Genesis 9

We're back with Noah again this chapter, and the subtitle (The Covenant with Noah) leads me to expect we'll be getting further elaboration on the promise God made to not freak out on the earth again.

God tells Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply. It's the same thing he told Adam and Eve, and it didn't work out too well for them. They'd have been better off saving some energy and just birthing a direct line to Noah. But God needed to have all that "fruit" to kill, or the Flood just wouldn't have that much of an impact. God also tells them that everything else on earth will have "fear and dread of you." Awesome. I'm wondering if God was including creatures like sharks, tigers, bears? Last I checked they weren't too scared of me.

God says that they should eat all the animals and plants, which is I suppose why fundies look so askance at vegans and vegetarians. They're dirty liberals who are directly flouting Genesis 9:3! Then again, some of the carnivores aren't doing any better. God says that if we eat anything that still has its blood, we will pay in our own blood. So God is against a good rare steak? And sushi? I'm not really sure what he's prohibiting here. I suppose it's a useful injuction for a primitive culture to cook their meat, but it hardly seems holy.

Genesis 9:6 is the predecessor to the later eye for an eye philosophy. It's a pretty cut and dried statement in support of the death penalty. "Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed." Well, color me shocked. It is 100% probably that there are people in history who have shed the blood of others and gone on to die perfectly natural, non-human-caused deaths. So God is proclaiming something demonstrably false here. Again, I must wonder about his omniscience if he doesn't know this isn't going to pan out. Or his omnipotence for not making this pan out!

Apparently feeling guilty, God repeats his promise to Noah and co. to never flood the earth again. Which is a bit of a wimpy promise, really. I mean, if God gets pissed off, there are thousands of ways he could destroy the earth without flooding it. So, congratulations, you've ruled out ONE possibility, God. I'll sure sleep better now! The really ludicrous part of this is that God says as a sign of this promise, he will put a rainbow in the sky so that we can remember. In fact, not only so we will remember, but that so God himself won't forget! That's some BS for an omniscient god!

Surely there were rainbows in the hundreds of years before the flood? Did it never rain? Did the sunlight never strike water at just that particular angle? That's ridiculous. This reminds me of the song in Fantasia where the night comes as a lady's robe and a rainbow is created by another lady's dress. MYTH. It truly hurts my brain to try to take this literally.

To end out the chapter, we get a nice little tale of Noah and his sons. Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham's son is Canaan (sound familiar?). One night, Noah gets drunk off wine from his vineyard (take that, teetotallers!), and passes out in his tent naked (hmmm, one has to wonder what he was doing in his tent, drunk, alone, and naked...blech). Ham sees Noah is naked, and tells Shem and Japheth who manage to cover up Noah without getting a peep at his peeper. Noah wakes up, probably hungover and with a wine headache, because there is no real reason for him to curse Canaan for this. But he does, and says that Canaan will be slave to Shem and Japheth. Wow. First of all, it was HAM who saw Noah, but Ham's innocent son who gets the curse. I kinda feel like there has to be something missing here. It says that Noah cursed Canaan "When Noah...knew what his youngest son had done to him." That sounds a lot more ominous that Ham just catching a glimpse of his dad passed out naked. Jeez.

That's Genesis for you. Vengeful, irratic, illogical, hypocritical, and mythical. It's quite entertaining until I remember that there are people try to live as if this were true. Gah.

And the Super Bowl approaches, so that's all for now!

Genesis 8

Sorry for the delay in posting. I wrote the first half of this last week, but then had a few 12 hour work days in a row and my husband got hurt so I had to take care of him all weekend. Not that I mind, but it kept me from blogging!

It's almost discouraging to realize that we're only on the 8th chapter, but I have no time limit and taking it in these small chunks is making it a lot easier to keep up with posting. So we'll continue on, one step at a time, and I'll try not to feel too overwhelmed. I only have to think about one chapter for now! And that's the wrapping up of the flood in Genesis 8.

But God finally remembers Noah and all the animals (Did he forget about them? It usually seems like the implication of "remembering" something is that it was forgotten at some point!) and sends a wind to blow away the waters. Wait, what? If the waters are covering the whole earth, where is the wind blowing the water to? This makes sense from a flat earth perspective, but for a globe it's illogical. However he did it, though, the waters start to recede. Eventually the ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat.

Given that the there is a specific location given for the resting place of the ark, and given that it wasn't more than a few thousand years ago according to the Biblical timeline, surely we could find evidence of the ark's remains on Ararat? Indeed, various expeditions have attempted this before. None of them have found anything! Well, that's not true. None of them have found anything that didn't turn out later to be a hoax. To be fair, the bible only says that it came to rest on "the mountains of Ararat," which may refer to a nearby peak to the actual Mt. Ararat. Still, nothing has been found on any of them either.

I find it interesting that the ark rests on its mountain on the 17th day of the 7th month, but "the tops of the mountains appeared" only when the water had been receding for 10 months. At that rate, it would take a lot longer to clear the water. Maybe God was tired, or just really laughing to himself about how cranky the Noahs were getting.

Noah sends out birds to see if they can find places to roost or find anything of note. The third bird he sends out, a dove, brings back a fresh olive leaf. This happens about 2 months after the tops of the mountains appear from the water. I don't know a ton about olive trees, but a quick Wikipedia check tells me they flourish in coastal areas and the like. Coastal areas tend to be about sea level. So in 2 months, the water completely disappeared and the olive tree had time to grow and bloom? Or is this an olive tree that survived being underwater for a year? And if it did, how does that fit with God wanting to kill every living thing on earth? (For that matter, what about the fishies? Were they on God's good list? And if so, why didn't he just temporarily give a couple animals gills until the flood had passed? Or just protect them in a bubble? The ark just seems SO unnecessary for am omnipotent god!)

One year and two months and some days after the start of the flood, God finally okays the ark to be emptied. Maybe it's just me, but there's no way I would sit in a dank, smelly, cramped ark for months while I waited for the ground to dry. Nope, I'd sneak out a window and run around in the mud and breathe the fresh air in great big gulps (I know, I'm such a bitter, cheerless atheist). This is probably why I would've been drowned! Noah and his family are so obedient. I can just picture God saying "Good boy! Good boy! C'mon out! Who's a good boy? You are! Oh yes you are!"

So after the ark empties out, Noah builds an altar and...wait for it...sacrifices some of all the clean animals to God. Wait. This is the same God who just killed millions of animals in the entire world, and now he is pleased by Noah killing some of the ones God went through all the trouble to save? I mean, wow, you'd think even God would've been sick of the blood by now. But anyway, apparently these last few animals dying did the trick, and God says that he will "never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth." That's okay, then, because humankind is pretty capable of cursing the ground ourselves, I think. It's the second part that gets me. God, listen, you made them. And if they're evil-leaning from the very start, that means you made them evil-leaning! How are you complaining about this? I was gonna write an analogy about script writers not liking the ending of their own movies, but that doesn't even begin to compare. God is omniscient and omnipotent. Which means he had to have known what was going to happen, he had to have been able to make something else happen, and so what the hell is so pouty about? It doesn't add up.

I don't know how I had so much to say about such a short, relatively uneventful chapter, but I guess I did! And now, hopefully, back to daily updates, at least while I'm at class and not on my ship every day.

Cheers!

Genesis 7

Welcome back! Time for a quick post or two before the football games today, so we're off to see the promised flood!

God gives Noah further instruction about the ark. He tells him now to not only bring a pair of every kind of animal, but seven pairs of all the clean animals! And I thought that ark was gonna be crowded before. It seems like God is trying to skew the animal population post-flood towards the "clean" animals. Seems a bit unnecessary, no? I mean, God is the one who created these animals, and created them unclean (animals didn't sin in Eden!). So he either wants them or he doesn't, and why doesn't he just make them multiply less? I mean, micromanaging and all, but I've certainly been led to believe that God micromanages each and every one of our lives, so surely in his omnipotence he could make the unclean animals less fruitful? Hm.

So Noah (at the ripe old age of 600) goes into the ark with his family and all the animals, and a week later, the flood came. It doesn't say why they went into the ark a week early. I mean, it can't be that much fun in there, and surely God can just start the flood as soon as they're all safe without the week lag...perhaps that was a grace period for the dinosaurs? Heh. Anyway, this isn't an issue if you just read the next few verses. Why? Because they completely restate everything, with a slight twist.

According to verse 12 and 13, the rain fell and "on the very same day" Noah and all the animals entered the ark. If they entered the ark on the same day the rains started to fall, why did verse 10 claim that the waters of the flood didn't come for seven days later? I mean, if the writers were specific enough to know that this happened when Noah was 600 years, 2 months, and 17 days old, it can't be too much of a stretch to know whether or not they waited around in the ark for a week before the flood started. Even if they didn't know, they could at least decide on one version to put here!

As far as the actual flood, that they agree lasted 40 days and 40 nights. During this time "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" in addition to all the rain. What's that supposed to mean? Geysers? Underground reservoirs coming forth to add to all the rain? What's preventing those empty spaces from now getting filled up with rain water? Hm. Perhaps God was plugging all the holes. However it happened, we know that the waters covered "all the high mountains under the whole heaven." Wow. That's a lot of water.

Given Mt. Everest is 8,848 meters tall, and the average elevation of the continents is 840 meters. So the water made a layer about 8000 meters deep. The radius of the earth is about 6400 kilometers. Doing a quick bit of math, this means there needed to be an additional 3,449,676,768,158,891,767,700 cubic meters of water. That's 3.4E24 cubic meters, aka 3.4 quadrillion. Where did all that water come from? Where did it go? There are all sorts of creationist "scientific" theories regarding this, but not one of them sounds in any way logical. So one must resort to "Well, God did it," which leads me to wonder why God would try to make it look like a natural phenomenon. Why not just strike dead all mankind at once? It's truly bizarre.

The cheerful ending of this chapter tells how every single living thing was "blotted out from the earth." Except for the ark. All those animals must have been the righteous ones. Or else God couldn't care less about animals. I'm thinking it's the latter. Very reassuring for anyone with a pet or a conscience, no? It must have been a lot of fun on that ark, as the waters of the flood stayed around for 150 days. So, a week beforehand, 40 days of flood, and then 150 days of floating...I can only imagine how snippy everyone was getting! Not to mention that everyone and everything they had known was gone. Like I said last time, I wouldn't accept such an offer from God. I'd rather die with everyone else.

The story of the flood is often touted as a children's story, with all the animals and the ark and everything. But I think it's incredibly morbid and gruesome. Luckily, it doesn't seem like it has any basis in truth, but that's only reassuring for those of us that can turn an objective eye towards this myth. Which isn't exactly an original myth (check out this Wikipedia page to see a list), so it's truly mindboggling that one can pick a story that sounds exactly like all the rest and say it is the true one. The more likely conclusion is that none of them are true.

Until next time!

Genesis 6

I have the most boring post titles, eh? Oh well, my format lends itself well to that, and it would be entirely too taxing to come up with amusing subtitles every time. So these will have to suffice! Plus, it clears up any confusion about what I'm going to write about (hint: it's Genesis 6!).

Wow, this chapter starts off on a great foot. "...daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose." There is no getting around the fact that just sounds flat-out sexist, and I'm not one of those people who is overly sensitive to sexism. Ah, this is when God hands down the mortal lifespan! He says that because we are flesh we cannot live more than 120 years. That's interesting, because all those people delineated in the previous chapter were flesh too, but they got at least 900 years!

Then there come blatant demi-gods. Remember those myths of Zeus having children with mortal women who end up being the greatest insert-noun-here? Clearly legend, of course. But when "the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them" who go on to become "the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown," then that's just the Biblical truth, and we can't possibly understand nowadays because things were different back then.

So God suddenly realizes that humankind is evil, so he decides to kill not only all the humans but also all the living things of his creation. He is sorry that he ever made them. Yes, let that statement sink in for a minute. The omniscient, omnipotent God who created humankind in his image, later discovers they are evil in their hearts and is sorry he ever got involved. An outcome that he should have known in the entirety from before he ever created them! Anyway, luckily for us modern day humans, Noah wasn't as black-hearted as the rest.

If Noah hadn't found favor with the Lord, would we today be arguing with Christians who believe that we've all been killed, the sensory world is merely a dream created by the devil, and that when we die we will actually "wake up" into the real, heavenly world? Actually, come to think of it, I'm sure there's some religion out there that claims such a thing. I wouldn't be surprised. But here I shall limit myself to merely what is presented before me in this holiest of books, where Noah was saved.

God tells Noah about his plan to flood the earth and gives him exact instructions for an ark. I know there is some debate on the actual length of a cubit (thanks, Google!), but for sake of modern day comprehension, I'll use the "long" cubit of about 20 inches. That makes the ark 2,083,333 cubic feet of volume. For comparison, the Titanic measured in with 4,632,800 cubic feet. So Noah made an ark out of wood and pitch that was half the size of the Titanic. Where did he get so much wood and pitch? That seems implausible.

So God outlines his plan of flooding the entire earth and tells Noah to bring his family (wife, sons, daughters-in-law) onto the ark as well as 2 of every kind of creature as well as every kind of food that exists.

This is almost worse than the creation story! At least then we can assume an omnipotent God who can do illogical things. Here we are asked to swallow the idea that Noah, a mortal man, built an ark half the size of the Titanic, in the middle of the desert (okay, it doesn't say so explicitly here, but this is what I was taught in church and given the Hebrew region seems likely), and then collected every kind of animal and plant onto it. Including animals like the kangaroo or the buffalo, that existed half a world away. Where did they shit? What did they eat? If they ate all the food he brought, how did he refurbish the world?

This makes NO SENSE. There is no brain acrobatic that makes this work. Noah's ark is impossible.

Another question that occurs to me is that God says all of humankind is evil. Then he says, well, Noah, you're okay. So why does Noah get to bring his whole family? It doesn't say that they're righteous. It just says Noah is. Are they getting a free pass from this flood because they're related to the one righteous man? What nepotism! And surely they had friends and neighbors. If Noah was able to influence his family to be righteous, what about them? And how could he do this knowing full well that they were going to be killed? I'd think the moral thing to do here is let God flood the entire earth and be done with it, rather than prolonging this "humankind is evil" crap for nearly six thousand more years.

What an interesting chapter. Demi-gods, impossible boats, and only one righteous man! And if everyone's lineage gets funneled through Noah, how can we go back to the idea that all of Lamech's descendants were musicians? Surely everyone is descended from Noah now, and since Noah descends through Seth and not Cain, no one can be a musician anymore?

Christianity would be doing so much better if someone had edited this book before publication! So far, I'm not impressed!

Genesis 5

I guess reading the Bible is providing me solace, as it is giving me something to do while my husband assuages his Cardinals' loss by playing xbox! This time we're hitting "Adam's Descendants to Noah and His Sons" which sounds oh-so-exciting. But skipping over the unpalatable parts is exactly NOT the point, so here I go!

Adam was 130 when Seth was born (Seth being the 3rd son, after Cain and Abel). This is obviously something that cannot happen nowadays or in any previous historical era. I forget if there is an explanation coming later, but as I touched on the other week, it is very illogical to say that human lifespans are dictated by God. Because we can now medically extend lifespans, does that make us more powerful than God, able to override his will? Or can we assume that he likes us more than he like those of the 19th century but much less than he liked Adam? It says right in verse 5 that Adam died when he was 930 (which is a far cry more than a day from when he ate of the tree!).

Outlined here is the following genealogy (with ages):

Adam (930) to
Seth (912) to
Enosh (905) to
Kenan [and the lesser-known sibling Kel...] (910) to
Mahalalel (895) to
Jared (962) to
Enoch (365) to
Methusaleh (969) to
Lamech (777) to
Noah.

Pretty straight forward genealogy except for the fact that these people are living almost a millennium each. I really just cannot see any way to accept this as anything other than a myth. Oh, back before the Flood, people lived sooo long! Yeah, so did the Númenóreans of Middle Earth. Also of note is Enoch, who is famous for being taken by God rather than dying. It doesn't say here why Enoch was taken or anything, just that he walked with God and was no more. Something that also stood out to me was that Lamech lived to be 777. Seven is a holy number in the Bible (or so I was taught, as evidence by instructions to forgive "seven times seven" and such), so is there any significance to the fact that Lamech lives to such an age? Perhaps because he was Noah's father he was an accorded a special status of some sort. Also, this is obviously a different Lamech than Cain's son, but the first repetition of names so far. Perhaps an oral tradition getting muddled?

The chapter ends by mentioning that Noah, at the age of 500, has 3 sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. How many of us can even hope to be fertile at 50?

A boring chapter, overall, but I think it's another chink in the armor of literalness. Not that anyone with half a rational brain takes this stuff literally, but it boggles my mind to read this and think that anyone thinks this is 100% true. My faith in humankind is slowly sinking by the verse.

Sigh.

Hopefully the next chapter will be more entertaining!