Were we allowed to read the Bible as we do all other books,
we would admire its beauties, treasure its worthy thoughts,
& account for all its absurd, grotesque & cruel things,
by saying that its authors lived in rude, barbaric times.
Writes Robert Ingersoll.
& Kurt Vonnegut writes:
Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred.
The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively
fourteen-year-old: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.'
...In the beginning...
We all know this part.
I consider it to be one of the good parts of the Bible, despite its being straightforward.
We can't fault the author for starting so simply;
he or she just gets right down to it;
it might not be a hook,
it might not be the jaw-dropping introduction so standard today,
but it's a classic & because of this most famous of beginings,
writers today are aware enough not to start their own modern stories in such a similarly cliched fashion...except for maybe George Lucas.
...God created the heaven & the earth...
I'd say the Good Book is good simply for the cajones it takes to make such a claim...& they're only getting started.
The author goes on to elaborate the mechanism whereby the Main Character, called "God," does all this creating.
It's not a complex process: God wants there to be some light...so there's some light.
...And God said,
Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness...
Who's this "us?"
Our image?
Our likeness?
I like this book more & more.
I can't believe the good folks at The Skeptic's Annotated Bible say there's nothing good in the book of Genesis.
Spoiler Alert: The Good Book never goes on to explain who exactly God's friends are, or who the "us" refers to.
You'll have to listen to late night radio or read hippy trippy woo woo stuff to (maybe) get to the bottom of all that.
Maybe there are a bunch of psychokinetic characters like God going around thinking they want light & animals & firmaments to exist -- & they just say it & it happens.
Maybe it's us from the future, creating ourselves, ouroboros style.
The Bible gets my hopes up, with such an audacious opening chapter.
It might could have won some Hugo or Nebula Awards if it had just stayed consistent throughout the rest of the books.
Skip some boring parts...
& then there's these three new characters & two of them (Adam & Eve) do something "bad" because the 3rd new character (a talking snake!) tells them to do that bad thing, & the LORD God is all...
...[Hey Talking Snake character, you jerk],
because thou hast done this,
thou art cursed above all cattle,
& above every beast of the field;
upon thy belly shalt thou go...
This part is worth reading cuz it's fun to think of what the serpent was like before he was forced [by God] to slither along on his belly.
I like to think the serpent had just floated & glided thru the air & such, before he messed with God's plans.
Skip some boring stuff...skip, skip...skip...
***Message to Christians: The author of this blog is not anti-Christian, nor is he anti-Christianity. In fact, he is quite a fan of Jesus Christ & what he was about. In fact, he tries to live his life like Jesus said to live. However, the author of this blog has a most serious objection to the way in which organized followers of Jesus Christ have behaved over the centuries.
For one example of a book better than the Bible at explaining how to live like Jesus, see Christianity & Evolution, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
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