So I started reading The Bible In 90 Days (it was kind of a dare). I will be sharing my thoughts and impressions over the next three months here on this blog.
Day 1: Genesis 1:1-16:16
1:3 And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness he called "night". And there was evening, and there was morning - on the first day.
However... God apparently waits until the 4th day to create the light producing objects (the sun and the stars). How could there be evening and morning on the first day with no sun?
(OK - I know, I'm starting with an easy one, but it's not like I can just ignore it - right?!)
In Genesis 1:1, the earth and "heaven" are created together "in the beginning," but they were not created together, the earth and universe are about 4.6 and 13.7 billion years old, respectively.
By the way... 1:14 Two great lights? The moon is not a light, it simply reflects the sunlight shining on it. You would think an omnipotent omniscient creator would know the difference.
You would think.
1:27 He creates man and woman at the same time (more on this shortly)
2:2 Apparently, poor little God was all tuckered out after all this creating and needed a rest. Not so omnipotent then, I guess?
2:7, 18-22 In the first creation story above, God makes humans - both male and female - after the other animals. Here at 2:7, 18-22, God makes a man first, then the other animals, and then a woman.
3:2 So we have this magical tree that God creates that the humans aren't allowed to touch - what purpose it serves, we don't know. Why the Hell he sticks it in the middle of the garden right where these naive idiots can get at it is anyones guess!
(Actually, as the stories of the Bible progress, you find that God quite enjoys fucking with people, so this is really not out of character)
So Adam and Eve are told that if they eat from this tree, they will die. Funnily Adam eats from it and lives to the ripe old age of 930, so it's not that much of a downside, all things considered.
3:21 Hey look! Another magical tree! The tree of life! um... why?
3:1 How about the serpent? If you think about it, not really such a bad character. At least the serpent never lied to Adam and Eve like God does.
3:14 God goes on to punish the serpent by making him crawl on his belly (?!) WTF? Isn't that what snakes do anyways?
(Oh yeah... I forgot to mention... it's a frickin' talking snake!) Yeah. A snake that talks. Riiiiiiiight.
3:16 The Biblical misogyny kicks in at this point with Adam blaming Eve for everything and God curses her with painful childbirth and an order to always be ruled over by here husband.
On to Cain and Abel...
And at 4:1 we get jiggy for the first (and certainly not the last) time in the Bible when Adam lays with his wife!
4:15 What's with God marking Cain? Who is it exactly that is going to find Cain and kill him? Supposedly there's just him, his mom and his dad - right?
4:17 Cain lay with his wife?!! Who's his wife?!! Where the hell did she come from?!! I thought Cain's mom was the only woman on the whole planet... hey.... wait a minute... you don't think...
Ewww!
4:18 Now Cain's son Enoch has a spouse! It seems suitable partners just started springing up from nowhere all of a sudden! Either that or Eve is a real go-er!
5:5 Adam lived 930 years. Yeah. Right. And the others all through Genesis 5. This is just getting stupid now. Methuselah live 969 years?! Wait a second - Noah became a dad at the ripe old age of 500?!! Oh for fuck's sake!
It looks like God has had enough of this too so at 6:3 he limits the human lifespan to 120 years - kind of like the replicants in Blade Runner I guess. Only longer. And not quite so irreversible. Lotsa people born after that lived longer than 120. Arpachshad lived 438 years. His son Shelah lived 433 years. His son Eber lived 464 years, and many more. (Genesis 11:12-16)
Now it gets disgustingly ugly. 6:7 So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth"
Nice.
Anyone wanna worship this guy? I say no thank you. I'm not that partial to psychopathic mass murderers.
By the way... 6:7 also says that God is grieved that he ever made mankind. So, he didn't see this coming? Not so omniscient then, I guess.
So, around Noah's 600th birthday, God flooded the whole planet because people were wicked and violent - presumably worse than these days. Noah loads up the ark with all the animals and off they go on a little cruise for 17 months (8:4).
A couple of questions and observations about this particular section.
A lot of people might ask: what did the animals eat and drink while on the ark for all those months? Surely food and water would take up a huge percentage of that precious and limited cargo space during such a long voyage. Just the elephants on board (pairs of both Indian and African) would need something in the region of 40 tons of hay each to keep them going. Then I presume there was also a pair of wooly mammoths and a couple of mastodons on there as well to keep all the creationists happy? As for fresh water? Can’t drink seawater - even diluted by the rains it would not be potable. And what, pray tell, do the carnivores eat on board the ark?
But here’s an even trickier question: What did the carnivores eat when they got off the ark? They can’t go back to eating their fellow former ark residents straight away can they? How could they wait the couple of years, if not decades it would take until the vegetarian animal populations grew to a sustainable level to start eating again?
This of course assumes that the vegetarian animals can find enough food growing in the sea water soaked land to not only hold off starvation but actually thrive.
9:13 Then God puts a rainbow in the sky - like some sort of giant multi colored post-it note to remind him to never ever kill everybody and everything on the whole planet again. Isn't that sweet?
11:1 The Tower of Babel - did you know that Bronze Age builders were able to build a tower right up to Heaven? Wish we had those sort of building skills today.
11:10 Shem - another centenarian getting his end away. Man, those old guys really got a lot of action back then!
12:13 We learn that Abram (Abraham) likes pretending that his wife is his sister and also that God is pretty cool with the whole slavery thing 12:16 - including sex slaves 16:2 and it warms his heart to have blokes cutting off the ends of their penises in his honor 17:10-14.
Day 2: Genesis 17:1-28:19
18:27-33 What is Abraham's age again?! This is like a conversation with a three year old!
19:2 What's with all the foot washing anyways?
19:8 Lot. Supposedly the only decent guy worth saving in all of Sodom and Gomorrah, impresses the angels by cheerfully offering up his daughters to a mob of rapists. The acorns don't fall far from the tree when we find his daughters getting Lot drunk and each screwing him till he climaxes without him ever realizing what's happening. 19:30-36
Can you get that drunk and still get hard? And then cum?!! Sure. Yeah. That's like... totally believable that Lot wasn't aware of what was happening. Yup.
19:26 And poor Lot's wife... all she did was glance back at her home town full of all her stuff she left, the only life she's ever known, plus all the people she knew screaming in terror as it was destroyed. Seems a reasonable thing for any human to naturally do. Look back. Wasn't God's punishment (given the circumstances) a teensy bit harsh?!
20:2 The local king is hot for Abraham's presumably 90 plus year old wife. Then Abraham pretends she's his sister again - only we find out - DOH! She actually IS his sister! 20:12
22:2 God's idea of a sick joke. How scarred for life would a child really be if they had to go through this evil farce for real? Think about it. Utterly reprehensible.
25:7 Abraham outlives the 120 year expiry date by 55 years.
26:7 I don't believe it! Isaac's doing his dad's wife/sister routine now!
