Wednesday, May 30, 2007

A Cute and Cuddly Bedtime Story of Mass Extinction

by: Jon

Just how does mass genocidal extinction become a cute and cuddly bed-time story?


When it's a bible story, that's how.

There are hundreds of children's storybooks, puzzles, games, videos, wallpaper, and toys all depicting Noah's Ark with all his happy smiling animals friends... oh, look! Cute furry bunnies!

Somehow, the rest of the story just doesn't matter. You know, the part where everyone else on the planet DROWNS TO DEATH.

Here is my more accurate portrayal of the flood story:



Sure, 40 days and 40 nights of rain that covers the globe would have eroded every mountain down to a nub, never mind wherever the water came from or where it all went. Forget the fact that such a deluge of water would have diluted the saltwater oceans, destroying the ecosystems and turning them into a barren waste. Don't concern yourself with what the animals ate after they got off the ark, either, since all the plants around the world would have also died... and the carnivores would have finished off everything in the ark in a matter of days. And it isn't important to figure out how the marsupials got back to Australia, the penguins to Antarctica, and so on.

Of course the story makes no sense, but that's not the point.

The point is that this is a story where God comes right out and KILLS everyone because they aren't doing what he wants them to, and then this story is turned into a lovable and cuddly cartoon. This is the bits of the story they don't include in the childrens videos. It's all there. Go read your Bible.

Genesis 6

Angels and humans are getting awfully "friendly" and the resulting half-breed offspring are called "Nephilim." Sounds like something from a L. Ron Hubbard novel.

God sees that everyone is wicked and violent, and he doesn't like violence... so he decides to murder everyone.

But God likes Noah, so he tells him to build an ark, tells him how many animals to put on it, and to put his family aboard. Also, Noah is 600 years old.

Forgetting for a moment the blind hypocrisy of Gods action here, it's interesting that his plan will kill all the animals, too, who are, after all, only doing what he created them to do.

So the waters come, everyone jumps in the boat, the entire earth is covered, and everything dies. EVERYTHING.

The wind started to blow and the water gradually began to disappear... off the edge of the earth, I guess, I don't know.

It takes several months, but they can finally see mountain tops. Noah sends out a dove who brings back an olive branch, and that's how Noah knows there's dry land.

So they land, and the animals scamper out of the ark. God never seems to notice that the animals still eat each other and such, but whatever. Noah kills some animals and offers them as a sacrifice... because God hates violence, remember. God says the barbeque smells really good (Yes, it's there: Genesis 8:21) and now he feels bad, so he promises that he'll never kill everything again. I guess he learned a valuable moral lesson!

He tells Noah to go ahead and eat anything he wants. Since God hates violence, he tells Noah to enforce capital punishment, eye for an eye, etc.. God again promises not to kill everything, but this time he says he won't *flood* everything again. Ah-ha! A loophole! Next time, it's FIRE! Suckers!

But God seems worried he might forget that he promised not to drown everyone, though, so he invents rainbows. Apparently the physical laws of light defraction didn't exist until that moment. Now, every time he sees a rainbow, he'll remember he isn't supposed to drown everything.

Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and passes out naked. His youngest son sees him and tells his two older brothers, who go to great lengths to cover him up without ever having to actually look at his 600 year old nakedness. Noah wakes up and, in what seems to be a drunken rant, condemns his youngest sons family to slavery for... whatever it was he did.

Yup... Noah was a drunk, his family dysfunctional, and their inbreeding repopulated the planet. Noah dies 350 years later, now nearly 1,000 years old. It's surprising he didn't leave a bigger footprint in history.

The end.

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So... how is this a good story, much less a reasonable one? God doesn't like the way people turned out, so he can just wipe them out? Isn't this a lesson of terror and intimidation? And it's being sent straight to our kids, as if it's no big deal.

I was raised with this story as literal truth. I can't imagine that this is how we want our kids to grow up... to be afraid and terrorized. Christians talk about their God of love... but I don't actually see much of him in the Bible.

6 comments:

Petitemalfleur said...

Such a great blog! I love it!

Samuel the Utahnite said...

Hey I just wanted to say congrats on your awesome blog and thanks a million for linking to me. I'm going to go post a link to your blog(and podcasts), on my blog, right after leaving this comment.

Next I'm going to go check out your podcast and if you two ever need any help(by the way, I think they sound great!!) or suggestions on software, etc, I'd be glad to help you guys out, as it can be difficult figuring it all out when you first start out. However, it sounds to me like you guys already have all of that stuff figured out and are doing a great job.

I love your logical, honest and straight-forward approach, which is exactly how I'm attacking all of this BS, meaning both Mormonism and Christianity and all religion. Too bad more people can't use this type of logic and reality to deduce what is in the Bible and Book of Mormon, and realize that it's all fiction.

The latest poll says that about 75% of people in the USA are Christian or believe in this loving, all powerful God. Also, it was 80% + that consider the USA to be a "Christian nation."

How can anyone, when actually using their brains, consider that there is a "loving" God out there?

Just look around, as I always say, with all of the rape, torture, murder, mass slaughters, genocide, injustice, crime....people raping and murdering little kids, chopping them up into pieces...all while this supposed loving God floats around on his pathetic throne, watching it all happen and not doing a damn thing about any of it. That's love?

What good is an all powerful God, if he's completely powerless by having his powers completely restricted in the name of free agency.

If we could prevent a loved one or our child, or even a stranger, from running into the street and getting killed, we would, but an all powerful/perfect God doesn't. Why? In other words, ironically, we as human beings, have more power than this all powerful God.

Oh yeah and he's also demanding that everyone worship him, bow down to him, give all the credit to him for anything they have and everything they accomplish and kiss his ass for all eternity...why? What has he done exactly to deserve that?

In fact, being omniscient, he knew it was going to happen before it happened and still did absolutely nothing. Is that how a loving father would act? I sure hope not!!

Anyway, your post on Noah's ark is a classic and a real gem and I'll be referring my readers over to your blog to read it.

I've mentioned the flood and a whole bunch of other BS from the Bible many times on my blog(and I will many times in the future), but you've recapped the happenings of "Noah's Ark" perfectly.

It's so dumb and so stupid that I don't know how anyone that actually knows the facts and has a brain, could actually think it is literal and makes sense.

The fanatical Christian nutjobs, that believe the Bible is INFALLIBLE, PERFECT and FLAWLESS, with no contradictions anywhere, are more deluded than the Mormons are, in my opinion.

Thanks for all your efforts and great blog and podcast and keep up the awesome work guys!!

Samuel

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHA! I just stumbled across this page when I was looking for pictures of noahs ark for a project I'm working on. I love it. I was raised strict christian, with all this shit given to me as literal truth. I started asking questions when I was around 15,(like if adam and eve were the only people on the planet, how did there kids have kids with out turning to each other?) but still, it took me YEARS to unlearn all the shit that got pumped into my brain as "fact".

I believe everyone has the right to belive whatever the hell they want. But I also believe you should only be able to teach religion to people who are over 18. Like doug stanhope says. "if they didn't drill christianity into your head while it was still soft, it wouldn't stick!"

great blog, keep it up.

peace

Anonymous said...

Great blog. After you talked about the animal sacrifices I actually DID look up the exact phrase in the bible that says "The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma" of the burnt animal bodies... so glad you pointed that out.

I did a search to find a quote I had heard when someone (didn't find out who) was asked about the bible said "They're great bedtime stories, aren't they?" and I found your blog. It gave me a few laughs and a big smile. Thanks for posting this, it's awesome.

Anonymous said...

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