Bible Notes

Well, lets just continue with the religious bashing today, since it's so much fun.

Let's jump right in on the touchiest issue going right now. I'm sure you've all seen the video and pictures of the Israeli army evacuating people from the Jewish settlements in Gaza. Some pretty sensational stuff, people being dragged out of a synagogue, troops having to deal with having things thrown at them (some acid substance being one of them), and weeping settlers as they are forced to leave their home. I would admit it is a tough situation for these people, but it isn't nearly as bad as when they do the same thing to Palestinians they want to make move. The army is helping settlers move their furniture and belongings, which will eventually go to their new homes in Israel that the government is paying for. No bullets have been fired at them, and no bulldozers are ripping through their homes with people still inside.

But I digress. That's not my point today. I don't really want to wade into the lose/lose argument about Israel/Palestine on my blog. I'm not that crazy. Yet.

No, what really gets me is this settler family I saw on the news the other day. They were among the ones who didn't want to leave and they did a little story about them. First of all, guess where they moved to Gaza from? The United States. OK, so the U.S. might have it's fair share of idiot anti-semites, but I don't think that any argument could be made that anyone who migrates to Israel from the U.S. is escaping some sort of religious or ethnic oppression, nor was this family claiming that. No, they said the land rightfully belongs to them. And what is the basis of this claim? Some sort of old deed that shows it was once in their family? A genealogy line that shows their ancestors lived on this piece of sea-front property generations ago? No, their bible. Yep, the bible. According to this family, the bible says this is where David, or Abraham or some other prophet lived, like 5000 years ago. Ah yes, the old "bible says so" answer that religious people love to bring up. I think people need to be reminded of other things the bible, old testament and new, says.

Some guy named Moses, using some sort of magic stick, parted the waters of the Red Sea for his people to be able to walk across.

At some point, in Egypt, frogs rained from the sky.

God killed the first born of every non-Jewish household in Egypt.

Some guy named Noah, in a boat god told him to build, gathered up two of every single species on the planet and set sail for forty days and nights when that same god flooded the entire planet.

People turned to salt.

Some guy named Jesus, who was the son of god and born to a virgin mother, was killed and came back to life three days later.

That's just from the top of my head, I haven't read that boring book in a long time. Now, if you're someone who believes any of those stories are actually true you should stop reading now because I'm going to make fun of you.

Could we please stop the insanity with the stupid people who believe in ancient fairy-tales running the world? This goes for all of them, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, whatever. Every religion has their damn myths, we should stop creating public policy around them. I think someone saying they deserve a piece of land because the bible says so is just as stupid as the idiots who think suicide bombers are getting 40 virgins in heaven, as crazy as those people who committed mass suicide because that comet was going to take them away, and as fucked-up as people who believe the same shit Tom Cruise believes.

I can accept a lot of arguments why the Jews should be there, and there are legitimate arguments both for and against what is happening. But "the bible says so" is not one of them.

Every day people use the bible (or other holy book) as their reason for their bullshit. At it's best it makes people believe that killing is wrong (although why you need a book to tell you that is beyond me). At it's worst, which is a lot more often, it is used as a justification to treat women as second class citizens (or even property), persecute homosexuals, and kill 6 million Jews (the so-called "Christ killers"). And I just won't buy into that nonsense.


In other religious wacko news, last week the religious right held Justice Sunday II: The Wrath Of Khan. No wait, that was Star Trek II. I believe the undertitle of Justice Sunday II was The Wrath of the Racist Homophobic Evildoers. Thank god Tom Delay at least didn't bare his chest like Ricardo Montalban, that would've just been nasty. So anyway, they did their usual railing against "activist (liberal) judges" and how they, as Christians, are going to take over the country and blah blah blah....
My favorite was a guy that I only saw The Daily Show play a clip of, and I can't find reference to him anywhere else to find out what his name is. But one of the things he said was something like this: India is the most religious nation in the world, and Sweden is the most irreligious. So what we have in America is a nation of Indians ruled by a government of Swedes. Gotta love how this guy frames his analogies. I really wanted to be able to ask this guy a question. So religion if religion is supposed to make a society so much better, is he saying that if he was forced to pick another country to live in he would rather choose India over Sweden? I mean, I've never been to either country, but I'm willing to bet that, except for the cold weather, Sweden would be a much better place to live than India. I'd love to hear that guy's argument how India, as a deeply religious country, is better off than the secular Sweden.

Of course my favorite part of these idiots' ranting is how they always claim our Constitution and other laws come directly from the Ten Commandments. So let's have a little look and see how right they are about that. First, you have to get a copy of the Ten Commandments. But which one? After a little searching, you will discover that the commandments are different depending on which religion it comes from. Which is funny, considering they're supposed to come from the same bible. I decided to go with the Catholic version because it seems to have less words. The protestant and Hebrew versions seem to get very long winded. I found it weird that the religion known for hours-long Easter Masses would have the shortest, straight to the point version of Moses' list. So here we go:

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.
OK, this one is a non-starter. Not only is this not in the Constitution, the exact opposite is. You are free to worship any god you want, even L. Ron Hubbard.

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Well, I know it's not in the Constitution and I know of no place where you'll get arrested for saying goddammit, and it's even in movies all the time.

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.
Three letter: NFL

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.
Not ever really been sure what this means, so I don't think you could write any sort of comprehensible law for it.

5. Thou shalt not kill.
Well finally. Murder is, in fact, against the law in every state in the Union. I would take away partial credit though for the existence of the death penalty. There's no "except in cases of..." in any version of the Commandments.

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Pretty scummy thing to do, unless your spouse says it's OK, but not illegal. Although it does help raise the price of the a divorce settlement.

7. Thou shalt not steal.
Another one in common with our laws. We're up to two.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
I'll assume this means you can't lie under oath in court, so I'll give them this one. But really it could just mean you can't lie to your neighbor, which people do all the time and don't get arrested for it.

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.
If this were a law there would be a lot of middle-aged suburban men in jail. What I love about this one is that it leaves open the women coveting their neighbors' husbands.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.
Those same middle-aged guys would love to have their neighbors' cars and speed-boats as much as, if not more than, they lust after their neighbors' wives. And no one is in jail for it.

So how many is that? Three out of ten. So the document they claim is the biggest influence on the creation of our laws has only three items in common with our laws. And do you really think that if the Ten Commandments didn't exist murder and stealing would be legal? At best they've got the oath thing, and that's a shaky one to begin with. So as usual, they are just talking out of their asses over there at Focus on the Family. Despite all of their arguments to the contrary, The Ten Commandments had absolutely no bearing on the creation of the Constitution.

And that's the way it should be. Bad things happen when a religion runs a country. Just ask the women in Afghanistan.