A Squeeze of the Hand

I got in an argument with this guy on youtube. He posted this video, 10 questions every atheist must answer. As is so often the case with these types, he presented himself as logical and reasonable. I always long for a logical, reasonable conversation about religion, so I watched. One of his questions was about birds--he claimed that birds cannot have developed through evolution. While the claim is obviously not true--millions of years of evolution is plenty of time to create wings--how exactly it happened is sort of irrelevant. (It's an interesting question, one that biologists will probably explain at some point, but it's irrelevant to the question of the existence of God.) I noticed that another guy on youtube responded to this video with his own, answering the questions. He said that wings are actually one of the easiest things to explain--small animals falling out of trees to escape predators. One has some extra webbing between his toes, it slows him down just enough to survive the fall, and voilà, the beginning of wings.

So I wrote to this guy, the original guy, to ask him what he thought of that explanation. It was clear, simple, easy to understand, and eliminated one of the guy's ten questions. As I wrote back and forth to the guy it became increasingly clear, surprise, surprise, that the guy isn't the least bit reasonable, and that no amount of evidence would ever prevent him from claiming it still hasn't been proven completely.

There are of course a million things wrong with that "argument." But anyway, I still write to him sometimes when I see something particularly obvious in the bible that needs to be explained. I just wrote to him about Exodus, this post will just be mostly my email to him.


Old Testament
Book Two: Exodus
Israel at Mount Sinai (cont'd)
Chapter 29: Instructions for the installation of the priests
Chapter 30: The incense altar, taxes, other instructions (the sacred sink, recipes for incense)
Chapter 31: The holy carpenters
Chapter 32: Edward G. Robinson's big moment!


If you simply read the bible, the book is so bizarre that to claim it was written by God is nothing short of insulting to him.

Just look at Exodus. God, and the book, change personality about ten times. First he goes insane and tries to kill Moses right after he hires him. Then the ten plagues. Then the book COMPLETELY changes character, and goes on and on in the most minute detail about things that are utterly unimportant for any future reader, the plans for the tabernacle, the ark, and so on. These passages of the book are completely different from anything that came before it, and then, of course, in chapter 32, it goes back to the old style!

The historical explanation of this explains it readily: later on, after the exodus story was written, the Aaronite/Levite priests came to power. Since Aaron was the bad guy in the older exodus story (with the golden calf), they needed to add some passages to prop him up, so they just inserted some chapters about God installing Aaron as his priest.

That explanation makes sense. Here's a really really interesting question for you to contemplate. You are very comfortable condemning certain translations in favor of others. Should you not be equally skeptical of certain verses of the bible themselves? Are these Aaronite verses really the word of God? Or are they written by bad humans in order to prop up themselves?

And HOW CAN YOU KNOW? Isn't that what the whole bible is? Where do you draw the line? And you are so big on the "fossil record," where's your "fossil record" proving the authenticity of these versus that are in our bible? We can only trace them back to 500 or 1000 A.D.! There's an enormous gap between the version we think of as the bible, and the original writing. How do you know what (if ANY) of it is real?

If, as you readily admit, indeed, insist on, current translators (going back at least to King James) made mistakes, or even worse, purposefully translate a passage in a certain way to make the point they want to make--why wouldn't that have been happening 2000, 3000, 4000 years ago? There's an enormous, 1000s-of-years-long gap in the "fossil record" of the bible. You should, if you have any intellectual integrity about it, have zero confidence in the veracity of the bible whatsoever. Not because you doubt the existence of God, but because you have absolutely no reason to believe that the book we have now is anything other than bullshit a bunch of humans wrote long after the original was written.

Just one more reason a belief in the whole enterprise is so unfounded and intellectually dishonest.

In fact, from this standpoint, the Mormons are on the most sure footing. They claim that God verified his writings a mere 150 years ago! You have 4000 years of human intervention.

Even by the time Jesus lived, the Judaism he learned had ALREADY been bastardized for a thousand years. It would have made far more sense for him to say, "that commandment about 'eye for an eye'? It doesn't exist. God never said it. Aaron added that himself."


--bibletoenail


Other notes: After seven chapters of tedious blueprints for alters, we go back to the good author of the bible, the one that writes about sex and death. The notes taught me something important about the bible. The last several chapters have been these boring detailed plans for the altar, tent, and so on. They don't fit, they don't belong. This has been happening throughout the bible so far--Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, for instance, totally different versions of the same story. Why? My rather confused assumption to this point has been that the editors simply didn't know what they were doing--it was like competing factions in Congress, they have to add some language here, other language there, to keep everyone happy, and the result makes no sense. But the notes in these sections tell a different story.

They say that there is a reason why these chapters were inserted in the middle of the otherwise compelling narrative. It's pure politics. It is, in fact, exactly what George Bush is doing now, a public relations campaign to convince people he was a good president. At some point after the original Exodus story was written, Aaron and the Levites came to power. The problem is, Aaron was the obvious bad guy in the Exodus story! He's the one responsible for the golden calf. So the Levite priests added these chapters in order to soften the impact of that story. To show that Aaron was special, and so perhaps his decision was special also, not sinful.

The point for me is a lesson that I have to reteach myself often: it's too easy always to assume the worst of people. Here, it's easy to assume the editors of the bible were just incompetent. It's infinitely more rewarding, however, to assume they did have a reason for the decisions they made, and try to figure out what those reasons are. That's not to say any of it's true; it's just to say that the authors were purposeful in their decisions.

By the way, God is characteristically insane in chapter 32. He kills THOUSANDS of the Israelites he just delivered from Egypt, mere days after rescuing them, and for getting tired of waiting for Moses to come back down. I really like the Israelites, they are consistently completely unimpressed by God. Remember that this new covenant is unenforceable; the Israelites already have a covenant with God that does not require their obedience of the ten commandments, and nothing whatsoever has invalidated that covenant. God repeatedly, viciously lies.


Lastly, there's something very gay about these chapters of the bible, all about the wonderful beautiful frilly clothes that Aaron will wear. And the book lately has been reminding me of Moby-Dick, how half the book was the narrative, and half was random chapters on rope and sitting in giant vats of fat holding hands with the other sailors.

By the way, if God keeps killing off the willful Israelites, it's no wonder by the time Jesus came around all that was left were these simpering weaklings. They were all that was left! The old testament was one big artificial selection experiment. Look at a Christian today: it is proof that evolution works.


Quotables:
"Who is on the Lord's side? Come here to me." --Exod. 32:26

"These are the words of the Lord the God of Israel: 'Arm yourselves, each of you, with his sword. Go through the camp from gate to gate and back again. Each of you kill his brother, his friend, his neighbor.'" --Exod. 32:27

"The Levites obeyed, and about three thousand of the people died that day." --Exod. 32:28

"Today you have consecrated yourselves to the Lord completely, because you have turned each against his own son and his own brother and so have this day brought a blessing upon yourselves." --Exod. 32:29

"If thou wilt forgive them, forgive. But if not, blot out my name, I pray, from thy book which thou hast written." --Exod. 32:32:


Textual Notes
- Exod. 29:1n -- This note says that these passages ascribe the origin of the Aaronite priesthood to the Mosaic period (got to use the vocabulary words! Another one is coming shortly). But, it says, in early Israelite history, a priest could come from any tribe. But later the Levites came to be recognized as the priestly tribe. Later still it came to be only the descendants or Aaron within the Levite tribe. It says in the "postexilic" period.--"postexilic" I think means after the Exodus. I think I still am hazy on the history of Israel (well, that's putting it mildly--I have no idea what happens after Exodus!). I thought at first "postexilic" only referred to the book of Exodus, but now I think perhaps their time "in the wilderness" will be longer than that. . . . Actually, I just looked up "exilic"--it means period of exile not period of exodus. My dictionary says "exilic" refers to a period in the 6th century B.C. when the Jews were exiled from Babylon--that might be a time entirely different from the time period of the current story. In fact, the "exilic" period might not even be recounted in the bible, it might be another time altogether in the history of Israel.

- Exod. 29:13 -- The notes for most of Exodus have referred to the tribe of Israel as a "cult." Mostly, I assumed it's just a general term for a religious group. But at times I think the notes may very well mean it in the more pejorative sense. Look at the detail, the relish, with which these passages are wallowing in the gore. Even though God in the last two books has killed hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, many his own followers, the death has always been rated PG--he smites them, but without much detail. Look at this passage, by comparison: "Then take the fat covering the entrails, the long lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys with the fat upon them, and burn it on the altar." Uh, wow. To our eyes, of course, this sounds barbaric, but the truth is probably that they had hard lives and used every bit of an animal that they slaughtered, and so were intimately familiar with every piece of a cow's insides.

- Exod. 29:14 -- Look at this: "the flesh of the bull, and its skin and offal, you shall destroy by fire outside the camp. It is a sin-offering." "Sin-offering"? I wish they explained that! It sounds like there's a whole complicated regime of rituals that are only touched on here in the bible. You don't just make offerings to God, you can somehow do the opposite--what exactly does that mean? It doesn’t mean "Satan," he doesn't exist yet. Is it also an offering to God, but it's a sin-offering to God? Very intriguing.

- Exod. 29:16 -- "Then slaughter it, take its blood and fling it against the sides of the alter." This enterprise does not sound very sanitary. And there is nothing in the bible about how to clean the walls of the temple after the bloodbath!

- Exod. 29:20 -- "Then take some of its blood, and put it on the lobes of the right ears of Aaron and his sons, and on their right thumbs and big toes." Earlobes, right thumbs, and big toes. Oh my.

- Exod. 30:15 -- It's interesting here that God enacts a regressive tax (all the same amount, no matter if rich or poor). It's completely the opposite of the socialism that Joseph imposed in Egypt.

- Exod. 31:2 -- Hey, another mention of the tribe of Judah!

- Exod. 31:15 -- I know some observations/criticisms of Christians and the bible are so obvious the only objection a Christian can muster is "come on, it's not all meant to be taken literally!" But here in the middle of very specific laws, hardly the time for flowery poetic language, is a law that anyone who works on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. It's right there in black and white. Which is worse, more sinful--to disobey the bible when it is very clear about something, or to read into the bible something that is not there (like that a fetus is human when it is clearly not (21:22))?

- Exod. 32:9-10 -- "So the Lord said to Moses, 'I have considered this people, and I see that they are a stubborn people. Now, let me alone to vent my anger upon them, so that I may put an end to them and make a great nation spring from you.'"

- Exod. 32:11-12 -- Again the humans are the reasonable ones.

- Exod. 32:9-14n -- This is a Christian note. The note says that God accepts Israel through grace, not because of her merits. But that's not what the story says at all. Moses argues with God, as Abraham did on behalf of Sodom, and convinces God not to do what he wants. And, indeed, God does not in fact save Israel through grace at all. What God wanted to do was kill the innocent along with the guilty. Moses intervenes to say that's wrong. So what God does instead (32:35) is kill only the guilty, not the innocent. This passage is exactly the opposite of salvation through grace. God wants to kill people without discernment--humans convince him to at least be just. It's the opposite of grace--it's God's "mysterious" murderous intent.

- Exod. 32:24 -- Keeping with the Israelite tradition, Aaron lies about his part in the golden calf incident. Moses is almost unique in his lack of mendacity.

- Exod. 32:26-29n -- More stuff showing Levites are special. Why? Because they were willing to murder their family and neighbors.