Like, yeah; how do you intend to have grandchildren in a way that’s not totally icky?
Reginald Selkirksays
… is tricked by a talking snake…
Nope. The snake told Eve the truth (Gen 3:4-5), whereas YHWH lied to Adam (Gen 2:16-17). When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they did not die that very day. Rather, they knew the difference between good and evil, just as Snakey said.
And who, pray tell, proved BoJo was an idiot? Some commie Labourite who’d just eaten the “wrong” apple?
severskysays
I thought BoJo was a self-made bozo.
birgerjohanssonsays
Raging Bee @ 6
The apple of knowledge, aka the COVID hearings. Very “entertaining” if you like explosions, train derailings or forest fires.
birgerjohanssonsays
But remember, true wisdom comes from “salt of the earth” type gentlemen without that elitisty “bookish” learning.
That is why I know you need leeches to stop disease.
ospalhsays
There’s pretty much a whole comic book about this, but written in German and not translated into English.
At one point Luz (Luci) the talking, horned snake realizes that if Adam stops believing in God, he, Luz, would disappear along with god. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7665547-prototyp
mordredsays
@10 Didn’t know Ralf König wrote on biblical topics! Thanks for the tip, I got to have a look at this.
ravensays
Without eating the magic apple, the human species would consist of two mindless but immortal people living forever.
It was all a setup anyway.
Why was the magic Tree of Knowledge in the garden anyway? God could have put it anywhere, Australia, Jupiter, the Andromeda galaxy.
Instead he put it right next to two people who had no idea what they were doing.
And, what was the talking snake doing in the garden. Can’t the all powerful god keep track of two people, a Tree, and a Talking Snake?
God is supposedly omniscient but you didn’t need that to know what was going to happen.
Any parent of a two year old could have figured that one out.
birgerjohanssonsays
It is a crime Ralf König has not been translated to English. Many of his graphic novels are available in Swedish, and I suspect USA is an even bigger market.
submoronsays
Tabby Lavalamp @4. ….and why is there a Ukrainian flag in the background?
Seversky @7 He IS self-made and he worships his maker
Nathaniel Hellersteinsays
My reading of the fairy tale is that Eve and Adam did nothing wrong, and they were not punished. Yahweh acted as a competent wildlife manager, who released the breeding pair into the wild as soon as they showed signs of mental and sexual maturity. Maybe the two felt bad about losing the free meals, but they were ready, and they made out okay.
By the way, Adam gave up Paradise for her. It’s a love story!
asclepiassays
Waaaaaay back when I went to Sunday school, I found myself wondering as early as 2nd grade where all these other villagers down the road came from if Adam and Eve were the only two people. In 8th grade, I started wondering about incest. By the time I got to high school, I started wondering how inbreeding was not more of a problem. In my opinion, anyone who is reasonably intelligent should at the very least wonder how there were a bunch of people down the road if only two were created in the first place.
@16 asclepias wrote: anyone who is reasonably intelligent should at the very least wonder how there were a bunch of people down the road if only two were created in the first place.
I reply: I guess we’re all mutants! /sarcasm?! Or, at least, by their behavior, all the Rtwingnut Xtian terroristss are mutants! (doesn’t that make sense)
nihilloligasansays
Imagine writing the opening part of Genesis and not thinking the snake is the hero of the story. What, you want people to remain ignorant and easy to control? That is basically just parental abuse
Yeah, well, that’s not the only sign of an abusive mindset Yahweh shows…
mambasays
Ask a Christian “what does God want from us?” and you will get an answer like “To worship him and love each other” or something, which is not giving us any actual consideration you might notice. But then reword it to say “What does God want humanity in general to accomplish? What do we DO?” and you will get nothing.
Why? because if the Bible story is true, God is a PET owner, and we’re the pets. It’s not good or evil, it’s having a pet to watch and play with. we’re not loved as we understand it, we’re patronizingly loved like “Ooo, I LOVE that rabbit!”. doesn’t mean we’d die for it if push came to shove, unlike love for OUR children which most parents would do.
Think of it…Genesis makes it clear we’re not supposed to be intelligent…the moment we were we were kicked out. We weren’t supposed to invent anything because all needs and desires (limited without intelligence) were taken care of in “paradise”. We were to wander around, love God, and mate occasionally. No goals, no dreams, no point…just be happy contented and entertaining in ignorance of literally everything. Have you ever tried to teach your cat how to attend college to further it’s development? No of course not. Just like God never bothered teaching A&E anything.
But Adam was alone and bored, unhealthy so eve was “made” (after testing out the other animals…use your imagination on bestiality WITHOUT lust of any form, no sin yet remember?). So now Adam has Eve, so go ahead and breed if you want, more purebreds make a nice collection.
Now think of your average cat or dog owner. Isn’t the desires basically the same? Just saying to the pet figuratively “Be comfortable and good, love me back, and I’ll care for you. Don’t get too smart though or you’ll be a threat and I’ll throw you into the wild woods! I don’t really care if you try to do anything else because nothing you do is
meaningful to me. Just be cute and I’ll play with you occasionally. Sometimes my little sister might shake your cage, sorry.”
There is a parallel you have to admit.
ravensays
God is a PET owner, and we’re the pets.
It is worse than that.
The better model is that we are god’s ant farm.
God doesn’t do much or even pay much attention to us.
Once he got mildly annoyed with us and poured a lot of water on the farm.
The ants call that the Deluge and made up a story about a Big Boat.
And, one day in the future, god is going to lose all interest and destroy the ant farm.
killyosaursays
@4 that comment just makes me think of the following :P
“Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long”
KGsays
submoron@14,
I’ve seen that (in the words “He is a self-made man, and worships his creator”) attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, talking about John Bright.
UnknownEric the Apostatesays
You know, they say Jesus was a Carpenter, but I always thought it was just Richard and Karen!
JimBsays
UnknownEric the Apostate @23
To soon man! To SOON!*
*I was curious so I looked it up. Damn. 40 years to the year since she died. Time flies!
nomdeplumesays
And what Genesis writing idiot thought that snakes eat dust? Had they never observed snakes catching prey? I don’t know what snakes occur in the region where the writer(s) of Genesis lived so maybe those species are hard to observe feeding? And having had this thought, the internet os full of creationist apologetics saying that snakes can occasionally ingest dust while eating, or Jacobson’s Organ may involve breathing in dust. I never, after all this time, fail to be amazed bu the lengths these morons will go to pretend that a 2500 year old document is valid.
killyosaursays
@4, @23 I kept trying to post a link to Ministry’s “Jesus Built my Hot Rod” but apparently it got blocked or is held up (I first assumed it was a phone error, but the second one posted from the computer is not posting either :P ) but in reference to the carpenter joke, I just think about that opening line from the song:
“Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long”
killyosaursays
@25, the writers of the bible believed some ridiculous things about animals, so that doesn’t surprise me.
chigau (違う)says
In Chapter 1, God creates humans in His image; male and female. God does this by His Word. no dirt.
There is no mention of numbers. Nowhere does it specify that there was 1 (one) of each. There could have been hundreds.
The only instruction they received was to be fruitful and multiply. Which they did.
Because by Chapter 2, there was no one to til the earth ( because the Chapter 1 lot were off in the bushes, fruitfully multiplying.)
God did the ‘rib’ trick on dirt-boy (AKA ‘Adam’) to produce “Eve”.
Adam and Eve had 3 male offspring who got their “wives” from those Chapter 1 folk, who were still fruitfully multiplying.
No incest. No worries.
nomdeplumesays
@27 Almost as if they were very restricted in their travels and had heard of some strange beasts from other lands but had never actually seen them. But also some bizzare beliefs about for example the genetics of sheep (goats?). Just looked up, There are some 25 very diverse snake (though no pythons) species in the Middle East. It can only be I think that the biblical writers had no interest in knowing anything about the animal diversity/behaviour/ecology of the region. No proto-scientific curiosity in the way Ancient Greeks had, nor practical observation in the hunter-gatherers like Australian Aborigines had.
No interest, and it seems no accurate information from “god”.
John Moralessays
I’m into derivative sin. Nothing original about it.
Raging Bee @19
He reminds me of my Evil Ex in all the worst ways.
killyosaursays
@31 exactly. Though when I would post it, my post vanished into the ether. Ah well, its out there :D (that song, and Al Jorgenson’s work with Jello Biafra were my first exposures to Ministry, then I started hanging out at a local goth club which meant a lot more exposure :P )
killyosaursays
@30, all I am thinking about is calculus now. So Derivative sin just moves the exponents and drops the constants…
killyosaursays
Should say reduces the exponents, it’s after midnight here, I should consider going to bed.
wzrd1says
UnknownEric the Apostate @ 23, well, threesomes can get complicated and messy, if the duo originating such are confused and uncertain.
nomdeplume @ 25, given I’ve crawled through the dust of much of the Levant, well, yeah, I ate dust, snakes do as well and well, anything walking, crawling or wriggling eats dust, the shit’s finer than portland cement dust, suspends in the air quite well for literally days to weeks.
But then, I blew my nose far too often and it was colored tan.
I’ll give a bit of artistic license there.
Literalists, well, they’re welcome to a spear that I’ll especially forge for their anal attention…
killyosaur @ 27, not only animals. Children, especially infants were equally fair game. As in circumcision without pain relief, “because infants don’t feel pain like adults do”. Despite tons of evidence of massive spikes in blood pressure, stress hormones and screams during the procedure…
My response has been, “physicians don’t experience pain like humans do…”.
Then, expose my old fighting knife.
After the inevitable heart attack, I cut the orange in my other hand.
Carefully, the last time I cut a fruit or veggie, I couldn’t figure out the discoloration on my potatoes briefly, then realized my finger wandered into the tip of the knife range and was bleeding.
With a rather short recorded bleeding time, that took 15 minutes to staunch fully.
Yeah, I keep my knives keen, to lessen injuries, as long as I pay attention.
Oddly missed, the Genesis gap. God created Adam and Steve or something, male and female or something, big fucking gap, then has to create Eve as an afterthought.
No clue who Lilith was…
nomdeplume @ 29, there’s a treatise out about a related topic, when hunter-gatherer vs farmer became a thing of societal conflict. Just around the time Genesis was “originally penned” (given originally, it was oral history, then that new fangled writing thing came about from those crazy “farmers”)…
And the origin of the fable about Cain and Abel.
Farmer/herder/gatherer vs farmer.
A stretch, beyond Stretch Armstrong, but hey.
Go with the blow when you’re on the spread.
And I’m Super Gumby in some ways.
I’ll work with anyone, eventually, I’ll have to cut them off, by the gonads if necessary, figuratively speaking, of course.
As for the fictive Jesus, wood working and whatnot.
My father was a stone mason by trade and accomplishment. Knew how to perform slump tests on concrete off of the truck via locally acquired material and manage it successfully to lab specifications.
I can’t manage that one. Can manage most of his fetes otherwise, just not that one.
I can work concrete, mortar, bricks and stones (cutting with a hammer and occasionally, a chisel and more.
He was offered numerous jobs at higher pay, but more seasonal, he sacrificed to go year round employment by a loyal employer.
One who bounced me on his knee, asking me to call him Zeydah. Fitting in well with our neighborhood at the time.
His son, not worth much, pretty much destroyed the company he inherited and embezzled tons of money to invest in his Wawa chain, which evaporated when the union found the money stolen from pensions. Zeydah loving the union and occasionally loathing it…
Life’s complicated, history is the same, prehistory, erm, do you really want to get into space junk versions of history?
Silentbobsays
@ 30 Morales
Wait ’til you learn about integral sin – you add everything with infinite limits.
nomdeplumesays
@37 snakes keep their mouths closed except when striking or eating, I don’t believe they ever get dust in the mouth, even accidentally. And Genesis has them “eating” dust, as if this was how they subsisted.’
nomdeplumesays
@37 snakes keep their mouths closed except when striking or eating, I don’t believe they ever get dust in the mouth, even accidentally. And Genesis has them “eating” dust, as if this was how they subsisted.’
submoronsays
KG @22. Thanks, I should have checked myself.
StevoRsays
@20. mamba :
Why? because if the Bible story is true, God is a PET owner, and we’re the pets. It’s not good or evil, it’s having a pet to watch and play with. we’re not loved as we understand it, we’re patronizingly loved like “Ooo, I LOVE that rabbit!”. doesn’t mean we’d die for it if push came to shove, unlike love for OUR children which most parents would do.
What sort of pet owner is God and what would we think of one that has a load of, say, cats or dogs but doesn’t like how they are behaving so he drowns all but one of them. In front of that one survivor which he keeps alive because it is the most submissive and slavishly obdient one that is most terrified of him? (God-fearing..) An owner that infact does that on several occassions massacring pets he doesn’t like that aren’t doing what he wants because he can? (Sodom, the Amalekites, Canaanites, etc..) and even really harshly and cruelly punishing – torturing – his one chosen pet (cat or dog or whatever) for not strictly doing what he orders? What sort of owner does that make God if we are his pets and a pet owner were to treat their pets as go does inthe Bible – setting pet against pet and encouraging them to kill and harm each other? Also abandoning them regularly for seemingly endless amounts of time. Ignoring their cries and screams of pain as they are murdered and tortured?
If the Biblical Yahwah / Jehovah was a pet owner and humans his pets, then he’d be the sort of pyscopathic owner taken tocourt by the RSPCA and banned from owning another living thing ever again – even being fined and jailed.
birgerjohanssonsays
The idea that flies have four legs kills all credibility.
There is also the bit with bats regarded as birds.
And the bajillion quintillion concepts borrowed from mesopotamian and Egyptian myths.
If you want to go go even further in detail, please read “The Memoirs of God”.
It shows how the older parts of the OT are very similar to other Caananeic religions as per the documents retrieved from Ugarit. It also describes the gradual development of the OT over centuries.
Unfortunately the book has been out of print sone time driving up prices but you might find it in a well-stocked University library.
birgerjohanssonsays
If you really want to pick the lowest-hanging fruits of flawed holy scriptures, try the koran and associated hadiths.
I am not going there in detail today with the war going on as trolls might yell “islamophobe”.
(FYI I am an equal-rights BS-phobe)
John Moralessays
If you really want to pick the lowest-hanging fruits of flawed holy scriptures, try the koran and associated hadiths.
Good grief. Entirely the wrong Abrahamic religion.
There is no original sin in Islam. You know, the topic at hand.
(Nor are hadiths scripture)
Kagehisays
@12 raven Actually… No. The “original” version of the story, as opposed to the edited version you get in many Christian Bibles, and all versions that make it into some form of propaganda film to promote it, had two trees. One of them was the tree of knowledge, but the other was the tree of immortality. Man was literally given a choice in that version, a three edged choice, 1) don’t eat either of them, and die an ignorant, ape like, creature, like any other animal, lacking distinction from any other of gods supposed great creations, 2) eat the from the tree of immortality and become immortal, like angels, but lose the capacity to ever become intelligent beings, who where capable of making their own choices, or 3) eat from the tree of knowledge and become like God in mind – aka self obsessed, paranoid, jealous, with the ability to choice to act self destructively by inventing ways to do the stupidest shit imaginable, even when it ran contrary to their own well being, or the respect of their fellow apes – much as a certain Biblical, supposedly all powerful, all loving, nutter seems to have self sabotaged with contradictory rules, lies, confusing and wrong explanations and some form of divine bipolar disorder.
It was a grift from the beginning, as you say, but it was one that, given the alternatives, was going to have a bad outcome no matter which option was chosen. lol
Kagehisays
Its kind of a weird conceit if you think about it, “If you don’t think, just mostly obey, and if you do make a mistake, believe really hard in the healing power of Jesus, God will grant you what those two nitwits rejected by picking the wrong tree, and make you immortal after you die.” Always looking for that get out of consequences free card, even from the very beginning….
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 45
Mr. M was clear about asking too many questions is wrong, but just accepting the literal interpretation is good.
So looking for explanations of things that sound iffy is a big no. In other words the independent quest for knowledge is bad, even if no fruits are involved.
.
As for the serpent in the OT, as discussed some years ago the intention was to discredit an animal associated with a rival goddess.
.
-We have not mentioned the Klieg lights Jahwe had rigged up to light the universe before he created the sun, but I assume he had moved those back into storage by the time Adam and Eve came around.
StevoRsays
FWIW. As a pet owner who has a dog and is owned by a cat, I have a couple of rules for them. Roughly. My cat isn’t allowed outside because she was caught red-pawed poaching the neighbours goldfish. So she gets an oudoor enclosure with a skywalk that he loves built specially for her. Yet she still makes a break for it & races out the door like a rocket when she can. She’s a big fat cat but when she wants to, she can easily move faster than me. Duck under trees and bushes and escape outside. Then come inside when she chooses too. Which usually isn’t that long & Ienable her to coem nsie again by opening the usally closeed catflap & doors..
At which point I .. shut her escape routes, try to keep her inside and .. make sure she knows I still love her because I do & am always worried about what might happen toher when she is outside..
Then try to keep her inside my house in future. I never punish her becaise I don;t think she’d understand why I’d do that nor do I think that would help or stop her. It wouldn’t help & would only hurt in my view.
Also my dog will occassionally try to bring bones inside which I don’t want her to do so .. I will say ..NO.Loudly & then take the bones and chuck them out of the door and that’s it.
I don’t torment my dog or blame her for trying and bein’ y’know, a dog.
She stll gets pats and food and love I just.. don’t let her bring bones into my house.
Oh & these two pets – or family members – I have. They love and groom each other & get on so very well and this delights me. I am so happy they do and make sure they both know they are very much loved by me. I would be heartrboken if eitehr one gahremd or killed the other. It would aginy and horrific to me if they did. Took my ca a week or so toet use dtomy new dog an so absolutely overjoyed they get on so very well now.
Contrast that with Yahwah / Jehovah / XN diety.
Huh.
No endlessly tormenting, No blaming them for being .them .. and no, y’know, genocide.. So… Dafuck?!
I am so very far from being perfect or the best ethical human but .. Yahweh / Jehoveah fails this simple test so bad? But is meant to be the ideal? Fk That!
StevoRsays
Typo fixes for clarity :
Then my cat comes inside when she chooses too. Which usually isn’t that long & I enable her to come inside again by opening the usally closed catflap & doors..
Oh & these two pets – or ( Definitley AND) family members – I have. They love and groom each other & get on so very well and this delights me. Fills me with utter joy. I am so happy they do and make sure they both know they are very much loved by me. I would be heartbroken if either one harmed or killed the other. It would agony and horrific to me if they did. Took my cat a week or so to get used to my new* dog and so absolutely overjoyed they get on so very well now.
So Yahwah as a pet owner ..? No. What a nightmare douchebag of one & how utterly unaccepeble his conduct..
.* For over a year and a half ish now
Rob Grigjanissays
The gods we create(d) tend to be personifications of the world as we perceive it. Vast, powerful, deadly, capricious. It also seems fairly common to try and make some of them appear as though they care about us (personally, or as a tribe, or a nation, or a race etc). Balancing those can be tricky!
Anyway: I see the Garden of Eden story as a myth about the awakening of self-awareness in humans*, and the costs that come with that (e.g. existential angst).
*Whether we are that different from other animals is debatable, but a large number of us have certainly seen ourselves that way.
KGsays
submoron@41,
I wasn’t criticising! I’ve no idea if Disraeli was the first to use it, and it’s probably been employed repeatedly since he did.
KGsays
John Morales@30,
Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional.
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.
If it is, try playin’ it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!
Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag
wzrd1says
Totally OT, but I just received my voting report card.
Apparently, I failed, as I didn’t vote in this county while I didn’t live here.
If I ever meet the village idiot that generated that waste of paper, I will beat that individual to death using their own gonads to do so, for both the waste of a tree and my time.
Twice.
The third time being the charm, I’ll shoot them out of a circus cannon.
I’m sure that, if cornered, the party would disclaim AI usage.
As if I couldn’t chip it in the nards… Or nard it in the chips.
Oh, screw it, nard its chips.
Now, where was I again? Oh, domestic violins.
A true horror in my hands.*
*Stringed and woodwind instruments in my hands literally constitute a war crime.
killyosaursays
@37 oh no, I am fully aware of other absurdities. I was mostly responding to the fact that the poster of the comment I responded to was “surprised” that the bible contains statements that clearly know nothing about the nature of snakes :P
@38 I need to get more clear on eigen-sin as that may be helpful as I work through my current class :D
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 30
It should be the ambition of every sapient being to invent at least one brand new sin, preferably several. Studying Bond villains and old Hammer films is good for getting in the right frame of mind.
Erpsays
@22 I’ve seen that (in the words “He is a self-made man, and worships his creator”) attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, talking about John Bright.
John Bright was a radical MP where Disraeli was a conservative one. Bright opposed the corn laws which drove up the price of grain and put it out of reach of the poor in famine years, he opposed UK involvement in the Crimean war, a prominent abolitionist, and opposed those who wanted the UK to support the Confederacy during the US Civil War. He also opposed the established church (he was a Quaker) and was considered a brilliant orator. He had his flaws, he supported male enfranchisement but not that of women (his eldest child, Helen, was an outspoken supporter of female enfranchisement).
StevoRsays
If a sin isn’t original do you have to pay a copyright or patent fee? Is not doing so a sin of its own and doing so a virtue that cancels some or all of the non-original sin? Derivative sin?
StevoRsays
@ 54. wzrd1 : “Totally OT, but I just received my voting report card.
Apparently, I failed, as I didn’t vote in this county while I didn’t live here.”
What the? First time I’ve ever heard of those. Pretty sure we don’t have them here in Oz. Wikipedia has drawn a blank on them..
FSM, the USA’s political system is weird I think..
wzrd1says
StevoR. I really should’ve retained them and scanned them.WTF, over? I failed due to moving acrioss voting
wzrd1says
That should’ve been moving across counties, hence voting districts.
I really should wear my reading glasses when commenting.
Erp@57,
I didn’t say Disraeli was justified in what he said, simply that he’s reported to have said it! Incidentally, Disraeli and Bright were at one time personal friends (I don’t know if this continued), and Disraeli, originally a Radical, retained some non-conservative (small “c”) policies, e.g. pushing through the Second Reform Bill widening the franchise.
Like, yeah; how do you intend to have grandchildren in a way that’s not totally icky?
Nope. The snake told Eve the truth (Gen 3:4-5), whereas YHWH lied to Adam (Gen 2:16-17). When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they did not die that very day. Rather, they knew the difference between good and evil, just as Snakey said.
Proof that Jesus is God and was there at the beginning! Jesus was a carpenter, and they needed someone with those skills to build that fence!
Going off on a tangent a bit; Intelligence is a good thing, especially during emergencies!
“Boris Johnson proven an idiot during 2020”
He was actually worse than Trump!
https://youtu.be/5-kYoJzK46M
And who, pray tell, proved BoJo was an idiot? Some commie Labourite who’d just eaten the “wrong” apple?
I thought BoJo was a self-made bozo.
Raging Bee @ 6
The apple of knowledge, aka the COVID hearings. Very “entertaining” if you like explosions, train derailings or forest fires.
But remember, true wisdom comes from “salt of the earth” type gentlemen without that elitisty “bookish” learning.
That is why I know you need leeches to stop disease.
There’s pretty much a whole comic book about this, but written in German and not translated into English.
At one point Luz (Luci) the talking, horned snake realizes that if Adam stops believing in God, he, Luz, would disappear along with god.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7665547-prototyp
@10 Didn’t know Ralf König wrote on biblical topics! Thanks for the tip, I got to have a look at this.
Without eating the magic apple, the human species would consist of two mindless but immortal people living forever.
It was all a setup anyway.
Why was the magic Tree of Knowledge in the garden anyway? God could have put it anywhere, Australia, Jupiter, the Andromeda galaxy.
Instead he put it right next to two people who had no idea what they were doing.
And, what was the talking snake doing in the garden. Can’t the all powerful god keep track of two people, a Tree, and a Talking Snake?
God is supposedly omniscient but you didn’t need that to know what was going to happen.
Any parent of a two year old could have figured that one out.
It is a crime Ralf König has not been translated to English. Many of his graphic novels are available in Swedish, and I suspect USA is an even bigger market.
Tabby Lavalamp @4. ….and why is there a Ukrainian flag in the background?
Seversky @7 He IS self-made and he worships his maker
My reading of the fairy tale is that Eve and Adam did nothing wrong, and they were not punished. Yahweh acted as a competent wildlife manager, who released the breeding pair into the wild as soon as they showed signs of mental and sexual maturity. Maybe the two felt bad about losing the free meals, but they were ready, and they made out okay.
By the way, Adam gave up Paradise for her. It’s a love story!
Waaaaaay back when I went to Sunday school, I found myself wondering as early as 2nd grade where all these other villagers down the road came from if Adam and Eve were the only two people. In 8th grade, I started wondering about incest. By the time I got to high school, I started wondering how inbreeding was not more of a problem. In my opinion, anyone who is reasonably intelligent should at the very least wonder how there were a bunch of people down the road if only two were created in the first place.
@16 asclepias wrote: anyone who is reasonably intelligent should at the very least wonder how there were a bunch of people down the road if only two were created in the first place.
I reply: I guess we’re all mutants! /sarcasm?! Or, at least, by their behavior, all the Rtwingnut Xtian terroristss are mutants! (doesn’t that make sense)
Imagine writing the opening part of Genesis and not thinking the snake is the hero of the story. What, you want people to remain ignorant and easy to control? That is basically just parental abuse
Yeah, well, that’s not the only sign of an abusive mindset Yahweh shows…
Ask a Christian “what does God want from us?” and you will get an answer like “To worship him and love each other” or something, which is not giving us any actual consideration you might notice. But then reword it to say “What does God want humanity in general to accomplish? What do we DO?” and you will get nothing.
Why? because if the Bible story is true, God is a PET owner, and we’re the pets. It’s not good or evil, it’s having a pet to watch and play with. we’re not loved as we understand it, we’re patronizingly loved like “Ooo, I LOVE that rabbit!”. doesn’t mean we’d die for it if push came to shove, unlike love for OUR children which most parents would do.
Think of it…Genesis makes it clear we’re not supposed to be intelligent…the moment we were we were kicked out. We weren’t supposed to invent anything because all needs and desires (limited without intelligence) were taken care of in “paradise”. We were to wander around, love God, and mate occasionally. No goals, no dreams, no point…just be happy contented and entertaining in ignorance of literally everything. Have you ever tried to teach your cat how to attend college to further it’s development? No of course not. Just like God never bothered teaching A&E anything.
But Adam was alone and bored, unhealthy so eve was “made” (after testing out the other animals…use your imagination on bestiality WITHOUT lust of any form, no sin yet remember?). So now Adam has Eve, so go ahead and breed if you want, more purebreds make a nice collection.
Now think of your average cat or dog owner. Isn’t the desires basically the same? Just saying to the pet figuratively “Be comfortable and good, love me back, and I’ll care for you. Don’t get too smart though or you’ll be a threat and I’ll throw you into the wild woods! I don’t really care if you try to do anything else because nothing you do is
meaningful to me. Just be cute and I’ll play with you occasionally. Sometimes my little sister might shake your cage, sorry.”
There is a parallel you have to admit.
It is worse than that.
The better model is that we are god’s ant farm.
God doesn’t do much or even pay much attention to us.
Once he got mildly annoyed with us and poured a lot of water on the farm.
The ants call that the Deluge and made up a story about a Big Boat.
And, one day in the future, god is going to lose all interest and destroy the ant farm.
@4 that comment just makes me think of the following :P
“Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long”
submoron@14,
I’ve seen that (in the words “He is a self-made man, and worships his creator”) attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, talking about John Bright.
You know, they say Jesus was a Carpenter, but I always thought it was just Richard and Karen!
UnknownEric the Apostate @23
To soon man! To SOON!*
*I was curious so I looked it up. Damn. 40 years to the year since she died. Time flies!
And what Genesis writing idiot thought that snakes eat dust? Had they never observed snakes catching prey? I don’t know what snakes occur in the region where the writer(s) of Genesis lived so maybe those species are hard to observe feeding? And having had this thought, the internet os full of creationist apologetics saying that snakes can occasionally ingest dust while eating, or Jacobson’s Organ may involve breathing in dust. I never, after all this time, fail to be amazed bu the lengths these morons will go to pretend that a 2500 year old document is valid.
@4, @23 I kept trying to post a link to Ministry’s “Jesus Built my Hot Rod” but apparently it got blocked or is held up (I first assumed it was a phone error, but the second one posted from the computer is not posting either :P ) but in reference to the carpenter joke, I just think about that opening line from the song:
“Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long”
@25, the writers of the bible believed some ridiculous things about animals, so that doesn’t surprise me.
In Chapter 1, God creates humans in His image; male and female. God does this by His Word. no dirt.
There is no mention of numbers. Nowhere does it specify that there was 1 (one) of each. There could have been hundreds.
The only instruction they received was to be fruitful and multiply. Which they did.
Because by Chapter 2, there was no one to til the earth ( because the Chapter 1 lot were off in the bushes, fruitfully multiplying.)
God did the ‘rib’ trick on dirt-boy (AKA ‘Adam’) to produce “Eve”.
Adam and Eve had 3 male offspring who got their “wives” from those Chapter 1 folk, who were still fruitfully multiplying.
No incest. No worries.
@27 Almost as if they were very restricted in their travels and had heard of some strange beasts from other lands but had never actually seen them. But also some bizzare beliefs about for example the genetics of sheep (goats?). Just looked up, There are some 25 very diverse snake (though no pythons) species in the Middle East. It can only be I think that the biblical writers had no interest in knowing anything about the animal diversity/behaviour/ecology of the region. No proto-scientific curiosity in the way Ancient Greeks had, nor practical observation in the hunter-gatherers like Australian Aborigines had.
No interest, and it seems no accurate information from “god”.
I’m into derivative sin. Nothing original about it.
killyosaur @26
This?
https://youtu.be/GXCh9OhDiCI?si=MmrLivYg8YmUfqrG
I was heavy into Ministry back then. Maybe too much into “N.W.O.” Filth Pig was intense.
As for whether Jesus was a carpenter, he was wooden:
A supergroup before Pearl Jam was even a thing.
Raging Bee @19
He reminds me of my Evil Ex in all the worst ways.
@31 exactly. Though when I would post it, my post vanished into the ether. Ah well, its out there :D (that song, and Al Jorgenson’s work with Jello Biafra were my first exposures to Ministry, then I started hanging out at a local goth club which meant a lot more exposure :P )
@30, all I am thinking about is calculus now. So Derivative sin just moves the exponents and drops the constants…
Should say reduces the exponents, it’s after midnight here, I should consider going to bed.
UnknownEric the Apostate @ 23, well, threesomes can get complicated and messy, if the duo originating such are confused and uncertain.
nomdeplume @ 25, given I’ve crawled through the dust of much of the Levant, well, yeah, I ate dust, snakes do as well and well, anything walking, crawling or wriggling eats dust, the shit’s finer than portland cement dust, suspends in the air quite well for literally days to weeks.
But then, I blew my nose far too often and it was colored tan.
I’ll give a bit of artistic license there.
Literalists, well, they’re welcome to a spear that I’ll especially forge for their anal attention…
killyosaur @ 27, not only animals. Children, especially infants were equally fair game. As in circumcision without pain relief, “because infants don’t feel pain like adults do”. Despite tons of evidence of massive spikes in blood pressure, stress hormones and screams during the procedure…
My response has been, “physicians don’t experience pain like humans do…”.
Then, expose my old fighting knife.
After the inevitable heart attack, I cut the orange in my other hand.
Carefully, the last time I cut a fruit or veggie, I couldn’t figure out the discoloration on my potatoes briefly, then realized my finger wandered into the tip of the knife range and was bleeding.
With a rather short recorded bleeding time, that took 15 minutes to staunch fully.
Yeah, I keep my knives keen, to lessen injuries, as long as I pay attention.
Oddly missed, the Genesis gap. God created Adam and Steve or something, male and female or something, big fucking gap, then has to create Eve as an afterthought.
No clue who Lilith was…
nomdeplume @ 29, there’s a treatise out about a related topic, when hunter-gatherer vs farmer became a thing of societal conflict. Just around the time Genesis was “originally penned” (given originally, it was oral history, then that new fangled writing thing came about from those crazy “farmers”)…
And the origin of the fable about Cain and Abel.
Farmer/herder/gatherer vs farmer.
A stretch, beyond Stretch Armstrong, but hey.
Go with the blow when you’re on the spread.
And I’m Super Gumby in some ways.
I’ll work with anyone, eventually, I’ll have to cut them off, by the gonads if necessary, figuratively speaking, of course.
As for the fictive Jesus, wood working and whatnot.
My father was a stone mason by trade and accomplishment. Knew how to perform slump tests on concrete off of the truck via locally acquired material and manage it successfully to lab specifications.
I can’t manage that one. Can manage most of his fetes otherwise, just not that one.
I can work concrete, mortar, bricks and stones (cutting with a hammer and occasionally, a chisel and more.
He was offered numerous jobs at higher pay, but more seasonal, he sacrificed to go year round employment by a loyal employer.
One who bounced me on his knee, asking me to call him Zeydah. Fitting in well with our neighborhood at the time.
His son, not worth much, pretty much destroyed the company he inherited and embezzled tons of money to invest in his Wawa chain, which evaporated when the union found the money stolen from pensions. Zeydah loving the union and occasionally loathing it…
Life’s complicated, history is the same, prehistory, erm, do you really want to get into space junk versions of history?
@ 30 Morales
Wait ’til you learn about integral sin – you add everything with infinite limits.
@37 snakes keep their mouths closed except when striking or eating, I don’t believe they ever get dust in the mouth, even accidentally. And Genesis has them “eating” dust, as if this was how they subsisted.’
@37 snakes keep their mouths closed except when striking or eating, I don’t believe they ever get dust in the mouth, even accidentally. And Genesis has them “eating” dust, as if this was how they subsisted.’
KG @22. Thanks, I should have checked myself.
@20. mamba :
What sort of pet owner is God and what would we think of one that has a load of, say, cats or dogs but doesn’t like how they are behaving so he drowns all but one of them. In front of that one survivor which he keeps alive because it is the most submissive and slavishly obdient one that is most terrified of him? (God-fearing..) An owner that infact does that on several occassions massacring pets he doesn’t like that aren’t doing what he wants because he can? (Sodom, the Amalekites, Canaanites, etc..) and even really harshly and cruelly punishing – torturing – his one chosen pet (cat or dog or whatever) for not strictly doing what he orders? What sort of owner does that make God if we are his pets and a pet owner were to treat their pets as go does inthe Bible – setting pet against pet and encouraging them to kill and harm each other? Also abandoning them regularly for seemingly endless amounts of time. Ignoring their cries and screams of pain as they are murdered and tortured?
If the Biblical Yahwah / Jehovah was a pet owner and humans his pets, then he’d be the sort of pyscopathic owner taken tocourt by the RSPCA and banned from owning another living thing ever again – even being fined and jailed.
The idea that flies have four legs kills all credibility.
There is also the bit with bats regarded as birds.
And the bajillion quintillion concepts borrowed from mesopotamian and Egyptian myths.
If you want to go go even further in detail, please read “The Memoirs of God”.
It shows how the older parts of the OT are very similar to other Caananeic religions as per the documents retrieved from Ugarit. It also describes the gradual development of the OT over centuries.
Unfortunately the book has been out of print sone time driving up prices but you might find it in a well-stocked University library.
If you really want to pick the lowest-hanging fruits of flawed holy scriptures, try the koran and associated hadiths.
I am not going there in detail today with the war going on as trolls might yell “islamophobe”.
(FYI I am an equal-rights BS-phobe)
Good grief. Entirely the wrong Abrahamic religion.
There is no original sin in Islam. You know, the topic at hand.
(Nor are hadiths scripture)
@12 raven Actually… No. The “original” version of the story, as opposed to the edited version you get in many Christian Bibles, and all versions that make it into some form of propaganda film to promote it, had two trees. One of them was the tree of knowledge, but the other was the tree of immortality. Man was literally given a choice in that version, a three edged choice, 1) don’t eat either of them, and die an ignorant, ape like, creature, like any other animal, lacking distinction from any other of gods supposed great creations, 2) eat the from the tree of immortality and become immortal, like angels, but lose the capacity to ever become intelligent beings, who where capable of making their own choices, or 3) eat from the tree of knowledge and become like God in mind – aka self obsessed, paranoid, jealous, with the ability to choice to act self destructively by inventing ways to do the stupidest shit imaginable, even when it ran contrary to their own well being, or the respect of their fellow apes – much as a certain Biblical, supposedly all powerful, all loving, nutter seems to have self sabotaged with contradictory rules, lies, confusing and wrong explanations and some form of divine bipolar disorder.
It was a grift from the beginning, as you say, but it was one that, given the alternatives, was going to have a bad outcome no matter which option was chosen. lol
Its kind of a weird conceit if you think about it, “If you don’t think, just mostly obey, and if you do make a mistake, believe really hard in the healing power of Jesus, God will grant you what those two nitwits rejected by picking the wrong tree, and make you immortal after you die.” Always looking for that get out of consequences free card, even from the very beginning….
John Morales @ 45
Mr. M was clear about asking too many questions is wrong, but just accepting the literal interpretation is good.
So looking for explanations of things that sound iffy is a big no. In other words the independent quest for knowledge is bad, even if no fruits are involved.
.
As for the serpent in the OT, as discussed some years ago the intention was to discredit an animal associated with a rival goddess.
.
-We have not mentioned the Klieg lights Jahwe had rigged up to light the universe before he created the sun, but I assume he had moved those back into storage by the time Adam and Eve came around.
FWIW. As a pet owner who has a dog and is owned by a cat, I have a couple of rules for them. Roughly. My cat isn’t allowed outside because she was caught red-pawed poaching the neighbours goldfish. So she gets an oudoor enclosure with a skywalk that he loves built specially for her. Yet she still makes a break for it & races out the door like a rocket when she can. She’s a big fat cat but when she wants to, she can easily move faster than me. Duck under trees and bushes and escape outside. Then come inside when she chooses too. Which usually isn’t that long & Ienable her to coem nsie again by opening the usally closeed catflap & doors..
At which point I .. shut her escape routes, try to keep her inside and .. make sure she knows I still love her because I do & am always worried about what might happen toher when she is outside..
Then try to keep her inside my house in future. I never punish her becaise I don;t think she’d understand why I’d do that nor do I think that would help or stop her. It wouldn’t help & would only hurt in my view.
Also my dog will occassionally try to bring bones inside which I don’t want her to do so .. I will say ..NO.Loudly & then take the bones and chuck them out of the door and that’s it.
I don’t torment my dog or blame her for trying and bein’ y’know, a dog.
She stll gets pats and food and love I just.. don’t let her bring bones into my house.
Oh & these two pets – or family members – I have. They love and groom each other & get on so very well and this delights me. I am so happy they do and make sure they both know they are very much loved by me. I would be heartrboken if eitehr one gahremd or killed the other. It would aginy and horrific to me if they did. Took my ca a week or so toet use dtomy new dog an so absolutely overjoyed they get on so very well now.
Contrast that with Yahwah / Jehovah / XN diety.
Huh.
No endlessly tormenting, No blaming them for being .them .. and no, y’know, genocide.. So… Dafuck?!
I am so very far from being perfect or the best ethical human but .. Yahweh / Jehoveah fails this simple test so bad? But is meant to be the ideal? Fk That!
Typo fixes for clarity :
Then my cat comes inside when she chooses too. Which usually isn’t that long & I enable her to come inside again by opening the usally closed catflap & doors..
Oh & these two pets – or ( Definitley AND) family members – I have. They love and groom each other & get on so very well and this delights me. Fills me with utter joy. I am so happy they do and make sure they both know they are very much loved by me. I would be heartbroken if either one harmed or killed the other. It would agony and horrific to me if they did. Took my cat a week or so to get used to my new* dog and so absolutely overjoyed they get on so very well now.
So Yahwah as a pet owner ..? No. What a nightmare douchebag of one & how utterly unaccepeble his conduct..
.* For over a year and a half ish now
The gods we create(d) tend to be personifications of the world as we perceive it. Vast, powerful, deadly, capricious. It also seems fairly common to try and make some of them appear as though they care about us (personally, or as a tribe, or a nation, or a race etc). Balancing those can be tricky!
Anyway: I see the Garden of Eden story as a myth about the awakening of self-awareness in humans*, and the costs that come with that (e.g. existential angst).
*Whether we are that different from other animals is debatable, but a large number of us have certainly seen ourselves that way.
submoron@41,
I wasn’t criticising! I’ve no idea if Disraeli was the first to use it, and it’s probably been employed repeatedly since he did.
John Morales@30,
Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag
Totally OT, but I just received my voting report card.
Apparently, I failed, as I didn’t vote in this county while I didn’t live here.
If I ever meet the village idiot that generated that waste of paper, I will beat that individual to death using their own gonads to do so, for both the waste of a tree and my time.
Twice.
The third time being the charm, I’ll shoot them out of a circus cannon.
I’m sure that, if cornered, the party would disclaim AI usage.
As if I couldn’t chip it in the nards… Or nard it in the chips.
Oh, screw it, nard its chips.
Now, where was I again? Oh, domestic violins.
A true horror in my hands.*
*Stringed and woodwind instruments in my hands literally constitute a war crime.
@37 oh no, I am fully aware of other absurdities. I was mostly responding to the fact that the poster of the comment I responded to was “surprised” that the bible contains statements that clearly know nothing about the nature of snakes :P
@38 I need to get more clear on eigen-sin as that may be helpful as I work through my current class :D
John Morales @ 30
It should be the ambition of every sapient being to invent at least one brand new sin, preferably several. Studying Bond villains and old Hammer films is good for getting in the right frame of mind.
@22 I’ve seen that (in the words “He is a self-made man, and worships his creator”) attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, talking about John Bright.
John Bright was a radical MP where Disraeli was a conservative one. Bright opposed the corn laws which drove up the price of grain and put it out of reach of the poor in famine years, he opposed UK involvement in the Crimean war, a prominent abolitionist, and opposed those who wanted the UK to support the Confederacy during the US Civil War. He also opposed the established church (he was a Quaker) and was considered a brilliant orator. He had his flaws, he supported male enfranchisement but not that of women (his eldest child, Helen, was an outspoken supporter of female enfranchisement).
If a sin isn’t original do you have to pay a copyright or patent fee? Is not doing so a sin of its own and doing so a virtue that cancels some or all of the non-original sin? Derivative sin?
@ 54. wzrd1 : “Totally OT, but I just received my voting report card.
Apparently, I failed, as I didn’t vote in this county while I didn’t live here.”
What the? First time I’ve ever heard of those. Pretty sure we don’t have them here in Oz. Wikipedia has drawn a blank on them..
FSM, the USA’s political system is weird I think..
StevoR. I really should’ve retained them and scanned them.WTF, over? I failed due to moving acrioss voting
That should’ve been moving across counties, hence voting districts.
I really should wear my reading glasses when commenting.
Oh, StevoR:
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/elections-verify/voting-report-card-mailers-are-legal-in-most-states-midterms-fact-check/536-2e72ab6b-28b3-4043-89c8-08a00e4301e3
Yeah, a real idiotic thing.
Idiotic, as a fairly simple logic test would’ve prevented their odd gaffe, given my year ago move between counties.
As in, given the logic required and voter numbers, the wait to completion would only be under a minute or so. Used to do regular expression searches with a far more extensive data source, so yeah, I’ve got a lot of experience on that subject.
Erp@57,
I didn’t say Disraeli was justified in what he said, simply that he’s reported to have said it! Incidentally, Disraeli and Bright were at one time personal friends (I don’t know if this continued), and Disraeli, originally a Radical, retained some non-conservative (small “c”) policies, e.g. pushing through the Second Reform Bill widening the franchise.