Let’s say

That I belonged to a social club that met each week.

Let’s say

That the people in the club believed that it was founded by a guy named, I don’t know, Chuck.

Let’s say

Chuck was a homophobic, misogynistic, genocidal old man who lived in a cloud and had the power to make everything happen.

Lastly, let’s say

That because I belonged to this club, I inherited a hatred of all other social clubs in the area.

Okay, now of course no one would ever join this club. It’s ridiculous. However, if this was your religion, you’d be perfectly fine with it.

The Old Testament, for instance, a book held believed to be true by both Christians and Jews, is one of the most outrageous pieces of literature in Western Culture.

For most of it, God is killing people. He wipes out everyone but Noah and his family in one part, destroys two cities and its inhabitants in another, forces Lot to offer his own daughters to be raped, etc.

However, when the O.T. is lacking in violence, it makes up for it in sheer whimsicality and stupidity. This is the same with all religious texts. There really is no room for a reasonable person to believe in some of the “facts” of Juedo-Christain beliefs (I’m not leaving other religions like Islam out on purpose, its just that these strike a little closer to home).

Religous “Facts”:

1.   Sadly (spoiler alert), Noah of the O.T. died at the young age of 950. The good die young.

2.   Although also in the New Testament, it is possible (and actually turned out quite well) to be swallowed by a giant fish, live in there for a while, and be spat back out.

3.   The universe was created by…well God. There isn’t much else to say about that because books like the O.T. say about that much in regard to the beginning of time (cough-COP OUT-cough).

However, taking what some would call “cheap shots” like this at religion isn’t fair because these things aren’t meant to be taken literally. They’re simply meant to be ignored and the good bits should be cherry picked out when needed.

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