The Antichristian Phenomenon

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Religious ideals about sexuality permeate our society to this very day. In the western society it is Christianity which has set our current norms. It may be apparent that things are different on the eastern and African front, where the Islamic religion prevails, but I’ll remain culturally local and only try to shake our own foundations. Normality as we know it is culturally founded on our Christian history, which is a clear invitation to critical inspection. To what extent has Christian doctrine influenced our ideas and perceptions regarding sexuality. Should we accept these, or is it time for a new paradigm?

I think I should start off with sexual education early at school. This is where everybody should come into contact with sexuality for the first time. Unfortunately, sex education is not compulsory in all schools, or even present at all in some countries. This is a shame because I think everybody should be taught some basics about sex and contraception. The worst case scenario is seen in the US, where so-called “abstinence-only sex education” prevails. To me that sounds a lot like a “bookless book club”. The whole idea is a farce and filled with propaganda against contraception. It is this kind of anti-knowledge that frustrates me the most. This is important stuff that shouldn’t be brushed behind the curtain, like it’s something to be ashamed of. Bring out the condoms and dildos already!

And while we’re still talking about teenagers, it’s time we remove the taboo of masturbation. Anyone who says he or she doesn’t do it is a liar, especially if they are in their teenage years. So what has made this topic indiscussable? People are evolutionary wired to like sex, so what is so damn wrong with simulating it? This has close ties with the taboo on pornography, the helping hand for masturbation. The social stigma on this genre is counterproductive in teaching the new generation about sex. Your teachers at school will not be giving examples in sexual education as portrayed in Monty Python’s Meaning of life, but I see absolutely no problem in displaying a pornographic film as part of this education. It’s only the activity that has produced everyone.

The abstinence-only generation is a generation that is geared towards pre-marital chastity simply because they know no different. It’s fine that somebody would choose for this for whatever reasons, but I simply detest the demonisation of sex before - what I perceive as - the empty gesture of marriage. Chastity has made it into the list of virtues, while lust has made it into the list of sins. What’s wrong with liking things that feel good, and what’s so good about not acting upon them? Excepting personal preference, I am truly in the dark about this. In this modern day and age, where we can prevent babies from spawning after having a lovely time with somebody you like, should it matter whether you’re married or not? I can understand the complications of getting a baby if you haven’t settled down with somebody because you are just fooling and experimenting around, but those scenarios are easily preventable nowadays.

So, on to marriage itself! As you’ve noticed, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. It’s a strange ritual, but I’ll not get into the technicalities of it. The fact remains that marriage is in many countries still a privilege, not a right, for heterosexual couples. I think it is quite fine that a religious institution has rules as to who can marry who, but a government should wake up to the twentyfirst century and realise that there are gay couples out there. There is absolutely no reason to reserve an official, recognised bonding to two people if and only if they are of different sex. There is no such thing as the “traditional family” of a husband, wife and kids. Historically, this kind of family is quite young. Marriage in historical terms was usually a man, a wife (usually arranged by parents) and then some additional lovers for the man: a polygyny. This is the kind of thing you would find in, oh let’s see, the Old Testament. Take that, you bible-pushing asshats! The modern marriage is a fresh concoction, a new paradigm that shifts from securing family wealth to romantic love male-female monogamy. And I’m not only for breaking the opposite sex restriction, I’m also in favour of the two people restriction. Why is it not allowed for more people to join in marriage? If there is a group of censenting adults who wish to share life together, why are they restricted from doing so? What is the sin of polyamory?

There is none, and it is time to break these taboos. We must reconsider the foundations of society in a new, rational perspective. We must be wary not to accept anything just because it is historically or culturally “simply so”. It is time to critically examine every direct and indirect restriction that pesters modern day life and depraves us or our fellow human beings of freedoms they may not have even imagined of having. We must open these closed doors to knowledge and true freedom.

Like many others, the ACP has recently joined scoutle in order to test it’s promise. At the moment the Atheosphere is embracing the service which is cool. The Atheists Network from 1 person jumped to 20

Recently I’ve been checking the Antichristian Scout and I noticed that scoutle has ranked us as deserved.

Muahahahahaaaa!

The only thing missing is to somehow lock us at this number >:D

Silliness aside, I’m quite glad at how this thing is progressing. This kind of automation will certainly allow uis to discover the sites that are interedting to each other without even trying. I’ve already discovered at least 5 blogs that I’ve never even seen.

Supposedly you want to promote something, a new ideology, and you want people to follow it for you to become powerfull. What do you tell them ? You camouflage this quest for personal good into something “universally good”. You make sure people don’t find out the real aspects and don’t get a glimpse of the complete picture, you offer them only fragments of what you wish to promote, like when doing a comercial for a movie and showing only scenes with a lot of action or explosions, when the overall movie is so bad that you fall asleep after just five minutes of it. You rely on mass ignorance in order to promote it. Ignorance leads to blind following, the second weapon.

However, ignorance and blind following  alone are not enough. There would still be a lot of people who would find it totally unnecessary to adhere to what you’re promoting, or would simply feel that your ideals are not good enough for them. That’s when you introduce the number one weapon of all- FEAR.

In the case of religion, fear is most perversely used than in any other domain. If an oppressive government threatens you with the police, you still have a few options open to escape and you know for sure what you are dealing with. But in the case of heaven and hell you don’t know what you are facing. To believe in these two concepts means to adhere to the first step of being hopelessly enslaved, from the mental point of view.

To believe with strength that a god who is supposed to be good and tolerant will, however, send you to eternal punishment for not following him is something that will make your existence miserable. Each time you do something considered by the bible as “sinful” you will start having remorse, you will start regreting, you will start feeling the need to “confess” your sins to the Lord.

This is where the church (aka consultant and mediator in divine problems) comes along. You will go to the church, you will kneel before the priest, you will drink a drop of wine from a little spoon, you will kiss the cross, and you will stand in the middle of the church, head down, eyes closed, feeling of humility greatly impregnated in your mind, and you will beg the Lord, your God for forgivness.

In other words, you will adhere to a masqeurade, 2000 years old. There is something quite incredible when you see an educated, intelligent person, kissing the cross, kneeling before a wodden figure and talking to himself. As strange as it may be, the majority of  globe adheres to such ritual, no matter if it is called Christianity, Islamism, or whatever other religion.

Still, why would people, even intelligent ones sometimes, rather believe some words written about 3000 years ago about a god creating the whole world in seven days, the light before the sun, the plants before the sun, and other such absurd things, rather than studying and, at least, partially accepting more elaborate theories, such as Darwin’s ? While i don’t consider the scientific theories as holding the absolute truth and I admit they are incomplete, they are still more plausible than any creationist theory existent. So why do people would rather believe them? There is only one answer: Fear of hell!

Since christianity is usually taught at a young age, the image of eternal suffering impregnates very well within the mind of a child and has a very high chance of remaining there for the rest of one’s life. Christian teachings are centered on the concept of hell and eternal punishment. I can remember when i was 2nd grade and attending religion in school (which was, and still is today, compulsory), I can remember how the teacher always spoke and threatened us with how we’ll be tormented forever if we fail to follow and do the biddings of Christ. When she quoted the bible, she always gave examples such as the story of Lasarus, or various other quotations from Christ, speaking about eternal punishment. I can remember we were all quite scared when hearing such things. No one had the courage to even ask a question about Christ’s doctrine. I also remember seeing a priest in church talking about punishment in hell. He was a very good speaker and the crowd was very impressed and shaken by his words. I also attended various services in church, such as wedding, baptisings and funerals, and i can say (at least that’s how it is in orthodoxy) that there isn’t a single such ritual that doesn’t contain at least one refference to hell, punishment, and what will happen to the non-believers. Also, try reading the gosspel of Matthew and count the number of times Jesus repeats the words “weeping and gnashing of teeth”- as a refference to hell.

Indeed, the prospect of eternal punishment must be repeated as many times as possible, because without it no one would care about Jesus and christianity. It is the very foundation of this belief. That’s why people find it easier to question any scientific theory, but not the “holy book”. Because Darwin, for example, did not threaten with eternal punishment those who questioned his theory.

Christianity does, and even asking questions about it will send you to hell. Which brings us to the second tool of religion- ignorance.
Only blind following is acceptable in the eyes of god. Studying, asking questions, searching for answer is heresy, and is punishable by eternity in hell. We will find out that many of those who call themselves “christians”, believe in Jesus and even go to the church, did not read one word from the bible which is supposed to be the book that holds the ideology which represents them.

The words “believe, don’t search” are quite often used by these people when talking about religion, words also taught in churches and during religion classes. These three words represent the most disgusting example of ignorance. And it is this kind of ignorance that kept the church on such an important position these 2000 years.

There was a period in the middle ages when you risked being burned on the stake even for holding a bible in your house. The same period when, in church, the priests held the divine service in latin, a language known in those times by a few priviliged who had the chance to an education- that is the agents of the church. Blind following is the key through which the church became the most profitable bussiness in human history. That’s why theologists want the rest of the people to remain totally ignorant. Why read the bible? As long as you believe in god you’ll go to heaven anyway. Just do what we tell you to and you’ll be fine. Almost all the people i know (myself included), after reading the bible rejected faith as complete nonsense. With the new information we posses, there are clearly a lot more chances to become an atheist after reading the bible, than become a christian. That’s why blind following and ignorance, along with fear, are vital to keep religion, and the Church Inc. going.

However, i do believe that their numbers are decreasing with every passing year and it is becoming very hard to keep people ignorant. Fear still remains the most efficient tool that keeps them going in this struggle for survival. However, like all religions, the abrahamic ones will fade with time. It is inevitable.

So, what is the actual Holy Trinity? God, Son and Holy Ghost ? No way ! Fear sits where god’s throne is supposed to be. Blind following was sent to us to help us avoid the punishment that fear is preaching. This is the true Son. And instead of the Holy Ghost we have Ignorance. I can hear it preaching to us every now and then. Whispering words such as “believe, don’t search”.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his “Thus spoke Zarathustra” that “God is dead! And we have killed him!”. While I admire very much Nietzsche’s philosophy, I think we should dig even further into this matter. We never put a finger on God, our hands are clean! God committed suicide ! He’s dead, by his hand!

I won’t bother with the Old Testament, when he was just a tribal god, similar to so many others, and “inspired” by the other gods “who didn’t exist”. Let the Jews worry about that. I’m talking about when he was “promoted” to a universal god, for all human beings. Suddenly he changed his old ways and decided to use other methods. He appeared to us in the form of a bastard son and made his new rules heard. Now the whole human race became his “chosen ones” and bloodshed , mass exterminations and crushing the infidels were no longer required. Suddenly he spoke of love, peace and tolerance between people.

Jesus (as he is portrayed in the Bible) appears as a peaceful, passive being, devoid of any pride or ego. He asks us to love our neighbour, to love our fellow humans how we love ourselves and to grant permanent forgiveness to those who hate, hurt or do us wrong, no matter how much wrong. We always have to forgive and never resist when we are attacked, insulted or beaten.
Also, the rules about chastity are even more tightened. Now, not only sex before marriage or cheating on your partner is sinful, but even looking at someone of the opposite sex and secretly desiring him/her will be treated as a deadly sin. The same will be said about verbally insulting someone and calling them “fools”. This is God’s new ideology that we must follow in order to achieve eternal happiness. This ideology brought by Jesus is more than just an ideology. This is what God represents. This is God.

But then we see how God inflicts wounds on himself when, just chapters after he told us not to call people “fools” he does so himself. He goes even further when he attacks the merchants selling things in the temples. His passivity and friendly attitude suddenly changes, and doing so he put another nail in his own coffin. If Jesus was the wisest man alive, why didn’t he use his infinite wisdom in order to peacefully convince the limited minded merchants to leave the temple ?
Tolerance is abandoned again when he calls those who do not listen to his teachings “vipers and vermin “. Where has “love thy neighbour” gone? Surely no one speaks this way to his neighbour when he loves him, right ? Even when he does something wrong. But Jesus seals his fate, as God, when he calls for eternal punishment in hell for the infidels, who do not follow him. Rightful and goodhearted actions are deemed nothing without faith in Christ. Without this faith, we all go to hell. This is the moment God renders his ideology obsolete. This is when God committed suicide. He is the one who asks for unlimited forgiveness, but he is also the one that offers unlimited punishment for limited sins done during a pathetic lifetime of few years that don’t even matter in the whole context of history.
It is obvious that God cannot follow his own rules. His words are contradicted either by other words or by his actions. If one who does not follow these rules deserves eternal death and God himself cannot follow them, he sentences himself to death: He commits suicide. We are innocent. As such, his ideology is rendered pointless and useless to us.

But even after his suicide, God still has followers. They call themselves “Christians”. but what is a Christian ? Nietzsche wrote in “The Antichrist” that the only Christian in human history died on the cross. Again, I go even further and say there was never such thing as Christian, since no one ever followed the rules required by the suicidal god to achieve this title. If we go on the streets and ask 1000 people the question “what is a Christian and what does it take to be one?”, it is guaranteed that we will get exactly 1000 definitions. The truth is that after God committed suicide, the people performed an autopsy on him and dissected him, each taking a part, the one that suits him/her best. We will find out that some don’t consider sex before marriage or sexual lust a sin at all. When we bring to them the lines quoted above, they either say that they are not important or they are just a figure of speech. To some, who consider themselves fundamentalists, they don’t find anything wrong in rejecting atheists and people who don’t believe what they believe. Or, why don’t we try hitting one of these Christians in the face. Will they be real Christians and turn the other cheek, while, perhaps trying to talk to us rationally, or will they do like a “mere human” would and hit back?

Also, who actually believes in this shallow, senseless emotion called “love for everybody”? Do you really think someone actually experiences this “love” for everyone in the world ? No! Some of them might have the guts to say something like this. But they are just words. They couldn’t care less if 2 blocks away there was a car accident and some people died. But what about loving Christ more than your wife/girlfriend/mother/father etcetera? Does anyone even think of Christ when they are with someone they love? Christian teachings are very incompatible with human personality, that’s why no one can follow them. Like I said, the only thing Christians can do is take God apart and reassemble him in the way they choose.

Let’s face it, for every “Christian” there is a Jesus who fits their own interests and interpretation. There are orthodox Christians, catholic Christians, protestant Christians, Jehova’s Witness Christians, and another million kinds of Christians, but no actual Christian. There never has been.

I know everyone embeds xkcd all the time but I just couldn’t resist doing it this time

In the previous installment of this series I ended at the destruction of Sodom. The rest of Genesis contains some stories about the descendants of Abraham down to Jacob, father of twelve sons who would later become the fathers of the twelve Israeli tribes living in Egypt that would later find themselves enslaved: Prepair for the book of Exodus.

However, before we enter Moses, I’d like to write out some general conclusions I have made from reading Genesis. These mainly concern the biblical god (”God”). Although Christians often portray him as an altruist, the god I’ve read about is definitely not. He appoints Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as his servants and demands they act like it if they want the Lord to help them. We’ll see the same kind of egoism in Exodus, but that’s for later. The thing I was annoyed with the most in Genesis is that right in the first book it is made clear that one is not to question the Lord. The stories of the Flood and Abraham almost sacrificing his son illustrate this very well. Noach and Abraham never stop to think about the motives of this authority figure. Questioning authority is a cornerstone in skeptical freethinking. I will also note that God will make damn sure that he gets his fix of destruction while still upholding a forgiving and good-willed façade. God: “I will not utterly destroy a city if just ONE of its inhabitants is innocent of crimes I will not disclose! … Quick, Job, get out so I can destroy the city!”

Enter Moses
I’m sure you’ve heard the story. The pharao has commanded all first-borns to be killed, but Moses’ mother hides her baby in a basket along the bank of the Nile. The pharao’s daughter takes little Moses in and so he is able to grow up. After killing an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew he flees to Midian where he is taken in by Reuel/Jethro and is given Zipporah, one of Jethro’s daughters, as his wife. Some time passes before god has satisfied his sadistic needs and decided it’s time to free “his people” - meaning those unlucky enough to have born in one of the Israeli tribes, having to undergo genital mutilation after birth - and Moses is appointed his side-kick. Moses fears he lacks charismatic skills and God agrees and commends Aaron to join his brother Moses. Moses, his wife Zipporah and his children travel to Egypt. Along the way, the famous foreskin incident takes place, in which Moses is saved from God’s wrath by his son’s foreskin.

Exodus 4:24-26
At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met {Moses} and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched {Moses’} feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. So the LORD let him alone.

Magic and God’s sick hunger for death
Instead of sitting down and talking like adults, Moses and Aaron are sent by God to show off some magic in the hopes of impressing the pharaoh. It becomes clear freeing the Israeli slaves is not the main objective for God: He simply feel likes showing of his mad skillz (Exodus 6:3-4). And so the show begins. God starts off with his weak staff-into-snake routine the pharaoh’s sorcerers (yes, that’s what it says!) are able to replicate. The water-into-blood routine was likewise equalled by the pharaoh’s magicians. The same happens for the plague of frogs. Finally God brought something new into his act, and transformed the dust into gnats through his proxies Moses and Aaron. Still, the pharaoh didn’t let the Israeli people go. Flies ensued and boils that plagued men and cattle alike. The pharaoh began to understand he was no match for God, but God made sure he could continue his sadistic act until the very end by preventing the pharaoh let the people go (Exodus 9:12).

And so God enjoyed himself greatly, raining hail down on Egypt. “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.” God says in Exodus 10:1-2. The heavenly maniac hasn’t performed his biggest act yet, and among the locusts and darkness he makes sure the pharaoh doesn’t spoil it (Exodus 10:20, 10:27, 11:10). Having made sure it would get this far, God now feels it is time to bring out the fireworks, and kills off all the innocent people who happened to have been the first to leave the womb. God breaks his spell of the pharaoh’s mind and the Israelites are free to go.

God had one more trick up his sleeve, however. By making sure the pharaoh decides to hunt after the Israelites (Exodus 14:4), he can perform one more miracle for the world - a last violent encore to add to the slaughter already committed. He made sure the Israelites didn’t choose the shortest path to the promised land; hell, there wouldn’t be a sea to split along that way! And so, even after the Egyptian slaughter, god’s hunger for death was finally stilled when he drowned the Egyptians after making sure the Israelites were able to traverse the Red Sea.

And returning to my opening paragraph, Exodus accounts again for the fact that God is not altruist at all. As if the gratification of his hunger wasn’t enough, the price for freeing the Hebrew slaves from Egypt was high: God demanded all the firstborn male that would see the light of life thereafter, men and cattle alike, to be his property. This means sacrifice, people. But not to worry, God will make sure you’re kids are fine - for the right price, tha tis. “Redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem every firstborn among your sons.” (Exodus 13:13)

Next up in Reading the Bible Part 3: Commandments and laws

Stephen Law has thoroughly pwned the little ignorant theist who was certain he’d proven that god exists. Only he was doing it using circular logic and unargued premises.

I was a bit surprised that this site even existed anymore, as anyone with even a passing familiarity of philosophy or logical arguments can punch holes through the kind of logic employed there. Indeed, the Antichristians took much pleasure in skewering the silly arguments presented therein more than one year ago when it fell to our attention.

Unfortunately back then, Sye (AKA Canuckfish) did not stick around to argue his point, although we’d have certainly been less challenging than a professional philosopher like Stephen.

Nevertheless, reading the discussion was…cute. Like watching a 12-year-old trying to play chess against Kasparov. You can’t help but cringe at the bad moves and laugh when the former insists that “moving the rook diagonally is correct”.

Anyway, head over. Have a laugh. Nothing else is going to change anyway since the theist in question seems incapable of comprehension, no matter how excplicitly he’s been proven incorrect.

Perhaps later on Stephen might wish to take on the Crossexamined blokes who seem to employ similar arguments (Logic cannot exist without God). They’re still pathetic in argumentation but there’s more, lets say, “fish to shoot in the barrel”

Heya! Blue Linchpin here. This isn’t so much an essay as letting you all know about something, and a call to action.

Google recently created Google Knols, an alternative to Wikipedia which will likely soon eclipse it, as Google Knols has the advantage of being created by the most widely used search engine. Already there are a great amount of wonderful articles, ranging from what do to when your bowels erupt (seriously!) to medical information on anorexia and cancer, to incoherent rants by religious fanatics. For the most part, its articles are almost all medical or religous, a strange mix.

And it’s that last type of “knol” that really gets me. Here we are, being presented by a great tool in beta that gives anyone and everyone a voice while allowing for ratings of articles so the crap can get filtered out. Depending on your preference, Wikipedia might be better, Knols might be better, or both might be pathetic. But it’s obvious that Google Knols will become widely used in the future, as it is a wonderful tool. The problem is that it is already being used for religious propaganda presented as articles. For example, there is one Knol user, a Christian church, who has been publishing articles via Knol disguised as helpful information about childcare, parenting, marriage, couples advice, as well as more obvious hatefilled bullshit. Some of these articles start out with stories or good advice, then down the line start babbling on about God. (As a side note, there’s a ridiculously idiotic writer on Knols who’s claiming some pretty silly stuff, like an article about liberals that has basically all the information about conservatives, only ‘conservative’ is replaced by ‘liberal’…d’oh!)

While most articles are written by conservative Christians and are simply rants against liberals, abortion, atheists, etc, Google users have been fighting back a little by denouncing these, but they aren’t being removed and no one (besides your favorite person, me!) has been fighting back by writing articles of their own, voting, or reviewing the propaganda.

So if you’re bored or interested, please head over and help out. Google Knols will certainly be getting a lot of viewing and coverage in the future, and possibly become the new Wikipedia: so it’s important not to let ranting, fanatical Christians take over a source of knowledge.

P.S., my profile on Knols is here, you can find the articles I’ve written or am working on there, as well as horrible articles I’ve reviewed. I could use some help!

Love, Blue. <3

So here it is: The first part to my reading quest. In this article I will comment on Genesis chapters 1-19. All chapters from 11-50 deal with the familiy history of Adam’s direct descendants. Some of these are important characters in biblical mythology, such as Noach and Abraham. Others seem not so much important, and it’s certainly possible that I will jump to the book of Exodus in the next edition of “Reading the Bible”, as the later chapters (for as far as I have read) do not have much interesting to add.

The first chapters of Genesis deal with well-known biblical stories: The creation, the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, Noach’s Ark and the flood, Abraham’s deal with God and the destruction of Sodom.

Creation
It was interesting to read the creation story, because it illustrates the pritimive knowledge (or rather: ideas) of the universe the ancient people, among who was the author of Genesis, had. The sky, “heaven”, is portrayed as a half sphere that is placed on top of the earth and which divides the waters of our planet and the waters above the heavens - yes indeed, apparently there is water in space, not a vacuum. In the half sphere that is heaven, God puts up some lamps and among them one big one to rule the day, and a smaller one to rule the night. Not only shows this that the nature of stars wasn’t undestood, but also that there wasn’t a clear distinction between stars and moons. After God has some plants and trees pop up, he creates the animals. In Biblical taxonomy, the main categories are: Birds, fish, wild animals, livestock and creatures that crawl. After all that, God creates man and woman.

In the second book of Genesis, man seems to be created before all flora, and definitely before the wild anmimals and birds. However, I’m not going into every contradiction because I’d never get through the Bible before I turn thirty. I just want to say that I think the accusation that the two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are contradictory is justified.

Eden
Skipping ahead a bit, we’ll get our first share of talking animals: a snake, who seduces Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. This actually constitutes the first big issue I have with christianity: the negative attitude to knowledge. Incarnations of this meme can be found throughout history, from Galileo Galilei to the modern day creationism crap. God would rather have wanted us to stay ignorant of the world, imprisoned in a garden. Eating from the tree of knowledge constitutes the aspiration to becoming gods - and that’s wrong for some reason. Personally, I encourage this aspiration. When a scientists who was working on genetic manipulation for protein development was asked whether he was playing for god, he answered: “I’m not playing” and it is such an attitude that deserves respect. I can’t wait to go post-human.

In any case, God wasn’t amused and felt threatened. To ensure his totalitarian reign, he punished women by making sure childbirth isn’t fun, and that the men will reign over them. He punished men by making sure they’d have to work hard to stay alive. He ban-kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden, and placed Cherubs with flaming swords (cool!) in East Eden to protect the way to the tree of life; making people wouldn’t live forever.

Noach and the flood
People didn’t live forever, that’s for sure, but I’d say 900 years is pretty close considering our current life expectancy. While the descendants of Adam and Eve were populating the earth and fucking like rabbits, God got more and more pissed off. He decreed that people shouldn’t live more than 120 years. God became sorry that he created humankind, because to him all of them were “bad” for reasons unknown. Luckily, he came up with a solution: Fucking kill them all, and with them all the animals: divine global genocide. God liked Noach though, and commanded him to build a boat too small considering its purpose. He told Noach to bring on board one pair of each animal seven pairs of clean animal and one pair of unclean animals and seven pairs of each kind of bird and NOach agreed and brought on board one pair of each animal seven pairs of clean animals and birds and one pair of unclean animals one pair of each animal. And so, after the flood, Noach and his family and the animals on the earth began the task of repopulating the earth.

Abraham’s deal with God
Following the line of first sons from Noach to Abra(ha)m, who is a strange character. He leads an army and kills off the army that sacked Sodom. When the king of Sodom wants to give Abram a reward, he suddenly turns holy and swears by the lord that he will not take anything, because it isn’t his to take - forgetting the lives of those soldiers he killed a moment ago. God, however, is impressed by Abram and appears to him in a vision and tells him he will bless him. Abram sacrifices some nice cattle too God, who loves dead cattle (Ask Cain!). After the birth of Abram’s first son Ismael, God appears to Abram again and asks him to become his little bitch. First of all, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham. God says he will bless Abraham’s descendants with kingship and furthermore offers Abraham and his descendants a big land. In return, God asks Abraham to cut off the end of his and his descendants penis. In this way, God will have a way to recognize who his has to bless, and who his has to curse. Abraham agreed, and showed great courage but sawing off the end of his penis when he was already 99 years old. He mutilated his extramarital son’s genitals that same day, too.

The destruction of Sodom
God tells Abraham of a serious accusation against Sodom. There is never any mentioning of a jury or judge to either confirm or reject this accusation, because God takes matters in his own hands. He tells that he will destroy Sodom and everybody in it. Abraham asks if God would destroy Sodom even if there was one person innocent in the whole city, and God tells Abraham he would leave the city alone if this would be so. Luckily for the people living in Sodom, Abrahams nephew Lot lives in Sodom, and he is quite innocent indeed. You’d guess there’s no need to worry for the city and its inhabitants because of God’s promise. However, God has a trick up his sleeve. He can’t wait to commit another genocide, and sends two angels to Lot. These angels get Lot out of the city, making way for the sickly murderous God to rain fire and sulphur down on the city.

Other general remarks
One thing that I thought was remarkable was the consequent mentioning of animal (and almost human) sacrifice to God. It shows the connection of OT Christianity with other ancient religion in which such sacrifices were the norm - of course, current day Christianity would rather forget this tradition while still hoping they can get away with calling the Bible timeless. Women’s rights are also non-existant. Men used to marry multiple women - even Abraham slept around with his wife’s slave to produce a receptacle for Abraham’s offspring - he’ll be damned to give it to his wife! Another interesting instance of cruelty against women is when the angels enter Lot’s home. The people of Sodom demand Lot to bring the strangers that entered his home, but he offers his virgin daughters instead, saying the Sodomites can do with them whatever they want.

In the coming months, I will be publishing articles that are the direct consequence of my confrontation with the Christian Holy Hardcover I have purchased. I have been playing with the idea for a while and I’ve presented the idea to the ACP community over at last.fm. Yesterday I received that number one best-seller of all times, and I’ll be keeping you up to date with my thoughts about its actual content.

The Art of War
My foremost reason for reading the bible is simply because I am interested about the actual, integral contents of this most famous book. I have been reading some mythology literature as of late, and the Bible adds well to that list. As an opponent of religious doctrine in general and Christianity in particular and remembering Sun Tzu I feel obliged to study its roots.

I will be reading the bible critically, as any book that is considered to hold truth should. However, I will make distinctions (and analyse differently accordingly) between parts presented as matter-of-fact (such as Genesis) and symbolically laden parts (such as Jesus’ parables). I will try to form an image “from the Bible up” of important Biblical characters such as God and Jesus - letting go of previous conceptions.

I will write articles whenever I feel I have enough to talk about. Therefore, I will not guarantee articles to be spaced evenly over time. Any other questions or recommendations are welcome and can be posted in the comment section.