At uni a friend of mine wrote a book review of the bible that began, "Not since Naked Lunch has such a dull book been saved by the constant barrage of sadomasochistic homosexual pornography."
I might be interested in reading the rest of that review if it's available to read online. That's a great opener lol
Alas it was pasted onto a sheet of paper and photocopied over 20 years ago now and I doubt it was saved. I don't remember anything else about the article, but I presume it was very undergraduate. That line was a killer though.
sadomasochistic homosexual pornography
You had my interest, but now you have my attention
Saul when David rolls up with a bag of 200 foreskins: 😍
In a similar vein, famed cartoonist R Crumb did a faithful adaptation of the book of Genesis, including all the sex and violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Genesis_(comics)
Lol
The book has been controversial, particularly for the explicit illustrations of sexual intercourse described in the text itself. In critical circles, it has drawn fire over whether and how literal the illustration job is, or should be.
It’s fine as a holy book that we should all treat as the literal word of god, but don’t you dare draw those raunchy sex scenes from my holy book
had no idea about this, thanks
ironically there's an entire book about genocide of the human race by god too
What's that one
Took me a second because I was focused on Genesis and Exodus, but it's got to be Revelations, right?
Good news is that's just a fan fiction.
Revelations works too but specifically I meant the Noah's Ark story :)
It was likely initially a story about famine before it was reworked to incorporate the Babylonian flood mythos.
Makes me think of my favorite verse to quote in arguments: Pslam 137:9 - Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks (NIV).
Omfg
Context is important. It's a song of imagined - and not executed - revenge. The writer is wishing that what happened to their kids also happened to the invaders kids. The Babylonians dashed Jewish kids against rocks, and the Jews didn't respond in kind - couldn't in fact, because the Law forbade it.
The thing is, most people that will cite the bible as an argument are already taking shit out of their context, so at this point it's just fair game.
Context seems to be largely ignored when your argument sounds so great
what is NIV
New international version I wanted to be clear on the translation I was quoting, because it can make a difference in wording and sometimes meaning.
New International Version.
Cool that there is more murder than misogyny
How very progressive
Most of the misogyny is in the stuff written by Paul. Dude HATED women.
Well, one of the dudes pretending to be Paul. Initial probably-actually-Paul is like "Why wouldn't we have women in church leadership? They were leaders when we were being hunted by the Romans."
Honestly though, I feel like there's just not enough green tabs as a whole. Plenty of OG misogyny in the religious law sections.
That's a very generous view of the old testament
A true leftist of his time.
Nothing pisses off "Christians" like quoting biblical scripture that contracts their bullshit to them.
I was dealing with racist far right people on FaceBook and, I forget the exact context but, some lady quoted the Bible at me to support her claim of racist superiority and I just shut her down with the classic Timothy 2:12
I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.
Given that original sin is attributed to women, shouldn't the whole book be written on green paper?
That was just Eve. Also, all of humanity was punished for it.
I used orange for inconsistencies between parallel accounts (like 4000 vs 40000 stalls in 2 Chr. 9 vs 1 Kings 4). I used a lot of orange flags.
The term you're looking for is univocality According to the consensus of biblical scholars, the bible does not have this property. Accoring to most of the ~40,000 ministries, the bible is assumed by fiat to have this feature.
I swear it was ~4,000 ministries… hmm.
It's 39,000+change denominations including all the dangerous cults^†^ but not including non-denominational churches, who are typically too small and localized to be part of a ministry, but some are big enough but pretend to be small and non-denominational so as not to draw too much attention (because US law enforcement really doesn't want another Waco or Jonestown)
Some of these are actually extinct like the Shakers -- nope, we still have one Shaker village -- but between the 1970s and now, a lot of liberal / relaxed / left-leaning denominations faded into insignificance, correlating to a rising popular atheist movement. (Before the new atheists of the aughts and places on the usenet and the internet where atheist philosophy could spread, it was constrained to academics and scientists and hobbyist philosophers. Richard Dawkins was moved by the 9/11/2001 attacks -- enabled by radical religious suicide attackers -- to not just promote that atheism should be an acceptable norm, but we should challenge the rhetoric of churches, many of which were already a lot more politicized than they were supposed to be while retaining tax-exempt status.
My numbers come from the (defunct?) Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance in the aughts, which tried to catalog all the religions of the world and what they believed (and how they differed from their adjacent schisms).
(FIXED)
† In 23rd century parlance, when we say cult we usually mean an NRM (New Religious Movement) that is dangerous. There are plenty of NRMs that are not dangerous (that get cult status anyway and harassed by US law enforcement) and there are plenty of old religions (more than a century-plus) that are dangerous, but not regarded as cults.
I was actually making a tongue-in-cheek reply to the comment above yours, but damn. Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!
You're welcome!
Jonestown happened when I was a kid, so when Waco happened, I did some rabbit-hole dives into cult phenomena how they entrap people, so I'll nerd out about it from time to time.
And don't get me started on Far Cry 5 and its failure to actually look at how cults work. (Of course Ubisoft was afraid of ~~losing business from~~ getting called out by the rising Christian nationalist movement in the US.)
Theyve been quite clear what counts as good is what god commands. Which means those are all actually good. That also makes god's goodness very meaningful.
Subscribe for more metaethics wisdom.
Angsty Teenagers: The Bible is made up of feel-good fairy tales
The bible: Demonstrates stories that detail some human history, reflecting on our evil nature and the evil we commit against our creator and others, and how God often interacts with man in spite of that evil.
Angsty Teenagers: shocked Pikachu face but why is there bad stuff in there?!
Watch your head OP, the entire point is flying over it.
You mean like that time this god went about and killed the whole planet, including babies and animals, except for this one dudes family?
Your god is more evil and tyrannical than her creation.
God does not interact with man in spite of evil, according to the bible, he encourages and rewards it. Because the bible is made up by evildoers to justify their ways and solidify their power
Yeah sorry I just never read any version of the Bible or anything related to the Bible
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
