While we’re sharing reading suggestions, I heartily recommend the Book of Jonah. It’s quite likely a parody of the bloodthirsty mentality that was back then, and still is, way too common. Jonah acts contrary to the other prophets, by trying to run away when God speaks to him, and then when he finally does preach against Ninive, as commanded, he’s successful. Which, ironically, pisses him off, and the book ends with God teaching him about compassion.
But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Flossy is wonderfully weird and often incomprehensible to the point that his or her comments seem like abstract poetry, while the person in question comes off like a badly written ‘button-pushing’ algorithm that could never pass even the most basic of turing tests.
How I see it? Two HS senior football jocks, one of whom has a freshman who looks up to him. It’s a fucking joke to them. Gary lets Stan pick on Joe – bully the crap out of him – and when Stan gets bored, they call it hazing, and Gary lets Joe be the waterboy.
Bullies ain’t worth my time, let alone my slavish worship.
Not even that, though; more like the head coach and his top Senior jock picking on and abusing the adoring Frosh for kicks.
Going by their own lore, Satan was created by God, meaning he could never be God’s equal; so why the happy fuck would God ever need to “prove” anything to one of his creations?
The minute Satan started bumping his gums about Job, God’s reply should have been something like this:
It’s been a couple decades since I read this but at this time I found it interesting.
The short version as best I recall is that the earliest reference to satan was more of a job description that any angel could fulfill. The job was to test a human by throwing a crisis into their path. Farmer Bob is devout but everything goes his way. Please be my Satan and go down and test his faith with some locusts on his crops.
…Fast forward some and the role becomes and entity that represents everything you hate in some “other” group.
Quarterback and Receiver still works, for me for the analogy. Mostly due to the undying worship by Job.
Realistically, if you look at that story, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and Sampson and Eden and… God has some serious red-flag abuser behaviours.
Adam and Eve is especially fucked up. They have no concept of right and wrong, so how could they possibly comprehend that disobedience is wrong? Then when they are capable of understanding it, cut them loose for doing something they couldn’t comprehend when they did it.
It’s like if your toddler said something hurtful, and after explaining to them why that was wrong – and before giving them a second chance or even a chance to apologise – you kicked them out of the house.
And I get that it’s an allegory for the evolution of human intelligence and empathy, and awareness… Ask any of us who are uncomfortable around family we adored in childhood, because we’ve found out how prejudiced they are, but back then we just didn’t know. But asking me to worship the God figure, therein… Well, I used to, until I gained knowledge of right and wrong, but I know what gaslighting and abuse are, now and fuck enabling that shit.
For all those assholes (like Nazis, fascists and the Alt Reich) who only want amplified exposure for their rotten ideas, and don’t actually care about civilized debate?
Absolutely.
Someone on Twitter created it, and @tinoesroho shared it here.
Really, it just sounds like God was the very first BBS mod: easily relatable to by the first users, massively deleted the entire user base except for Noah and his family after the first flame wars, swore never to do that again but dropping the ban hammer got to be so futile that he withdrew more and more, and now even using his username in the BBS is off limits. It’s doubtful if he would ever respond anyways.
Obligatory on topic: Steve King is just another asshole who is all whiney because they called him out on his bullshit, and enough of a cynic to try to use being rebuked for financial gain. It’s a cliche, really.
The way Adam & Even was justified to me back in the day was that God set them up in a situation that he knew they’d do the opposite of what he said he wanted… but really he always knew the outcome. Isn’t that a convoluted way of lying without having to lie? Or doing something terrible without dirtying one’s own hands? That’s like sitting a toddler in front of an expensive vase and then getting angry at the baby for knocking it over when it was known what the likely outcome was. I presume that God wanted humankind to gain knowledge themselves, if true then why the elaborate smoke and mirror show and punishment? As others said, the whole situation is inconsistent and abusive.
Then again i don’t take the Bible as a literal thing, but plenty of people do.
“Look, here’s this little world I coded up, go have fun. But hey, I haven’t implemented file permissions, so just do me a favour and don’t go into the /knowledge/* directory tree. There’s stuff in there that will mess you up.”
As was pointed out to me a few years ago, it also lays out a very precise list of requirements for what Job needs to know and be able to do before being allowed to demand an explanation from God. A lot of those requirements are starting to look pretty achievable over the next couple of generations.
