Sitting in the living room, reading to your child may not be the standard moment to have a revelation about your life but tonight that exact thing happened. I doubt that my two year old can fully comprehend the story behind Terry Pratchett’s, Wee Free Men, but I think a child simply relaxes to the sound of parental mumbling not caring too much about the whole story. While the boy softly snored on my arm something struck me, I would have never gotten to read this book as a kid. The story of Tiffany Aching’s magic abilities and her friends, the foul mouthed Pictsies would never have even been allowed in my childhood home. Being raised in a Christian house can limit your library, when you are not allowed to eat Lucky Charms or Trix Cereal because they “condone the practice of magic”, you can guess that ones sources of reading material may be a tad underwhelming at best. ”The only book you ever need is the bible”, this was a common phrase heard where, how and when I grew up. Most other books were inspired by the evils of man or even worse, demonic forces from the middle of our planet. I later discovered that the middle of our planet was inhabited by Morlocks, dinosaurs, the continent of Pellucidar but mostly molten iron, nickle and other variable impurities. I did read the bible, actually a few times, cover to cover, in some sort of youthful search for a higher truth that I was told only it could bring. The first time, it was a search for answers, a search that brought up more questions. The second, it was a quest for resolution, to see if the new questions were simply me being overly skeptical. The other times, just to bait the logic bear inside my brain meat. I would like to use this forum to answer some questions that I have brought up due to the reading of religious text. Feel free to follow along, sure it is a bit self indulgent but so is masturbating in a sushi kitchen, that doesn’t mean we haven’t all tried it.
First off, why are religious authors so fucking horrible at developing a cogent story line? The bible is great for this, it is a mish-mash of unrelated, contradicting or just plain horribly written stories that have somehow gotten people to believe them. Have you ever tried to read the texts of L. Ron? Holy fuckawful, that in not a poorly written pair of words, that is a new word unto itself; Fuckawful: Adjective. Anything related to the works of L. Ron Hubbard. How about the Book of Mormon? So bad that Joseph Smith got him and his brother killed for printing that shit. There are now joke religions based on Harry Potter and Star Wars that actually make more sense than Christianity ever could. A boy that survived and later destroyed an ancient evil while being taught magic at an invisible university or, an unseen power that controls all things in the universe that some people, being that they are tuned to the universal frequency, can hook into and use to benefit them? Makes way more sense than the entire book of Genesis. I know we Atheists love to pick on Noah’s Ark but, come on, it is so repulsively idiotic. If someone wrote that shit now it could only get published if it had sparkling vampires or was written from the perspective of a woman who never had sex before but wanted to tell you what it probably wouldn’t be like if she had it, also she was on an ark . How can people fear a beast from the ocean destroying the world of man but not worry that their children are, sailing over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day, to where the wild things are, because they were sent to bed without supper?
I hate hearing that the bible is the best selling book of all time. Is that supposed to make it good? Have people ever read a good book? An estimated six point five billion bibles have been sold in the history of keeping track of such things. That is almost a bible per person on the planet and when you consider that there are an estimated two billion Christians on the planet, that is way more fucking bibles than any one person needs or may want. I understand that the whole “Have a bible in your house or get burned to death”, argument has been around for a long time but, in a world that is supposed to be able to think for itself; Shouldn’t the sales drop off? I have never bought one of these bibley things but I somehow own seven, all different translations. I love books and have a nice size library but to own that many bibles by accident is pretty amazing. The shear fact that the second most distributed book in our history is “The Quotations of Mao Zedong”, is evidence that some people will use not owning a certain book as a reason to kill you, therefore, a lot of motherfuckers will buy said book. The fact that Cervatez’s Don Quixote is considered the most purchased fiction book in history makes you realize that stories about crazy people attacking invisible monsters is another driving statistic when dealing with literature purchases. The bible is full of invisible things that loonies want to fight or follow. Another factor, where the bible sales are concerned, they do not discriminate by version. Since there are 50 current, printed versions of the bible in existence, they should have to cut the amount per version, that would make a huge difference in the stats, it would also place the Koran in the lead for religious books, the Torah isn’t a big score keeper and the Book of Mormon is limited by the worldwide number of Mormons ,though they do try desperately to shore up the numbers.
Has a religious person ever been in your house and you catch them sneering at your book collection? It has most likely happened to most of us. As a rule I Keep my science books and any literature that may advocate freedom of thought, on the top rows, next comes the sci-fi, comedy and then history followed way at the bottom, by religion. To most people, shelf height holds a direct correlation to value. I enjoy having my books get the stink eye from silly folk. Do you realize how much better story , Stranger in a Strange Land, or The Hitchhikers Trilogy, are than any religious book in existence? The Harry Potter books are usually considered evil by many sects of Christianity, those books are wonderful. They may be full of magic, ghosts, witches, demons and spells but so is the bible. the bible has all of them in one book; remember Legion? That dude was chock fulla demons and his short, shitty story is considered a teaching point for religion lovers. I Had to bring up Potter and Legion in the same stream of thought because of the article I was just reading that claims three young ladies from “Murica are heading or did head, to Brittania to exorcise some demons. Part of their line of reasoning is that the Potter books have spread the act of witchcraft so they are going to the root of the problem. Maybe next they will go to Egypt and burn a mummy, then Transylvania for some staking, after that, jet set to Monster Island and summon Mothra. Part of me really hopes that the story is just a well timed troll but it’s probably not; remember, moronic plus money multiplied by time, usually equals something extra batshit crazy.
A commonly heard, pro-bible argument is the ” It may be fictional but it does have some great humanitarian value”. I have never fully grokked this line. The bible is full of murder, rape, genocide, slavery, and various other atrocities. The ten commandments are inane at best. Commandments 1and 2 are the same thing basically, 3 is not possible because we invented hammers and god would have invented thumbs and that is that. Number 4; Are you ready for some football? If so, you failed 4. Number 5, I know several people with really bad parents, fuck them and their shitty existence, number 5 is irrelevant. Numbers 6,7,8, see the fore mentioned atrocities. Number 9, this one tends to stump me. Was lying about your neighbor a thing once? It must have been pretty widespread to work rape out of the big ten. This makes me think that people of early biblical times were just bitchy about really cunty little shit and made up silly lies, to make things more interesting while they waited to die of a stomach bug or scratch they got in the field. Finally we get to 10, not possible. Everyone covets, everyone lusts, everyone wants what they don’t have. Fuck 10, it is stupid. You may know that Psalm 137:9 basically says, happy are the baby killers. Is any book that advocates smashing babies on a rock going to have any inverse humanitarian value? Having read many, many books chronicling several wars that actually happened, I doubt that all of the deaths and violence in all of these books combined holds a candle to any given book in the Old Testament or, of course, Revelation, wherein everybody dies. I focus mostly on the bible because it is the silliness that I was raised on, so don’t bother me about attacking the Tipitaka or something, I am surrounded by annoying bible thumpers more than I am enraged Buddhists. At any rate, this is all so aggravating, and has gotten way more long winded than I had expected. So fuck it, comic books and wine until I drop. Later.
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