex 12 it is the 10th day of the first month. In Numbers 7:54 it is changed to the 14th day of the 2nd month, In Num 9:14 that is repeated. In Chapter 28, it is confirmed back to the 14th day of the first month.

The next few chapters are about the various slaughters for the festivals. And then they go to war against the Midianites and they kill Balaam who wouldn’t fight them before (the man who spoke to his donkey) and they bring back literally hundreds of thousands of sheep, cattle and asses, and 32,000 virgins, all of which they divide amongst themselves after they’ve killed off all the boys.

Finally they agree on where the various tribes will settle, and that they will support each other in wars. There is a dispute about the inheritance and the vows of women, which is resolved that if a woman makes a vow without the man in her life’s consent, it is not binding. If her father or husband or brother hears her and doesn’t intervene, it is binding and the vow of a widow or divorcee is binding.

Finally they argue about the women who inherited their father’s share possibly marrying outside the tribe and thus taking the money out of the tribe. They are ordered to marry their cousins,their uncle Mannasseh’s sons, i.e. Joseph’s grandsons.

On to Deuteronomy. It's taken me around 2 weeks to read the first four books.

Agrippina wrote:

1.Once upon a time, around thirteen point seven billion years ago, a deity emerged from the rubble of the explosion that came to be known as the “Big Bang,”

How have I managed to miss this gem of a thread? I would make a suggestion though, one which could save you a lot of work in the long run. It would go something like this...

Some people believe that once upon a time, long, long ago a deity emerged from the rubble of a mighty explosion which it had caused and by which it had brought into existence everything that there was, is or shall ever be, including itself. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and so everything that these poor, deluded people believe and claim for and about this deity is totally without merit and can be safely ignored.

<insert bible here>

See, I told you.

Ah, but you've already started of course...

Agrippina wrote:The next few chapters are about the various slaughters for the festivals. And then they go to war against the Midianites and they kill Balaam who wouldn’t fight them before (the man who spoke to his donkey) and they bring back literally hundreds of thousands of sheep, cattle and asses, and 32,000 virgins, all of which they divide amongst themselves after they’ve killed off all the boys.

They were quite obsessed with stealing goats and sheep from other tribes, and killing all the male children and the women who had known a man. I've always found it a bit pervy, this pre-occupation with virgins and livestock.

Anyway, good luck in your endeavours Aggie.




edit: double post quote/edit mishap thingy.

Agrippina wrote:
Exactly, but it could even have been simply smallpox which leaves horribly scarring, with the pustules turning in to "running sores" they could have seen it as "leprosy" especially because people died and the ones who recovered were scarred. So they just used a blanket term "leprosy" for all infectious diseases.

Hardly. Afaik smallpox only arrived in their part of the world in the Middle Ages (this wikipedia article seems to agree with me).

THWOTH wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

1.Once upon a time, around thirteen point seven billion years ago, a deity emerged from the rubble of the explosion that came to be known as the “Big Bang,”

How have I managed to miss this gem of a thread? I would make a suggestion though, one which could save you a lot of work in the long run. It would go something like this...

Some people believe that once upon a time, long, long ago a deity emerged from the rubble of a mighty explosion which it had caused and by which it had brought into existence everything that there was, is or shall ever be, including itself. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and so everything that these poor, deluded people believe and claim for and about this deity is totally without merit and can be safely ignored.

<insert bible here>

See, I told you.

Ah, but you've already started of course...

Agrippina wrote:The next few chapters are about the various slaughters for the festivals. And then they go to war against the Midianites and they kill Balaam who wouldn’t fight them before (the man who spoke to his donkey) and they bring back literally hundreds of thousands of sheep, cattle and asses, and 32,000 virgins, all of which they divide amongst themselves after they’ve killed off all the boys.

They were quite obsessed with stealing goats and sheep from other tribes, and killing all the male children and the women who had known a man. I've always found it a bit pervy, this pre-occupation with virgins and livestock.

Anyway, good luck in your endeavours Aggie.




edit: double post quote/edit mishap thingy.

Thanks THWOTH, the encouragement I'm getting is really inspirational. As for the "good book" reading it is reaffiriing every atheist thought I ever had. Now no one will ever tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about ever again.