The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons

So I’m at the part of the bible where God gives Moses the 10 commandments, which, by the way there aren’t ten of.  I don’t give a shit how you decide to count those fuckers, there aren’t ten.  I can see a reasonable argument for 9, 8, 11 or even 12, but to get to 10 you’ve got to start cutting these suckers up mid-sentence at some points and adding whole paragraphs together at others.

But after the 8 commandments, God carries on and it really seems like he just lost his train of thought.  He keeps spouting out moral dictates, but they’re as haphazard as you can imagine.  He’ll go straight from a details proscription for who pays who what if a donkey falling into an uncovered pit to a command to kill female sorcerers.  A couple of these things do seem reasonably moral, but some of them actually start out with stuff like, “When a father sells his daughter into slavery…” and end with something other than him be punished mercilessly.

I suppose I should sit back and enjoy, as I know I’m in for a lot more of these schizophrenic lists of archaic morals and some of them are hilarious.  These tend to be the parts of the bible you most often hear atheists alluding to, as they are the quickest proof that this book is a horrible source for morality and as I come across the little nuggets I’ve quoted before this whole endeavor seems momentarily less pointless.

Most of the best shit is in Leviticus, to be sure, but I was quite pleased to come across this one tonight.  I’ll be sure to toss it out next time I see one of my Christophile friends or neighbors bitching about Obama.  Exodus 22:28;

You  shall not revile God or curse a leader of your people.

I can see how that one gets lost, as it is sandwiched between a pointlessly involved explication of why you shouldn’t borrow your neighbors cloak and then not give it back to him if he’s cold and a warning not to delay in making offerings from the fullness of your harvest, so I can see how maybe it got tossed out as archaic.  I mean… who sleeps in a cloak any more, right?

But to all of those Obama-haters that actually believe in this silly little book, it might be a conflict worth losing sleep over.  At the very least, I can hope.