Adam The first human, the father of all mankind, created by God out of dirt. Of course, for the human race, the pain begins early as The Creator did not just magically create Eve out of more dirt, no, he chooses to yank a rib out of Adam (Genesis 2:19), with no anesthesia, which was invented by more advanced humans much later. There is no explanation as to why men and women have the same number of ribs, and belly-buttons. The Guy in the Sky doesn’t do God-splaining.
Behemoth (Also see: Dinosaurs) Christians have a lot of problems with dinosaurs. To claim they coexisted with humans is absurd (many claim this anyway), so how do they account for them within the framework of creationism? They try, but fail miserably with verses like (Job 40:15-20), which unmistakably describes a hippo, not a dino.
Cain The Holy Bible is filled to the brim with humans getting a raw deal from God. Adam & Eve were the first, trick-bagged by him in the Garden of Eden, with even a ringer in the form of a talking snake to ensure their demise. Cain, their son, did not escape God’s shenanigans either. Their Skydady liked his brother Abel more, and made him a herdsman with animals; while Cain only had plants as a farmer. Why? Because God loved the bloody animal sacrifices of Abel, that’s why. Cain became jealous and four humans in after creation, we already have a murder (Genesis 4:8).
Dinosaurs Question: Why did the dinosaurs not survive Noah’s flood? You see, Noah realized that the dinosaurs were too large and dangerous to take on the Ark, so he took dinosaur eggs instead. Unfortunately, he put the eggs in the suite next to the Komodo dragons, who were tired of their vegan diet, and ate the eggs. Source: Answers in Genocides. My answer, of course, is absurd, just like every apologist attempt to explain the undeniable presence of dinosaurs on the planet earth. There are also a few verses referring to a Leviathan, or sea serpent, which is obviously describing a crocodile.
We know that dinosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago, long before the earliest humans evolved. There are tens of thousands of dinosaur fossils, including the famous Archeopteryx, which shows the dinosaur ancestry link to present day birds and fowl. Not to be deterred, the religiously impaired just claim that Satan planted the fossils to test their faith.
Ezekiel To say the very least, the prophets of the Old Testament had a hard time. No one had it rougher than Ezekiel, so it is no surprise that he was bat-shit crazy with nightmarish visions. This was inevitable as God tortured him relentlessly. God killed his wife, and ordered him not to mourn. Why this would grace Yahweh’s table, I have no idea.
He made him eat a parchment scroll, then eat only bread made with human dung, while lying on his left side for 13 months. Ezekiel begged for mercy, so God relented and made him eat bread made with only cow dung. (Ezekiel 4:9-15) The rest of the story is even too shocking for this article.
Foreskins Oh my Goodness, the Old Testament was obsessed with a lot of things, mostly involving smiting, violence and death, but the old boy really had a thing about peens. The Almighty Creator supposedly created the foreskin, but never really explains why cutting off the best part of the penis was important to him.
In a disgusting and shocking account in Genesis, God orders Abraham to take his son Isaac up on a mountain as a human sacrifice. After trolling the terrified duo, God changed his mind and just has them cut off their foreskins instead. This episode is just the beginning of the foreskin horror in the Bible. More later (See King David).
God A.K.A. as the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, He, Him, I am, and Jealous. God is by far the scariest character in the Old Testament. He was petulant, brooding, blood-thirsty and vengeful. He especially excelled in killing people.
Once upon a time, the Lord of Lords freely roamed the Earth, smiting, getting his feelings hurt, making his prophets do crazy things, and even losing a wrestling match with Jacob. (Genesis 32:22). In the New Testament, The Jealous One disappeared and in the age of photographs, film, Cam-Corders, iPhones and peer-review, he is nowhere to be seen.
Hell Of course. With all the smiting, violence and evil sinning of humans in the Old Testament, the pages must be filled with the horrors of burning eternally in Hell. Nope. Not a word. Hades was mentioned in Roman and Greek mythology, and of course we have the Hades in Dante’s Inferno, but there was not a peep about the dreaded place in the Old Testament.
Hell was introduced in the New Testament as the Hebrew word gehenna, which was a landfill outside of Jerusalem where garbage was burned. The Bible was obviously “make it up as you go along”, so Hell was introduced as a recruiting “stick and carrot” to scare and indoctrinate little kids.
Isaiah This is one of the most important books in the Bible because it contains one of the most important verses. Isaiah 45:7 states explicitly God’s role in creating evil. This is also known as the Epicurian Paradox and has not been adequately addressed in thousands of years. Apologists have tried and miserably failed to sanitize this verse, but its meaning is clear and unambiguous. Christians continually bleat about God’s love and phrases like “God is good, all the time”, but even casual study of the Old Testament reveals another story.
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” Isaiah 45:7
Jonah Oh boy, the Old Testament has a lot of problems with its watery myths (See Noah and Water). Noah’s impossible flood is a belly laugh, but what about the biblical claim that a man survived in the belly of a big fish for 3 days? Whether it was a whale or a big fish, it really doesn’t matter, does it? There are many imaginable hostile environments for humans, but inside a large fish’s stomach, cloaked with digestive juices and deep under water has to rank up there.
Of course, the apologists and fundamentalists defend the outrageous story as somehow being valid. One of God’s miracles. The absurdity of the Old Testament has no boundary.
King David Revered in Sunday School classes as the boy hero who slew the bully giant Goliath with a slingshot, David was actually one of the most bloodthirsty and violent characters in the Old Testament, not to mention a notorious philanderer. It’s no wonder that he was one of God’s favorites.
In order to get favor to marry King Saul’s daughter, he brought him a gift of 100 foreskins of slain Philistine soldiers. I guess you get whacked, then get it whacked off after you are killed. Later, as King David, he had sex with one of his subject’s wives, Bathsheba, and then had her husband sent to the front line to be killed in battle so he could marry her. God liked David, but is annoyed, so God kills David and Bathsheba’s baby as punishment for his misdeeds.
The apple does not fall far from the tree, as David’s son Amnon brutally rapes his sister. David’s other son Absalom comforts his sister and tells her to keep quiet about it (II Samuel 13:1-20).
Lot Speaking of incest, back in Genesis, Lot, his wife and two daughters were escaping Sodom, which God was destroying for sexual wickedness. God instructs them not to look back, but the wife does, and God kills her. Later that night, the two virgin daughters get Lot drunk, both have sex with him and end up pregnant. God ignores this. (Genesis 19:30-36)
Sodom, of course, is the name where the term “sodomy” originated, meaning any type of sex other than the missionary position. Again, the Old Testament OCD Creator was just obsessed with sex.
Moses The Jesus figure of the Old Testament. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy tell the story of the descendants of Jacob and the chosen people of Israel. The story of these poor people, who wandered around the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years is great testimony to the saying “With friends like God, why do you need enemies?”. (See: Promised Land)
I’m sure that being a slave in Egypt was no picnic, but what happened to these people after they were delivered from bondage was as bad, or worse.
Moses was famous for parting the Red Sea, and delivering the people, but he was more famous for his role in delivering the 10 Commandments from God. Most people think that there were only 10, but further reading reveals that there were closer to 600 commandments, including important stuff like this: God instructed that no altar to God should have steps because he was worried that the people might expose their genitals. (Exodus 20:26). No, you can’t make this up, but apparently the entire account of the slaves in Egypt was made up, as there is absolutely no historical account of any of these events actually happening.
Noah
We are really into the heavy-hitters of the Old Testament now. According to the myth, Noah descended from Adam & Eve, and the rest of us descended from Noah. Why? Well, according to the myth, God killed everyone else.
Yep, that’s right. Except for Noah and the ark crew, God sent everything else kicking and screaming in anguish and pain to a watery grave. The Almighty one was non-selective in his brutality. He killed men, women, children, babies, the unborn, trees, plants, all birds and every other unfortunate critter that got in the way of his wrath. The reason for this genocide? The world had grown too violent. (Genesis 6:11) Oh, the irony, but God was eager to kill his mistakes.
The flood, as claimed in the Bible, takes the #1 spot as the biggest and most unoriginal lie in the entirety of the Bible. Only Matthew 27:51-53 comes close. All ancient civilizations had flood myths, but the Genesis account was over the top. The physical and logistical problems with this lie are too numerous and outrageous to include in these ABCs. Needless to say, it didn’t happen and it couldn’t happen, but that doesn’t stop the religiously impaired from believing it. (See: Water)
Omnipotent/Omniscient God Christians will readily tell you that their God is All good, omniscient and omnipotent. This is out of necessity, because any god that did not have these attributes would not be a god worthy of worship. Most are familiar with the Epicurean paradox about God, his supposed omnipotence and evil. If God is omnipotent and all-knowing, then he knows when horrific evil will occur. If he can stop it, then he is all-powerful. If God is All-Good, then he will want to stop evil. If he doesn’t know, is powerless to stop, or doesn’t want to stop evil, then why call him God?
Onan (Honorable Mention) The sin of Onan is not merely masturbation. He spilled his seed on the ground, but this was not the issue. He pulled out to not impregnate his sister-in-law, and the pregnancy is what God wanted. God kills Onan. (Genesis 38:1-10)
Promised Land (Also see: Noah) As I mentioned before, being one of God’s chosen people was not all you would think it would be cracked up to be. He had them wander around for 40 years in the scorching desert only to have them settle in the only area of the Middle East that did not contain oil. If you study geography, the present-day Israel was one of the worst pieces of land on Earth, before the Jews drained the swamps and made it somewhat inhabitable.
Quit Just stop. I mean, really. God failed in his every endeavor. He created Heaven with imperfect angels, some of whom rebelled. He failed in creating Adam & Eve by making them imperfect and choosing to disobey, even though they were totally inexperienced and unaware of anything, like consequences.
God failed with his humanity and chose to destroy everyone and everything except for the ark crew. Jehovah failed when he sent his son Jesus via rape of Mary as his chosen people rejected him and still do to this day.
Most of all, he failed in his “Believe or Else!” ultimatum, citing the red herring of Free Will. Genuine free will would include the option to opt out, without consequences. Worship me or I will torture you is hardly an attribute of a loving God.
Rape (Also see: King David) The Old Testament is filled to the brim with misogyny, including rape, all of which was sanctioned by God.
There are too many instances of God-approved rape to mention in this article, but here is one of the worst instances. (Judges 21:10-24):
So, they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin. Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.“
This is horrendous enough, but it gets worse reading the rest of the verses. They sacked an entire town, but wanted more virgins, so they hid by the side of the road to ambush them. (Also see Numbers 31:1-18 for more rape of virgins)
Then there is the horrifying account at Ephraim, where the townsmen wanted the angels visiting Lot and crew to be sacrificed to the crowd so that the men could have sex with them. This was refused, but a concubine was sent out to be raped, killed and dismembered. The city was later destroyed by God, after letting this woman be tortured and brutalized (Judges 19: 1-26). Family values are at their finest here in the Old Testament.
Slavery
This practice has always been one of the most heinous and immoral acts of man’s inhumanity to other members of their species. You would think that a God who is supposed to be the very template of good and morality would roundly condemn this practice and make to not enslaving one of the 10 Commandments. Guess what? Slavery is not only not condemned, but is actually condoned and rampant throughout the Bible in both Testaments.
Many apologists try to sanitize and validate the “slavery” as just characterizing them as well-treated house servants. Nothing could be further from the truth as the Old Testament gives instruction on buying and selling slaves like livestock, how to beat them (Exodus 21:20-21), and how to have sex with female slaves. (Exodus 21:7-11) Ugly stuff.
Ten Commandments On the surface, most of these seem somewhat O.K., that is until you read the fine print. Commandment #1 readily admits that there are other gods. The punishment for worshiping another god? Death by stoning. The second commandment is a bizarre condemnation of any type of artistic creativity. So much for Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and all the ornate architecture you see in churches and cathedrals.
All of the commandments have strings attached with deadly punishment for breaking most of them. Also, it is noteworthy, like many other things in the Bible, these commandments were copped from earlier religions and mythologies.
In one way or another, virtually all of the commandments are ignored to some degree, especially the draconian punishment for relatively trivial offenses. If the commandments are inconvenient, they are often ignored altogether, like #4, 7 and 10 and even 6 if you factor in wars and capital punishment. The hypocrisy runs rampant if you consider all the other 600 commandments condemning things like eating shellfish or wearing dacron/polyester.
Understanding The Absurd Both Testaments have tremendous credibility problems for both the free-thinkers and the members of the cult.
Biblical Apologetics was born out of necessity to try to explain away the plethora of absurdities in the Bible. The Old Testament is the most egregious offender as some of the tall-tales that I have mentioned here are beyond laughable.
Absurdities like Noah’s flood, Jonah’s fish tale and the Earth ceasing to rotate on its axis for 24 hours seemingly present absurdity that is unassailable. Apologists come to the rescue with their bizarre and laughable excuses. “I know what the Bible says, but here is what it REALLY means” is a common excuse, not based in any fact. Biblical contradictions are often explained away by translation errors and other unsupported nonsense.
Ignored is the brutal reality that the Old Testament was written by ignorant and violent Bronze-Aged animal herders, who had no idea about the workings of the world around them. This is forgivable, but not if you claim the Old Testament writings are the work of an omniscient god.
Virginity In the Old Testament, God is almost as obsessed with virginity as he is with foreskins. Women are less than second-class citizens as we have pointed out before, and the penalty for not being a virgin was harsh, to the point of being stoned to death. (Leviticus 21:1-13)
There are a few rules for men, but nowhere near as harsh. If a man takes a woman’s virginity, then he must marry her. If a woman loses her virginity (unless raped) she must die.
Water
In the Genesis account, God created the heaven and the Earth, everything, including water. Water is a Newtonian fluid, virtually incompressible and a cubit foot weighs over 62 lbs. The account in Genesis states:
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. [18] The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. [19] They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. [20] The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. (Genesis 7:17-20)
This is a clear and unambiguous claim. Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth at 29,032 ft. or 8849 meters above sea level. It has been calculated that the amount of rain needed to accomplish this was a staggering 813,975,076 miles (not inches) of rain in 40 days. We are talking about 1.35 QUADRILLION Olympic-sized pools full of rain.
Where did this water come from, and where did it go after the flood? This is just one of hundreds of problems with Noah’s mythical flood. Water simply does not magically appear, and then disappear.
Xerxes was a king in Persia whose demands created a tiny victory for women in the Old Testament. He commanded Queen Vashti to come to him, presumably for sex, and she refused. In the book of Esther, it was written that this behavior would empower women to “despise their husbands in their eyes” when they found out about this. Well, good for her and I don’t blame her if King X looked anything like he was portrayed in the movie. 300.
Yahweh This is the name of the ancient god of the Kingdom of Israel or later, Judah. It means “He who makes that which has been made”, or simply, “The Creator”. Later this name was changed to Jehovah by Christian monks in the Middle Ages. Like many other things in the Old Testament, Yahweh was borrowed from an earlier god, the god of metallurgy.
Zzzzz
I am now at the end of my rant of a very important topic, The Old Testament of the Holy Bible. Don’t sleep on what is claimed in this Testament. Many Christians, out of sheer necessity, claim that the Old Testament laws no longer apply, as Jesus came to invoke the “New Law”.
There are more than a couple of problems with this concept. Jesus stated explicitly in the New Testament that he did not come to replace the existing law, but to FULFILL it. (Matthew 5:17-18). This is repeated in numerous other verses in the Gospels. Also, if God is God, then why would his perfect plan and perfect laws need to be changed?
Clearly, the laws and everything else in the Old Testament were written by man and for man. There was a creation in the Old Testament, but it was humans creating a god, not the other way around.
Leave a Reply