Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Sex, Sacrifice, and Male Virgins

It seems like Christianity is obsessed with human sacrifices and virginity. It is more specifically concerned with virgin male sacrifices. Allow me to first discuss a few major examples of human sacrifices. In the book of Genesis, Cain sacrifices an offering of crops and God rejects it. Abel offers a virgin lamb and God accepts his offering. So Cain decides to offer his brother's life as an offering to God. Then something strange happens. Instead of God ending Cain's life for sacrificing his brother, he allows Cain to live and build cities. The descendants of Cain were the originators of metallurgy, music, and herding livestock. Looking at the story from this vantage point allows one to see Abel as the first human virgin sacrifice. (Genesis 4)

Later on in Genesis, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his virgin son Isaac, but God changed his mind allowing Isaac to live. One can also think of Joseph being thrown in the pit by his brothers as a figurative virgin sacrifice.(Genesis 22, Gen. 37)

Those tales were the set-up for the ultimate virgin sacrifice in Christianity. In order to appease an angry divinity, Jesus the unblemished(read virgin) lamb of God had to be sacrificed. Once the offering was accepted, Yahweh was pleased.

When one considers that the focal point of Christianity is a male virgin god, how can someone strive to be Christlike if they already have a sexual encounter? How can Christ be acquainted with the human condition if he never had a one night stand? Even Mary the mother of Jesus conceived the messiah through non sexual means in order for the virgin birth to occur.

Here is the takeaway, according to Paul: (1 Cor. 7)

1. Virgin(abstinent, most Christlike) (1 Cor 7:1, 25-28)
2. Marriage between one man and one woman( permitted but not "god's best") (1 Cor7:1-6)
3. Unmarried and sexually active(worst place, not permitted, shunned with harsh words and penalties) (1 Thess 4:3-8) (1 Cor 6:12-20)

Modern Christianity recognizes that the virgin position is untenable in today's society, so it pushes hard for the next best thing: heterosexual marriage. This is one of the motivations behind the purity pledges, the abstinence only sex education, and the push for traditional marriage.

This focus on sexual purity before marriage can stifle people from having honest conversations about sex and sexuality, especially in the church.

I have tried to show a link between virginity, sex, and human sacrifices that exist with Christianity. I hope you enjoyed the brief essay.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Biblical fantasy

I was always a lover of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. I knew that ancient mythology was full of stories about heroes slaying monsters, fantastic creatures, forbidden love, and the like. Little did I realize that these types of stories were also rooted in the bible. If you asked a rational christian of any stripe, if the Lord of the Rings was a true story, they would probably say, "It's a good piece of fiction, but it's not real." Riddle me this,why do people believe that the stories in the bible are real? In case you missed it, the bible also is a collection of books set in a fantasy world. Here is a list of fantasy elements in the scriptures.(this is by no means a comprehensive list)
1. a fully grown human male made out of dust without a mother
2. a fully grown human female made from the rib of the aforementioned male
3. all sorts of animals made from nothing
4. a talking serpent, who unlike modern snakes has legs
5. a story to explain the current social order that people dwell in, i.e. why women have pain in childbirth, or why men have to plant crops
6. a man who lives for 1,000 years
7. a man who walk with god and vanishes never to be seen again
8. male demi gods mating with human females and creating a race of giants( I guess no female demi gods were available to mate with and I figure the female demi gods didn't want to mate with human males anyway)
9. a giant ark with a male and female of every animal in the world, predator and prey, great and small...from aardvark to zebra and everything else including koalas, pandas, south american pythons, tree sloths, tigers, polar bears, and penguins
10. six people repopulate the entire planet, including the most remote places where humans dwell
11. a magical battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil
12. magical talismans to protect people from the death god
13. magical weapons that can transform to animals and back
14. magical power to control the outcome of a battle based on arm position
15. a magical object that causes the waters of a sea to split apart
16. people having the ability to make a golden calf statue in the middle of the desert, taking the time to dig a pit to refine, heat the gold, melt the gold, cast it into a form, cool it off and have time to worship it, all in a matter of moments
17. If the lord kept striking the israelites with plagues, how did any of them make it out of the desert alive?
18. A talking donkey
19. Giant people and giant fruit
20. a super powered trumpet that can destroy fortified walls
21. the sun standing still because a man told it to do so
22.a superpowered strong man whose strength lies in his hair.
23. This same strong man also killed a lion with his bare hands
24. a king seeking a medium to talk to a dead wise man
25. This dead wise man come back as a ghost and talks to the king
26. Virgin birth
27. Virgin sacrifices(virgin animals and virgin humans) to appease god
28. gods wagering over the life a human
29. reanimated zombie corpses coming back from the dead with magical words
30. demons battling demi-gods over human souls
30. a final battle pitting the forces of good against the forces of evil

I know I left out many more bizarre, macabre, unbelievable elements from the good book, but this is just a start to get you thinking...enjoy !

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Zombies and Ritualized Cannibalism in the "Good Book"

The further away I get from christianity, the more I realize how sick and twisted it is. The belief system is based off of a reanimated corpse returning to the land of the living and how you need to eat his reanimated flesh in order to have a place with him. This article points out the zombie references in the so-called "good book".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-gilmour/biblical-zombie-scenes_b_1643970.html?utm_hp_ref=religion