h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm putting Crepuscular Meadows aside until November. I've run out of new ideas anyway. My November project will be a murder mystery set there.

For now, I'm reading the King James version of the Bible online. it's free. I like the elegance of the words. I've read two books of the Bible as "literature," but not the whole thing.

It's the most significant book that I haven't read cover to cover. If David had lived in our times, his psalms would surely have won him the Nobel Prize.

Some of the reasoning is fascinating, almost funny, though I fear laughing. Would a bolt of lightning hit me?

Today I read books 1-31 of Genesis.

Noah is a strange case. Wouldn't the waters have killed all the vegetation? If so, why did Noah take no plants?

Or did plants survive on the tops of the mountains?

Genesis also has a somewhat curious policy toward wives. God only created one wife: Eve. When her descendants started propagating, somehow they managed to find wives. Did God go around creating wives for them at first, until enough generations went by for potential wives to be generated the normal way?

the Ark was 450 feet long, but only 75 feet wide. That's 6 times as long as wide. Was this a good navigational design? If a large wave hit it sideways, it could tip over. Or did God make sure that didn't happen? And did God help Noah plan for how much food to take, not just for his family, but also for the animals?

And why was God so good to Jacob? He cheated his brother not once, but twice. I realize that arguing with God in those days was futile, but still. Even Isaac was pissed off at him . Ah, one big happy family, though not as dysfunctional as the first generation, when Cain killed Abel. And, God made it clear that anyone who killed Cain would face God's wrath. Huh?

God created the very first humans. Now that we've had more generations of humans to study, we know how important it is to have good role models. Boys learn to be men by studying their fathers or male mentors. God was not cut out to be a role model for humans. Unless you argue that, in he day when Genesis was being written, exile was considered the proper response to disobedience. In which case, the people who wrote genesis thought God *was* a good role model. And how about Eve? If she had had a proper mother, the mother would have warned her about the serpent. Adam was a pushover as far as resisting Eve and the snake. Would a proper fatherly presence have kept him out of trouble?

Speaking like a true atheist you are - as Yoda would have put it

God created Man in his own image. Both Adam and Eve are always pictured with navels. Thus follows that God had a navel, yes? So who was God's Mother?

As for the Ark some claim it has been found on Mount Ararat in what is now called Turkey. See for yourself here or google the words 'noah', 'ark' and 'ararat' there's about a ton of pictures and live footage to be found

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxpcOvvsgKw

I think the one thing that's clear from reading Genesis is that it was not meant to be read literally. It only makes sense as allegory with a deep psychological truth.

We don't know that. And since these words were probably written long after they were first spoken, and have been translated numerous times since, there is ample space for speculation.

I believe (!) religions are based on attempts to explain where everything comes from - and how we ought to behave.

Genesis is about God's chosen people, the Jews, yes? That there are other peoples is therefore not surprising, is it?

So, God created the Jews, but someone else created the non-Jews? That sounds like multiple gods.

Atheist, moi? That sounds as if a decision was made to the effect that there isn't, and can't be, a god (or gods). Hey, I can't even find my glasses sometimes. How would I rise to the occasion of knowing so much about the universe that I can be certain about the existence of gods.

I'm a modest man, with much to be modest about.

"We don't know that." No, we don't but then again, I don't know what J K Rowling was thinking when she wrote Harry Potter but I can take an educated guess that she was hoping to provide a story for teenagers who were struggling to cope with the pressures of wanting to conform to peer expectations and the seemingly irrational things which adults in positions of power do.

As you say, Genesis was probably an oral tradition before it was written down which, I suspect, would make it more likely that when it was eventually written it had become an allegory.

"Genesis is about God's chosen people..." I think that's looking at it the wrong way round - it's a story about that particular culture's chosen God.

Isn't Judaism just "a particular culture"? In my eye it is in no other way different from other human cultures.

And of course there are multiple gods. Even if a number of religions claim there is only one. Namely theirs

I believe I'm as modest as you are, paulh. I was raised as a christian but lost all faith at an early age. Since some people described atheism as a kind of faith and I did't believe anything, I believed I was an agnostic. But then someone taught me there are different kinds of agnosticism and that made my so ever since I've just been lazy old me

Have fun reading about the (not ten but) 613 commandments, paulh

"Isn't Judaism just a "particular culture"?" Yes, that was part of the point that I was making - sorry if that was unclear.

Unlike you, I was not raised with any religious faith so I've never been able to recognise any difference between faiths - they're all equally puzzling and fascinating to me.

613 commandments is way more than I want to deal with.

It is I who should apologize, Chris Morris. Your point was clear enough and I should have realized that before I posted. Please except my apologies and bear with me

I agree with you about religions being "all equally puzzling and fascinating". Douglas Adams is quoted for saying: "I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." I couldn't agree more.

I hope your version of the Bible mentions all the original 613 commandments, paulh. They make for an interesting read.

In the 3rd century C.E., a rabbi mention4d 613 commandments. The Talmud says that there are that many, but it dos not mention them.

So, the Bible is not the source for them.

And, i I am not jewish, am I required to follow them?

They are outdated at best. I mean, who asks for a reasonable price to sell his daughter for these days? Or kills his neighbor for sowing different crops in the same field? Or for wearing shirts made of different fibers?

So no, I wouldn't follow them. Not all of them anyway.



PS: Another puzzle: Why does God's chosen people not live in God's own country?

I won't answer that, at least not for free.

I'm up to chapter 15 of "Exodus," which has some familiar lines. handel's librettist used hem in "Israeli n Egypt."

And then, in Chapter 17, there's manna from heaven. I hadn't realized that manna was so early in the Bible. I thought it was new testament.

Jeez, Paulh, I've read the Bible several times front-to-back. It can be quite enlightening and fun also. But do read it critically! It does contain lots of mythology, some deep thought, lots of puzzling stuff as well. It's been compounded from a variety of different writings that originate from different times and places and those ancient 'editors' who brought all the books together (in two main, separate events: first mostly the Babylonian exile for the 'Old Testament' and then the first three or so centuries of the Christian era for the 'New Testament') likely did fiddle with the texts to try and make things consistent ... not always very successfully. So enjoy!

Exodus 21:24 literally says "an eye for an eye." That's Hammurabi's Code, I believe. So, yes, the Babylonian influence is there. And the ten commandments are just the first part of what God ordered. There's lots more after them.

22;18: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" In never realized thatthe witch hunts had biblical auhorization.

If you're upper class, you're allowed to do things that a poor perosn would be punished for. That is Hammurabi, too.