Book Review

[Riverwind (imported)]

I got this email from a member (Jesus) who turned me on to this book, I read the reviews and the first couple pages and downloaded it on my Nexus,

The name of the book is 'Being Gay is Disgusting or God likes the smell of Burning Fat.'

It is a book about the first 5 books of the Bible, (yes that one) It points out some of the things that are dangling out there with no further references ever. It covers the years between leader and kings, it is totally disrespectful to fundamentalist religion.

So if you like satire, you will love this book.

I have made it through Genesis and am half way through Exodus.

You do want to grab your copy of the King James for references.

Enjoy

River

Small sample:

So Moses went for coffee at Pharaoh's place one last time. "At midnight in a few days' time, God's going to come through town and kill the first-born of every human and animal, including your son, buddy. And everyone will cry.(99)

(99) So here's a death tally for those of you playing at home: All the livestock were killed in the fifth plague. These dead animals were then afflicted with boils in the sixth plague and killed again by hail in the seventh plague. Finally, the twice-killed first-born animals are killed for a third time in the tenth plague.

[JesusA (imported)]

Here's an edited version of what I originally sent to River (and several other friends and Archive members):

The latest issue of Freethought Today has an interview with Edward Falzon, the author of Being Gay is Disgusting, or, God Likes the Smell of Burning Fat. In the interview he points out that only about 5% of professed Evangelical Christians have read the Bible all the way through. (That seems higher than what I've found talking to a number of them.) Here are a couple of Q&A from the interview:

Q. Which of the immoral and bizarre decrees supposedly handed down by God is the most disturbing?

A. It's probably a 15-way tie. Maybe killing your children for being disobedient or slicing open the bellies of unarmed, pregnant women for being Canaanite. How about a god requiring a man to gut his own son to test how much he fears his god? Slavery is not only sanctioned but mandated and codified. Rape is an effective way to gain a wife. The list goes on.

Q. Why the subtitle "God likes the smell of burning fat?"

A. Partly for surrealism and partly to further illustrate the nonsense in these allegedly holy books. In the U.S. ("One nation under God"), no organization lobbies the government to burn the fat of sacrificed animals to please Yahweh. Churches don't even do it themselves, but yet they still scream about how gayness is a sin.

<°)))><

From the book, here is his quick overview of the entire book of Genesis (before he goes into it in much greater detail):

It begins. In this book, a god named Elohim makes the world, then floods it and kills everyone except Noah and his kids. Years later, seeing that everyone is getting along just a bit too well, he separates them all and invents multiple languages so they can no longer work together.

Then Abraham is visited by a god named El the Almighty and sets the scene for the creation of several Dynasties and even severaller wars. Genesis ends with the story of Joe, who interprets dreams with uncanny accuracy, and also owns a nice coat. Joe dies in the very last paragraph... oh, did I give away the ending? Crap.

[moi621 (imported)]

Book ?

ba, ba, ba oook ?

[Riverwind (imported)]

Yes Moi, some of us actually read books, I read all the time and try to read a novel a week along with several short stories.

River

[Slammr (imported)]

More atheists than Christians have read the Bible, which is most likely why they are atheists, for how could anyone possessing intelligence read the Bible and believe it's the word of any god? Both Einstein and Niels Bohr believed at first until they got older, when both said, essentially, "How could I have ever believed that?. It can't be true."

[Paolo]

One of my favorites is Jesus (C) losing his temper and beating the shit out of the money changers in the temple. "Love your neighbor, turn the other cheek...and..."What the fuck is THIS?!" Then you can see him going all "Granddad" a'la "The Boondocks" on the guys! Oh, hang on, what was the Aramaic word for "fuck"?

The Great Flood? Probably. There are plenty of ancient records to support this. I rather like the notion of wiping out 99.9% of humanity.

I also enjoyed the part about Sodom and Gomorrah. Some would say that Planet X/Nibiru and a meteor swarm did that, though.

As for the cryptic and often mushroom-trippy-inspired book of Revelations, well, what more could you ask for? Four Horsemen wreaking havoc, total chaos and such? What's not to like there?

Doom, death, damnation, and destruction!

What has come to bother me most about the Bible, and having been raised in the Christian faith, is that the book was formed up by the Council of Nicea. "Let's keep this, let's toss this, who is this Enoch mutha fucka? Get dat shit outta here, he musta been trippin'!" Who were they to decided what went into the Bible and what didn't? What about the Apocrypha? What bothered them about the Gospel of Thomas? They always taught us that Thomas had it right - don't believe it when someone comes around saying "I am Christ!"

I still believe in God. I don't have any issues with Jesus. Anyone who tears up the temple is pretty cool in my book, and the man didn't have to cook - he just kept passing out the loaves and fishes! I need that recipe.

What I do have problems with is this Lord High Hateful Bastard that the Catholics and such chase around, usually through His divine Secretary. I cannot explain the origins of the Universe, therefore, I can accept that someone 'higher' than me created it.

I also have problems with the timelines and archeological evidence of late. One example is the Orion Correlation Theory of the 3 pyramids at Giza. Spin the star map back 10k years and lo and behold, they line up! The Sphinx is a lion looking at the constellation of Leo way back when on the Solstice. Or was it the Equinox? I forget. No matter. We're a lot older than we're led to believe. I have to come believe that Adam and Eve were in fact a 'reboot' of life on this planet. For all I know, we're Martian immigrants. Maybe Noah's ark was a spacecraft?

But back to the topic, I never understood why God wanted a BBQ'd sheep or goat. I also held those dodge questions by the Minister in high suspect. For instance, if God knew who would go to Heaven or Hell, why'd He create this mess to begin with? Seems like an awful waste of time, and a pretty mean thing to do. I was a 10 year old blasphemer, you see, who also wanted to know what Daniel and those eunuchs were up to and why!

Sounds like an entertaining read here, though!

[fhunter]

As for the cryptic and often mushroom-trippy-inspired book of Revelations, well, what more could you ask for? Four Horsemen wreaking havoc, total chaos and such? What's not to like there?

Well, it is hot in the place it was written. You do not need mushrooms, sun is enough .

I still believe in God. I don't have any issues with Jesus. Anyone who tears up the temple is pretty cool in my book, and the man didn't have to cook - he just kept passing out the loaves and fishes! I need that recipe.

One of the soviet fiction writers (Ilya Varshavsky if I remember correctly), wrote a story "Hysteresis loop", in which he speculated on Jesus being a researcher who went back in time, searching for the mythical figure of Jesus Christ (and obviously not finding him). I liked the play on "turning water into wine" - that was... vodka . Do not remember exactly what happened to loaves and fishes there, but this episode was also mentioned.

[Paolo]

The story of loaves and fishes comes from the feeding of the 5,000, where a little boy supposedly had a lunch packed and offered it to Jesus. The lunch pack just kept replicating as Jesus passed out food. Then he and the 12 cleaned up the mess. Must have been a pretty long day, I think?

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

I am, more than ever, a devoted follower of Spood The Obtuse. No matter how much you pray or how fervently you appeal you will never get what you ask for. I can believe in that kind of reliable consistency. --FLO--

[moi621 (imported)]

The Great Flood? Probably. There are plenty of ancient records to support this. I rather like the notion of wiping out 99.9% of humanity.

I also enjoyed the part about Sodom and Gomorrah. Some would say that Planet X/Nibiru and a meteor swarm did that, though.

"Know, O Prince, that between the years when the ocean drank Atlantis and the Rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of... the Hyborian Age

And before there was

The Thurian Age was a specific epoch of Earth's pre-history. It predates the Hyborian Age and is known to them as the Pre-Cataclysmic Age.

The main continent is called Thuria, although smaller continents such as Atlantis and an unnamed Eastern continent exist, as do several island chains. Most of the planet is unexplored wilderness inhabited by "scattered clans and tribes of primitive savages."

A great cataclysm ends the Thurian Age . Several countries sink into the sea, others rise from it, and the rest is devastated by earthquakes and volcanoes. Civilization is destroyed and the survivors attempt to build a new culture but warfare and a Lesser Cataclysm strike, creating the Hyborian Vilayet Sea and destroying any last remnants of Thurian society.