Judges 1-2: God apparently can't handle a few chariots

So, chapter 1 is all about the Simeonites and ... Judah-ites? ... killing more Canaanites. I really thought conquering time was over, but I guess not. Whatever. Hundreds of thousands of more people die or are enslaved.

Funny, apparently in all this fighting "the LORD was with them," but also they were unable to conquer the plains, because the Canaanites had chariots fitted with iron. So,

Chariots > God

Good to know.

Then God shows up to gloat some more over how great he is at keeping promises. God is so ridiculously proud of himself over this whole clusterfuck.

All the Israelites go their separate ways. A generation later, after everyone who was around for all the conquering was dead, no one knew about God and "did evil in the eyes of the LORD." That didn't take long.

This next part is just weird. God is pissed that they're worshipping other Gods, even though he already knew that this was inevitably going to happen, presumably because he himself set it up that way. So God helps out their enemies, and they lose a bunch of battles.

Then, just to make it confusing (cause what kind of bible story would this be if it weren't confusing?), God "raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them." So he's trying to help them out? Why? If he's so concerned about their wellbeing, he wouldn't have made them lose all their battles in the first place. I still think God has multiple personalities. Also, judges? What the fuck does that mean? The footnote says it could also be translated as "leaders."

Anyway, it doesn't work. The people ignore their new leaders and continue worshipping their other gods. Apparently this goes on for several generations, with God playing for both teams for some reason. Eventually God becomes not just angry, but "very angry," and decides that he's not going to help the Israelites at all anymore.

Numbers 26-34: 8 chapters and nothing happened

God says, look, I know you're all busy with the conquest and whatnot, but I demand you do another census! And they count every male older than 20 years, and it was boring. It makes some statement about how not a single person counted last time is still alive, except Caleb and Joshua (and Moses I suppose). God promised that they would all be dead by the time they reached the promised land, and I guess that's one promise he actually kept. Wonderful.

Then God gives the Israelites some inheritance law. This is prompted by some uppity woman complaining to Moses about how she should get her father's inheritance, and for some reason God agrees with her. I am shocked.

For his next act, God orders Moses to climb a mountain and die, just like Aaron. And he names Joshua the new leader. But first, God spends a chapter reiterating some of the rules from Exodus and Leviticus. Just reliving those good old times, I suppose. There's actually a new rule here: if a woman makes a vow and her father or husband forbid her from actually making good on it, God will release her from the vow. Random, as ever.

Hmm, actually, before Moses can die God wants him to "take vengeance on the Midianites." For what, I don't know. So the Israelites killed every Midianite man, and took all the woman and children and goods for themselves, and burned everything else down. But that's not good enough for Moses, he tells them to kill every boy and every woman who isn't a virgin. And they do. Yay.

Then there is half a chapter about what they looted (including the virgins!) and how much, and how it was all split up. This is Numbers, after all, I suppose. I'm just surprised it wasn't longer.

I continue to be amazed at how the bible can be so horrifically violent, and yet so boring, all at the same time. I've never read anything else quite like it.

So they are about to cross the river Jordan, which is seemingly the official boundary of the "promised land." (So why have they been killing so many people on their way here? I thought the point of all that killing was so they could take over the promised land. But it seems it was just some pointless slaughtering of innocents, just for fun! Cause they weren't staying there...they just killed everyone and moved on. WTF.) A couple of clans come up to Moses (who for some reason isn't dead yet) and say they want to stay here. Moses calls them cowards for not going into battle with the rest. As a compromise, Moses agrees that their women and children can stay here because it's safer, but their men have to come help with the fighting, and they can't come back here until the whole promised land is conquered.

Interesting tidbit here... we finally find out the time scale of their trip now. I know it was supposed to take 40 years, but I've been wondering when (or if) that happened. So a few chapters ago, they just got near the promised land and sent scouts out, and God got upset about their realistic reports and killed them, and also promised that anyone who had "grumbled" would die in the wilderness before they get there. Apparently it is now 40 years since that happened...God's solution for killing them off in the wilderness was apparently to just make them wander around until that generation died of old age. I guess this is what God not killing people looks like (remember he promised not to kill them?) Brilliant loophole. Excellent story telling too. I had absolutely no idea that the seemingly random wandering of the past few chapters was supposed to have taken 40 years.

Anyway...then we get a chapter long recap of their journey so far. Boring. God takes the opportunity to once again tell them to fucking kill everybody. Or he will kill them and you. Somebody needs a nap.

Then God tells them what the boundaries of their land will be. And he tells them who will decide which clan gets what land. Can't these people decide anything for themselves?

By the way, Moses is still not dead.

Exodus 13-16: God drowns some Egyptians

I didn't mention last time, in chapter 12 the Pharaoh basically told all the Israelites to get the fuck out of Egypt. And really, who can blame him. And so they went, and it goes on and on about how their bread had no yeast in it. Yeah, yeah, I get it, no fucking yeast.

So they're leaving, and God randomly says to Moses, "Consecrate to me every firstborn male." OK, whatever that means.

Then Moses goes on about celebrating Passover some more. No fucking yeast! I get it already.

Also, "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath." Sweet, they actually did dig up Joseph's corpse and take it with them. That's hilarious.

It also says that God didn't let them take the easy road, but led them through the desert toward the Red Sea, because "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." Yeah, right. Also, if God could control the mind of the Pharaoh, can't he just control the Israelites' minds and make them keep going?

So God led them on as a pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night. Fantastic.

Then, in chapter 14, God is telling Moses where they should go. I have to wonder why that is necessary, since all they have to do is follow the cloud/fire. Oh well.

Well, shit, God hasn't had enough of controlling the Pharaoh like a puppet. Exodus 14:4: "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD." But I will gain glory for myself????? Fuck that. This is ridiculous.

So of course, Pharaoh chases them, along with 600 of his finest chariots. And he gets another dose of "hardened heart" in verse 8.

The Israelites see the Egyptians coming, and they get pissed at Moses. We told you we didn't want your stupid help back in chapter 6!!

So, God parts the sea so the Israelites can flee across it, and "I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen." Seriously??? This is all just so fucking stupid. God is continually making this whole thing so much more difficult than it has to be, just so he can "gain glory" for himself. Well God, I guess if the pointless murder of children wasn't enough "glory" for you, maybe the pointless murder of 600 chariot's worth of adults will be.

So of course, that's what happens... the Israelites get across the sea safely, while the Egyptians are forced in by God and drown. "Not one of them survived." Fucking great. Are you happy now, God? Do you feel sufficiently glorified now???

We also learn about now that the pillar of cloud/fire is an angel of God, even though it said previously that it was actually God. I am so confused.

Then Moses and the Israelites sing a song to God. It's a pretty dumb song about how fantastic it is that God killed all the Egyptians.

Then they walk through the desert for 3 days without water. They finally find some water, but it is "bitter." So Moses "cried out" to God, and God pointed out a piece of wood, and Moses threw it in the water and it became "sweet." Well, that's just grand. Then God says, (paraphrasing) "Just do whatever I want, and you won't have to suffer like the Egyptians." Hmm, God is issuing thinly veiled threats to his chosen people...

Then they go on to a place with 12 springs and 70 palm trees. That is so specific.

So they're in the desert for like 2 months, and they are all grumbling about how at least as Egyptian slaves they had enough to eat, and Moses just brought them all out here to starve to death, and so on. God hears this and says "At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread."

Then "That evening quail came and covered the camp." I can't help but imagine dead quail just raining out of the sky. The following morning "thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor."

Yep, this is manna. The bible has a lot to say about manna. Each person is to gather as much as they need for a day. (except for saturday! gather twice as much on saturday because there won't be any on sunday.) Don't save any til morning! (except saturday) When they did keep some til morning, it got all maggoty and gross - except for sunday, it was alright on sunday. Well I guess that just proves it's bread flakes from God. They also apparently saved a jar of manna; "keep it for the generations to come" God said. I wonder where this jar of God-bread is now, and why no one has tried to make a fake one.

Apparently, "The Israelites ate manna forty years ... until they reached the border of Canaan."

It took them 40 years to get there??? I'm remembering Genesis, when Jacob's 11 sons apparently had no trouble getting from Canaan to Egypt in a reasonable time to buy food. 40 years, huh. I do hope there's some good reason for that.

Exodus 7-12: 10 plagues of Egypt

I've heard this story before, and I imagine most everyone else has too. Here's Penn & Teller covering the basics of this story, in their amazing way.



That clip also contains one of my all-time favorite quotes: "God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways." From what I've seen so far... so true.

There is one pretty major detail in this story, though, that Penn & Teller do not touch on, and for all the many, many times I've heard this story in church and sunday school, I've never heard of this either. God says repeatedly that he is "hardening the Pharaoh's heart" so that he won't let the Israelites go. Yeah, seriously.

Exodus 7: 3-4 "But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you."

Exodus 9:12 "But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron"

Exodus 10:1 "Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials"

Exodus 10:20 "But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go."

Exodus 11:9-10 "The LORD had said to Moses, "Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt." Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country."

If this is true, then I want to know... what the goddamn hell is the point of all of this??? I mean, seriously. The Pharaoh might have let the people go of his own free will at any point (probably long before God ruthlessly slaughters all the Egyptian firstborns). But no, God "hardens his heart." WHY??? Is this all a game?? Is God some kid playing with dolls? Is this all just a roleplaying game, with God as the sadistic DM? I don't get it!!

I haven't ruled out the possibility that this is all just the usual arbitrary cruelty, but the story does give a couple of hints...

Exodus 7: 3-5 "But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it."

Exodus 10:1-2 "Then the LORD said to Moses, "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."

Exodus 11:9-10 "The LORD had said to Moses, "Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt." Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country."

So... God is just looking for an excuse to show off? Or actually no, even worse: God is manufacturing an excuse to show off. What the effing crap is that all about? Gah!

This is possibly the worst thing I have ever heard of. God slaughtered Egyptian children, which is horrible no matter what. But he himself created the circumstances that led to it, which is even worse. But, even worse than that, God apparently slaughtered these children just to show off, which is what makes this officially the worst thing I have ever heard of.

Let me just say right here, I am glad that God does not exist. This is complete bullshit.

So anyway, let me see if I can calm down enough to finish.

While God is giving the Israelites instructions for painting their doors with lamb's blood on the night of this reprehensible slaughter of innocents (apparently God can't tell who is Israelite and who isn't), he also gives some instructions about celebrating Passover. Yeah, apparently we're supposed to celebrate that God killed everyone else's kids but not our own.

First and foremost, NO YEAST! God goes on and on about this. "Whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel." Harsh. Also, if any foreigners want to celebrate, they have to be circumcised. All right then.

Exodus 3-6: Back to work you lazy slaves!

Well, now that God has been alerted to the situation (because apparently that has to happen), he starts bothering Moses. Moses is out tending the flock when he sees a bush that is somehow on fire but not burning. He goes over to check it out, when suddenly the bush demands that he remove his sandals. After that, the bush announces that it is God, and it is very concerned about the suffering of the Hebrews in Egypt. The bush has big plans to take the Hebrews to "a land flowing with milk and honey." Also the bush would really like it if Moses would do all of this so it doesn't have to.

Well, I do hope someone remembers to dig up Joseph's corpse and take it with them...those were his final wishes ya know.

Anyway, Moses is like, "Why me?"

And God says, "I will be with you." (Way to dodge the question, God.)

Moses asks God what his name is (ballsy).

God says, "I am who I am." (again, nice dodge)

God tells Moses to go tell the elders of the Israelites about all of this. Then Moses and the elders are to go tell the Pharaoh that they would like to take a 3-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to God. Apparently God knows that the Pharaoh will not let them go unless "a mighty hand compels him." Therefore, God will "strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them." Hmm, I think I know where this is going...I don't think 'wonders' is the word I'd have chosen.

God also encourages the Hebrews to "plunder the Egyptians" by asking their neighbors (their Egyptian neighbors?) for gold or silver, or clothing, which they should dress their children in. OK, whatever.

Moses asks God what he should do if no one believes him. So God imbues him with the power of 3 cheesy magic tricks: he can throw his staff on the ground, where it becomes a snake; he can put his hand in his cloak, and it comes out leprous, then put it back in the cloak and it comes out fine; and he can make water turn to blood when he pours it on the ground.

Then Moses says, "I am slow of speech and tongue."

God says, "Go; I will help you speak and teach you what to say."

Moses says, "please send someone else."

God gets pissed and says fine! I'll get your brother Aaron to help you.

God apparently also told Moses that it was safe to go back to Egypt because everyone who was trying to kill him had died. Bwah ha ha! So Moses packs up his wife and son and goes back to Egypt.

Prepare yourself for Exodus 4:21-26 - the most confusing reading known to mankind (or maybe just to me).

God is apparently coaching Moses for his confrontation with the Pharaoh. God says to be sure to do all 3 of your cheesy magic tricks. But it won't work anyway, because "I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go." Then what the goddamn hell is the point, I would like to know.

So after the magic tricks fail, Moses is supposed to say "This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, 'Let my son go, so he may worship me.' But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son."

Huh... Israel. Is that Jacob? Is that all of the Israelites?

So Israel (whoever that is) is... God's firstborn son? Moses's firstborn son? WTF? Neither one makes any sense at all.

All I can figure is this must be about how they were planning to ask for a 3-day journey to make a sacrifice to God. But Pharaoh will refuse (because his heart had been hardened by God), therefore, God is going to kill the Pharaoh's son. That makes no fucking sense. You refuse what I ask, because I made you refuse, therefore I will punish you. Gah, I think my head just exploded. Seriously, I would expect this scenario to come up when some sadistic 5 year old is playing with his dolls (or action figures!), not when the Creator of the universe is trying to free his chosen people.

Then, Moses and his family are lodging somewhere on the way to Egypt, when suddenly God shows up and tries to kill Moses. Yeah, seriously. WTF. Why, God...is your bloodlust so insatiable that you apparently have to kill your own people??? So obviously his wife cuts off their son's foreskin and touches it to Moses's feet. God is apparently satisfied that Moses has foreskin on his feet, and leaves him alone. For fuck's sake.

OK, that was Exodus 4:21-26. Moving on...

Then God goes and tells Aaron to meet Moses in the desert. They find each other, and Moses tells Aaron about what God told him to say, and his fancy new magic tricks. They go to the elders of the Israelites, and they believed them.

Then Moses and Aaron go see the Pharaoh, and ask him to let the Hebrews go worship God in the desert for a while. The Pharaoh says, (paraphrase) "I don't know God! So why should I obey him!" They say, (paraphrase) "But God told us to take a 3 day journey into the desert! He might punish us if we don't go!" The Pharaoh says, (paraphrase) "Get back to work!" Hmm, they forgot to say the bit about how God would kill the Pharaoh's son. That surely would have closed the deal for them.

Then the Pharaoh decides that the slave's problem is they are lazy, so he tells the foremen to stop providing them with straw to make bricks with, so the slaves will have to go gather it themselves. Then they beat the slaves when they can't make as many bricks as usual. Hmm.

The Isrealites complain to the Pharaoh...yeah we can't make as many bricks, but it's your own fault for not giving us straw. The Pharaoh says, (paraphrase) "Back to work you lazy slaves!!"

So now all the Israelites hate Moses and Aaron. Awesome.

Moses asks God, "why have you brought trouble upon this people?" I did what you said and things are worse than ever! Waah!

Then God told Moses, "Because of my mighty hand he will let them go." Well that's just fucking great, God, why didn't you do that before?

God also told Moses about the covenant that he established with Abraham, and apparently now that he's strung those guys along for 3 generations, and then vanished entirely for who knows how long, now he is ready to make good on his promise!!! Oh joy.

Moses told this to the Israelites, but somehow they fail to be excited by it. Perhaps they're too busy being beaten for not making enough bricks.

Then God tells Moses to go ask the Pharaoh to let them go again. Moses says, seriously old man? he won't listen to me.

Then there's a random segue into the genealogy of Jacob and his sons.

Then God tells Moses, just say what I tell you to say, for fuck's sake. But Moses is still like, "I speak with faltering lips!" Holy shit, that Moses complains.

So, Genesis gave me the impression that God is sort of a bumbling, inept idiot who would much rather kill people than make them better.

After reading this last bit I am reforming that impression.... God is a temperamental 5 year old and we are all his dolls.

Genesis 6-9: God's first major temper tantrum

Chapter 6 starts with God deciding that the human life span will be 120 years (up til now they all lived to about 900 years). Why does he decide that? Of course, it’s not clear.

God is upset about how his own creation turned out, though it’s not clear from the text why omniscient God wouldn’t have known exactly what would happen. So he decides to destroy everything. But he likes Noah, who was apparently less evil than everyone else at the time.

So God says to Noah, (paraphrasing) “I’m about to destroy everything, so you better build yourself an ark.” And the ark had to be 450 x 75 x 45 feet, made of cyprus, with a roof that is 18 feet tall, and a door in the side, with little rooms inside in 3 levels. And since Noah is the favorite, he can go on the ark, with his wife and sons and daughters-in-law. And Noah has to collect 2 of every animal and take them in the boat with him.

Chapter 6 ends with a statement that Noah did all that God asked.

I do find it interesting that for all the lack of details so far (Cain’s wife, etc.), that the description of the boat is so detailed.

Chapter 7 starts with God changing his mind…now he wants 7 of every kind of clean animal, 7 of every kind of bird, and 2 of every kind of unclean animal. Chapter 6 ended with Noah having finished building the ark and collecting 2 of every animal…how funny is it that, after all that, God apparently comes down and says, “Actually, make it 7 of every animal.” I’d be pissed at this point, if I was Noah.

So now Noah goes onto the ark with his family all these animals, and it rains for 40 days…it says the water got high enough to cover the tops of the mountains by 20 feet, and the earth was flooded for 150 days. There is also some detail about how every single thing on the earth died.

Then “God remembered Noah.” Aww, that’s sweet. After 150 days of doom, God finally stopped going “mwah ha ha” or whatever he was doing all that time, and “remembers Noah,” and causes the water to recede. 7 months later the earth is dry again, everything comes out of the ark, and the first thing Noah does is sacrifice some of those clean animals to God. Ah, so that’s why God decided he wanted extra animals! It seems a bit ridiculous to me that God told Noah to save those animals from the flood, just so when it was over they could be sacrificed. God was pleased with the sacrifice (that he himself ordered), and promised to not wipe out everything ever again. Again, aww, that’s sweet.

God sets up a covenant with Noah et al…he gives them dominion over everything, and also sets up the death penalty (as punishment for murder), which is a bit weird. It’s not consistent anyway, Cain’s “punishment” for murdering Abel was to fail at growing crops, and to have God set it up so no man could ever kill him.

Then God promises to never again kill everything with a flood (that sounds like he’s leaving a loophole for later…yeah, I’ll never wipe out all life with a flood again, but maybe by some other means I will, you never know), and says he’ll put rainbows in the sky whenever it rains, as a reminder of his promise…not for people, but for himself, oddly enough. Yeah, seriously. Genesis 9:16, God says, "Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

So that’s the story of Noah’s flood… which cannot possibly be interpreted literally, if you think about it logically. Just the logistics of it are overwhelming…all-powerful, benevolent God left it up to Noah to collect 2 (7) of every kind of animal…that’s at least a million different species, from all over the world. Impossible. And kind of a jerk move on God’s part, when he, being all-powerful, could have just poofed them all into the boat himself. Or better yet, he could have just poofed everything else dead without all the trouble for Noah. Or even better, he could have made his creation more to his liking in the first place.

The ark is 450 x 75 x 45 feet… that’s about 5 football fields in area, and about as tall as a 3-story building. There’s no way there is enough room on that boat for 2 (or 7) of every kind of animal; I bet a pair of brontosauruses would take up almost that much space on their own. There is no way that Noah could have rounded up all of these animals from all over the world on his own. There’s no way that, being on this boat for about a year, the carnivores didn’t eat any of the other animals, or that Noah didn’t make some species of insect extinct by stepping on them. And there is no way that after the ark landed, all the species ended up where they were supposed to be…with all the marsupials in Australia, etc.

If the waters really covered the entire earth, up to 20 ft higher than the mountain tops, wouldn’t that have killed all of the plants? Noah didn’t save any plants on the ark…so clearly we should have no plants today. Noah sent a dove out of the ark, which came back with an olive branch…where did that come from? After 150+ days underwater, every plant would have been dead and rotten. Also, how is it possible for the entire earth to be covered in that much excess water? I mean, if you get a flood in one place, it’s because it has extra water that came from somewhere else. You can’t flood everywhere at the same time, unless God created some extra water just for the occasion. And then reverse it… when localized flood waters recede, it’s because they are going somewhere else; if the entire earth was flooded, there would be nowhere for the extra water to go. The flood waters would never recede. Unless, again, God made it magically disappear…but then, why wouldn’t he just do it all at once, instead of making them all wait in the ark while he slowly disappeared the water over 7 months; is it because he’s a jerk?

This whole story gives the impression that God is kind of an asshole, and not really all that perfect. There are so many stages along the way where God demonstrates his ineptitude. He creates something, man, which turns out so wrong it makes him want to destroy everything. Why would a perfect God mess up his own creation so badly?

Then, to deal with his own fuck up, he decides to kill everything in a big, doom-filled flood. This is so much overkill, and more what I would expect an ill-tempered, angry, imperfect deity than a benevolent, perfect, all-powerful one. A benevolent God would have gone down there and done something to make man better…a vengeful God throwing a temper tantrum would decide that the thing to do is kill everything.

Assuming that it’s OK for God to decide that the thing to do is just kill all the evil people, rather than make them better, even the way he goes about it is absurd. Rather than using his perfect knowledge and supreme power to only destroy the evil people, he decides to kill everything…evil people, good people (surely in all the world, Noah was not the only good person), animals, plants…except for Noah et al.

Even at that, surely God could have used his omnipotent power to simply kill everything in the world, except for Noah et al, and 2 (or 7) of every animal. It would have been much less trouble for Noah. But God, the jerk, decides to make Noah traipse all over the world, collecting 2 (7) of everything, then put him and his family through the ordeal of being stuck in a boat with all these animals for a year.

Then, when it’s all over, he invents rainbows as a reminder to himself of his promise to not kill everything with a flood again. Because being perfect and all-knowing, he might have forgotten otherwise? I don’t get it.

Anyway, chapter 9 continues with the story of Noah, being drunk and naked in his tent. Yeah, after that ordeal he just went through, who can blame him. One of his 3 sons, Ham, sees him. His 2 brothers cover Noah up without looking. Noah woke up and was apparently pissed off that Ham had dared to look at him naked, and cursed him and his descendents to be slaves forever; the other 2 brothers he blessed. Overreact much? Maybe he was still drunk at that point. This story is a bit random, and all I can figure is that it was stuck in as a lame justification for slavery.

Ham just looks at his drunk and naked father. From what I’ve heard of Christianity, it’s generally a bigger sin to be drunk and naked, rather than to be the person who happened to see you that way. But, whatever. Then Noah, possibly still drunk, or maybe hung over and grumpy, curses Ham and all his descendents to be slaves forever. But this is just Noah...Noah shouldn’t have the power to actually curse people; he’s just a man. I thought that was some sort of blasphemy, anyway. So I guess God must have seen all this and thought, “What a good idea, I’ll go ahead and do that,” which would fit right in with that picture of God as a total dick that I’ve been seeing so far.

Seriously, this is the actual bible story (one of them, anyway) that was cited in support for slavery in America. (Disclaimer: I am not a history buff, and I may be wrong about this. I have the impression, mostly from this book, that Christians back in the day generally opposed abolition, mainly because of bible stories like this one.) What a stupid story. It pisses me off just to think of all the people who suffered because of this idiotic story. Yes, I know that people who wanted to have slaves would have probably done it no matter what the bible says. But it is there...the bible, the literal word of God, supports slavery. Seriously.