13/08/2002 - Entry #22
Ho hum.
So it's been a while since I properly updated, and now I dunno where to start. There's been a plethora of things I wanted to mention, and yet they don't all really fit together now. It seems wrong to do one entry detailing them all, so I have to try and pick which to mention, and which to leave out. Hmm. I guess I'll just play it by ear.
I had another dream last night, incidentally. It was even more bizarre than the last one. The basic gist of it was that my semi-friend (more of an acquaintance really), Dave, was trying to kill me. Not an especially out of the ordinary dream, oddly enough. What was odd was that I wasn't me, I was Peter Jackson, and Dave wasn't Dave, he was Hermann Goerring. He spent most of the dream trying to track me down so that he could stop me from ever releasing part 2 of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, by stabbing me in the back with a piece of broken glass. We both had pieces, though, and whilst his was vaguely square, mine was jagged and triangular. When he finally found me, and brandished his piece of glass, I wielded my own in self-defence. Upon seeing my superior, jagged piece of glass, he panicked and flung his square piece at me, before mincing off in an incredibly effeminate manner.
So a couple of days ago I had an argument regarding the Bible. I ended up searching through pages and pages of the damn thing, trying to find something that might win or lose the argument for me. Trouble is, I kept getting sidetracked by absolutely ridiculous passages that had me in stitches. The whole thing was so entertaining, that I've decided to list as many as I can find again, here.
Since most of you probably don't have access to a Bible, I'll be utilising the aid of the excellent Bible Gateway. There you can search for the chapter and verse, in most versions of the Bible. I was using the King James version, naturally, but I might link to whichever one gives the best description. Anyway, I know you're not meant to take the Bible 100% literally, and most of it can be sorted out by some rationalisations and so on, but that's not the point. There ARE fundamentalists and literalists out there, and that's basically who I'm mocking. The Bible's an awful lot of fun, if you do take it literally, and doing so just further undermines true zealots. See for yourself:
We'll start at the beginning. Genesis 1:12-16. Apparently plants grew before there was actually a sun. I guess between now and then, God has rewritten biology and invented photosynthesis. Probably forgot, in that busy week he had.
Genesis 1:29. God gave us every seed-bearing plant on Earth, and told us to use them all for food. Sweet! Thanks, God! I'll just be in the corner, munching on nightshade, hemlock, mistletoe and buckeye pod. Maybe garnish it all with a little oleander! Mmm, yummy.
Genesis 3:14-16. This is the part where God curses Adam and Eve, and the serpent, for disobeying him. Y'know, despite him being omniscient. And, like, knowing that it would happen. By definition of being God himself. What's the point in testing someone if you know fully well, ahead of time, that they'll fail? Idiot.
Genesis 4:15. God doesn't want anyone to kill Cain, and so puts an identifying mark on him to distinguish him from others. Sensible, really. Except...wait, there were only three people alive at the time. Three people on the entire face of the Earth, and he has to mark one of them so nobody gets confused? Clearly doesn't have much faith in us, does he?
Genesis 4:17. Cain builds and populates an entire city in two generations. I do NOT want to think about it.
Genesis 6:15. "This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high." Hmm. 450 feet long, 75 feet wide. Somewhere between 2 million and 5 million species to be taken aboard. So slightly less than 0.75 cubic feet per animal, then. Intriguing.
Genesis 8:20. After saving 2 of every animal from the flood, Noah's very first action is to.....sacrifice 1 of every animal to God. Er...hmm.
Genesis 9:12. God finally gets round to creating a rainbow. Presumably he was as lazy inventing the refraction of light as he was with photosynthesis. Cuh!
Genesis 30:36-43. Possibly my favourite passage from the whole Bible. In an effort to con Laban and end up with all the best cows, Jacob manages to successfully alter the genetic characteristics of cattle by showing them a striped stick while they're mating. Apparently a cow's offspring will resemble whatever it was looking at during procreation. Genius! Why weren't we informed? There's an entire market of novelty shaped cows to be had!
Genesis 32:24-30. God gets jiggy with Jacob, and they do some wrestling on a hill. God is losing, cos he's feeble and weak, so he breaks Jacob's hip with the power of his mind. Talk about a sore loser. I mean, really. It's just not playing fair.
Exodus 4:24. God meets Moses outside a pub and tries to kill him. Things could have been so different.
Exodus 12:30. So God does his big nasty plague, and kills every first-born child in Egypt. Fair enough. But are we really meant to believe that there wasn't a single house that didn't suffer a death? Egypt wasn't big on childless families then, huh? Infertility rates at an all-time low? Excellent adoption services? Bizarre.
Numbers 1:45-46. 600,000 men of military age take part in the Exodus. Factoring in women, children and the elderly, that means there were probably a total of 2,000,000 or so Israelites, at a time when the total population of Egypt was significantly less than 2,000,000. Quite an impressive feat.
Exodus 17:14. Another favourite of mine. God vows to utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven......whilst writing it down on paper.....and spreading the word. But hey, it worked, because now Amalek is permanently remembered in the Bible. Wait, what does "blot out" mean? It means REMOVE? Oh. Oh dear.
Exodus 28:34-35. WARNING: Failure to wear golden bells and pomegranates upon entering the Holy Land will result in death!
Leviticus 11:20-21. Ah, good old Leviticus. Probably the most embarrassing of all the priests, and most stupid of idiots ever to write in the Bible. He offers us the pearl of wisdom that any insects with 4 legs are evil, but any birds with 4 legs are fine. Uh huh. Sorry Lev, old friend, but all insects have six legs, and there are no quadrapedal birds. Unless you're about to rip legs off insects and glue them onto birds, that is. You fucking lunatic.
Leviticus 14:33-57. God himself shows an acute sense of biology, explaining how easy it is for your house and your clothes to contract leprosy.
Numbers 11:31-33. God makes some wind blow quail (a game bird) in from the sea (??) in great numbers. Nobody can move for quail. The people went out and gathered quail, each collecting at least 60 bushels. That's 2.2 tonnes each. I'm not sure, but I doubt I could eat 2.2 tonnes of quail. I'm willing to try though. Unfortunately for our Biblical friends, after delivering several thousand tonnes of quail to them, God immediately decided to send them a plague which destroyed all their food as they ate it. The Lord works in mysterious ways indeed.
Deuteronomy 1:1. Moses speaks to all of Israel, in the desert. We've already worked out that "all of Israel" is in excess of 2 million people, so all in all, Moses is a pretty damn good public speaker. Or at least an exceptionally loud one.
Deuteronomy 2:14. Speaking of those 600,000 men of age 20 and above, it turns out they were all dead 38 years after leaving Egypt. Every last one of them. Talk about bad luck.
Deuteronomy 25:5-9. The brother of a dead husband has an obligation to marry and impregnate his deceased sibling's widow. If he refuses to do so, the widow will spit in his face before the village elders and then proceed to steal his shoes.
Judges 20:16. Quite an army, that has 700 left-handed men who can sling a stone at a hair and not miss.
Kings 3:12-28. Okay, one of the most famous little parables from the Bible, regarding the dispute over who is the rightful mother of a baby. King Solomon, the wisest man who has ever walked the face of the planet, can think of no better way than to threaten to chop the baby in half? I understand the motive and the cunning ruse, but I can't help but wonder how much differently the story would be remembered if the natural mother had suffered from mental derangement and mild psychosis, as presumably the fake mother did since she had no objections to receiving half a baby.
Kings 10:24. Not wanting to let Moses outdo him with a trifling 2 million people, Solomon decides to give counsil to the entire population of the world. all at once. And in a temple no bigger than 90 feet long and 30 feet wide at that.
Kings 18:33-38. Fire burns wet wood, stones, soil and dust, and also manages to "lick up" water. Remarkable.
Kings 6:5-7. A solid iron axe-head floats in water. Is anyone else getting really fucked off with God and his loose cannon take on physics, here?
Kings 16:2 and Kings 18:1-2. Ahaz becomes King of Israel when he's 20 years old. He reigns for 16 years before dying, making him 36 years old when his son, Hezekiah, succeeds him. Hezekiah was 25 at the time. This, clearly, means Ahaz was a 10 or 11 year old father. And people say morals are declining.
Chronicles 7:5. Solomon sacrifices 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in one week. That's a rather impressive 845+ animals per hour, 14+ animals per minute, for 7 days straight. And people say the foot and mouth thing was bad.
Psalms 58:8. Slugs apparently melt as they move. So THAT'S what the slimey stuff is. It's melted slug! It all makes sense now.
Psalms 121:6. Apparently it's possible to get moonstroke, as well as sunstroke.
Isaiah 24:1. God turns the world upside down, and scatters its inhabitants. Hmm.
Isaiah 11:12 and Isaiah 40:22. The Earth has 4 corners, whilst also being a circle. But not a sphere. Don't be absurd.
Matthew 18:19. Ding ding ding! Major loophole on Christian theology! If any two people agree on something and ask it of God, it will be granted. Since the novelty shaped cows are already taken care of, that only leaves Lisa Snowdon to be wished for. All I need is for one of you to think that I genuinely deserve her, and we're all set! In return, I'll strive to agree with whatever you want, and then we'll ask God for them both together. Deal?
Mark 11:12-21. Jesus gets a bit peckish and visits a fig-tree. Sadly, it isn't fig season, so the tree has no fruit. Despite being the son of God and therefore omnipotent, Jesus gets mighty pissed off at nature in general and curses the fig tree for all eternity. What, like he can turn water into wine and feed five thousand people, but he can't stand to see a fig tree OBEYING THE LAWS OF NATURE? Why curse the tree when you can just cause it to bear fruit regardless of seasons? Don't be so grumpy, Jesus!
Luke 22:28-30. Jesus grants each of his disciples, including Judas, a throne in the kingdom of heaven. That's very forgiving, I must say.
John 6:24-30. Hahaha. Immediately after he fed the Multitude with nothing but a loaf of bread and a fish, the crowd of five thousand people ask Jesus for a sign that they might see and believe. Clearly they weren't satisfied with his turning water into wine, and cloning food with the power of thought alone. It's a kind of biblical "but what have you done for me lately?", where "lately" means "in the last 5 minutes". Well hey, if you're in the presence of an omnipotent being, you're bound to ask him for party tricks.
John 12:34. A crowd of people (speaking in unison?) ask Jesus a 30 word question. That's co-ordination if ever I heard it.
Corinthians 12:2. It would seem that there are at least three different heavens. What are they for? Who goes where? It neglects to mention.
Titus 1:12. Okay, I'm gonna finish on another of my absolute favourite verses. "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, the Cretians are alway liars." I love the logic of that sentence. How could the Bible possibly go wrong with sharp-thinking like that behind it?
Right, I'm gonna go to bed now. There was a bunch more stuff I was gonna talk about, such as arguments, friendships, misunderstandings, judgments, and so on. But it's almost 4am, and I'm too tired now. Besides, there's plenty here to make up an entry anyway.
Goodnight.
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