The Bible’s Eight Goriest Passages
And this is a text that people use to teach their children morality? Via Cracked, eight bible stories that compete with the worst horror novels and slasher movies in terms of grotesque, over-the-top violence, including the impaling of Haman on a 75-foot spike, the serving of John the Baptist’s head on a platter at a banquet, Herod being eaten alive by worms as Godly punishment, a lake of blood filled by crushing masses of people inside a giant wine press, and the dismembering of a prostitute:
“When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, ‘Get up; let’s go.’ But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.…
The Secrets Of Jefferson’s Bible
A close-up of the one of the source books shows Jefferson's meticulous excisions. Source: Smithsonian National Museum of American History (CC)
Mitch Horowitz, perhaps the leading editor of occult books working today, ponders how The Jefferson Bible might have changed history, for CNN:
Imagine the following scenario: A U.S. president is discovered to be spending his spare time taking a razor to the New Testament, cutting up and re-pasting those passages of the Gospels that he considered authentic and morally true and discarding all the rest.
Gone are the virgin birth, divine healings, exorcisms and the resurrection of the dead, all of which the chief executive dismissed as “superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.”
Such an episode occurred, although the revised version of Scripture remained unseen for nearly seven decades after its abridger’s death. Thomas Jefferson intended it that way.
During most of his two terms in the White House, from 1801 to 1809, and for more than a…
Is Jesus A Cheap Imitation Of Mithras?
It’s been mentioned, but in this clip from the British show QI, Stephen Fry and co. discuss the strange similarities between the Christian savior and the far cooler and more mystical Roman/Persian god Mithras, who shares the December 25 birthday, and had twelve disciples of his own, and was birthed in the form of a mortal to a virgin mother…
The Gospel Of Supply Side Jesus
Just in time for the holidays, Al Franken’s animated comic tells the biblical story of Supply Side Jesus — basically, a version of Christ the savior updated to be more palatable for the devout conservative Christians of today. Witness the tale of his radical free-market teachings:
Jiizus: The Jamaican Patois Bible
Robert Pigott reports on the controversial new Bible translation into Jamaican patois for BBC News Magazine:
The Bible is, for the first time, being translated into Jamaican patois. It’s a move welcomed by those Jamaicans want their mother tongue enshrined as the national language – but opposed by others, who think learning and speaking English should be the priority.
In the Spanish Town Tabernacle near the capital, Kingston, the congregation is hearing the word of God in the language of the street.
At the front of the concrete-block church, a young man and woman read alternate lines from the Bible.
This is the Gospel of St Luke in Jamaican patois – or more precisely, “Jiizas – di buk we Luuk rait bout im”.
The sound of the creole, developed from English by West African slaves in Jamaica’s sugar plantations 400 years ago, has an electrifying effect on those listening.
Several women rise to testify, in patois,…
If You Are Poor, It’s Because God Hates Your Guts
[Site editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the new Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.]
The history of Christianity is like a treasure chest for anyone who is fond of contradictions. The Gospels bicker with each other by relating similar tales in very different ways. But even more obviously, Christianity has often so dramatically departed from the words attributed to Jesus as to make you wonder how these glaring contradictions can be justified. Jesus tells you to “Love your enemies” and “Turn the other cheek”? So let’s show how much we love Jesus by waging crusades, inquisitions, witch-hunts, and brutal campaigns of repression against anyone who doesn’t love Him as much as we do. Jesus’s pacifism has drowned in the hyper-violence that has characterized much of Christian history.
But—we may object—most Christians alive today seem to have lost the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of their…
Jesus Was A Mushroom
This must have been a mind-bending moment for many viewers. Ancient texts scholar and The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross author John Allegro informs the public know that, Jesus was, in fact, a mushroom. Why don’t I learn facts like this from television today?
God is Part of the 1 Percent
Via Eric Allen Bell:
Once upon a time a very, very angry man named “god” created the world, got pissed off at everybody and killed them all with a flood, except for his buddy Noah and his 2 live crew.
Later God decided everyone is so lame that he chose his “chosen people” to give a plot of real estate to while telling everyone else to fuck off, ordered some ethnic cleansings to clear out the area and so forth.
Still finding nearly all people to be unbearable (and who can blame him, really?) this god person decided, out of the kindness of his heart, to send his only son to be brutally tortured and savagely murdered so that he won’t have to send us all into a lake of hell fire for all eternity …
Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution
Jonathan Dudley writes on Huffington Post:
As someone raised evangelical, I realize anti-evolutionists believe they are defending the Christian tradition. But as a seminary graduate now training to be a medical scientist, I can say that, in reality, they’ve abandoned it.
In theory, if not always in practice, past Christian theologians valued science out of the belief that God created the world scientists study. Augustine castigated those who made the Bible teach bad science, John Calvin argued that Genesis reflects a commoner’s view of the physical world, and the Belgic confession likened scripture and nature to two books written by the same author.
These beliefs encouraged past Christians to accept the best science of their day, and these beliefs persisted even into the evangelical tradition. As Princeton Seminary’s Charles Hodge, widely considered the father of modern evangelical theology, put it in 1859: “Nature is as truly a revelation of God as the Bible;…
Church Mass Moves Italian Man To Tear Out Both Of His Eyes
The Bible’s Gospel of St. Matthew quotes Jesus telling his disciples: ‘If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.’
A case of literal biblical interpretation gone gruesomely awry. If God spoke to you and told you to do this, would you? NBC New York writes:
An Italian man tore both of his eyes out in the middle of the priest’s homily at a church near Pisa, according to reports.
Fellow parishioners watched in horror as Aldo Bianchini, 46, used his bare hands to pull out both eyeballs. Bianchini later told surgeons, who were unable to save his vision, he heard voices that told him to do it.
“He was in a great deal of agony and he was covered in blood,” Dr. Gino Barbacci told the Daily Mail. “He said that he had used his bare hands to gouge out his eye balls after hearing voices telling him…
Preacher Protests The Midnight Harry Potter Screening
“You have stuff on your head, Jesus has stuff in his heart.” A bible-loving preacher, AKA comedian Paul Gale, ruffles feathers when he comes out to protest the deviance of the New York City midnight premier of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2. His voice sounds like a soft Southern wind:
No, Reverend, That’s Not What The Bible Says
John Blake reports for CNN on something many of us have long suspected – that people who like to spew quotes from the Bible often mangle or just make them up:
NFL legend Mike Ditka was giving a news conference one day after being fired as the coach of the Chicago Bears when he decided to quote the Bible.
“Scripture tells you that all things shall pass,” a choked-up Ditka said after leading his team to only five wins during the previous season. “This, too, shall pass.”
Ditka fumbled his biblical citation, though. The phrase “This, too, shall pass” doesn’t appear in the Bible. Ditka was quoting a phantom scripture that sounds like it belongs in the Bible, but look closer and it’s not there.
Ditka’s biblical blunder is as common as preachers delivering long-winded public prayers. The Bible may be the most revered book in America, but it’s also one of the most misquoted.…
The Incredibly Tiny Christian Fundamentalist Universe
Maybe those 21 May 2011 “End of the World” folks were right, and only their tiny universe disappeared? Jim Walker writes on NoBeliefs.com:
Incredible as it may seem, many Christians today believe that a god created the universe approximately 6000 years ago. That means that everything in it, planets, stars, moons, comets, and even light itself, must have originated at the time (or after) the Great Creation.
Consider that no energy or matter in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. If you take the speed-of-light back in time 6000 years to the point of the alleged Creation, you get a spherical radius of only around 6000 light-years. This means that a 12,000 diameter light-year bubble represents everything that could possibly happen or exist within the time range of Christian chronology. Consider that the entire Christian universe cannot measure larger than a single average galaxy in the known universe! The…
New York Man Spends Life Savings Ahead of May 21 Doomsday
[disinfo ed.'s note: just as a reminder, the world may end on Saturday. Have a great week!]
A video report from CNN, and below a write up from Fox News:
A New York man spent his entire $140,000 life savings advertising his prediction that the world will end May 21, the New York Post reported Friday.
Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, said he spent at least that sum on 1,000 subway-car placards and ads on bus kiosks and subway cars…
Living Inside The Westboro Baptist Church
Wondering what it would be like to live in a cult? British documentarian Louis Theroux spent several days in the Kansas homes of members of the Westboro Baptist Church and filmed the experience for the BBC — basically opening a giant can of crazy.
The ‘Passion of the Christ’ Whipping Scene (Video)
In case you were wondering what this “holiday” is all about. (BTW, Mel Gibson makes really good movies):
ACLU Sues South Carolina Jail That Bans All Written Materials Except The Bible
It’s a violation of freedom of religion, obviously. (Jewish and Muslim prisoners were blocked from receiving their holy books.) But beyond that, isn’t it a damaging and cruel form of punishment to prevent inmates from reading books, newspapers, magazines, letters, and other printed material of any kind for years upon years? The Christian Science Monitor reports on rehabilitation, South Carolina-style:
The US Justice Department is asking a federal judge in South Carolina to allow it to intervene in a lawsuit against a sheriff who allegedly forbids prisoners in his jail from receiving books, magazines, or printed materials other than copies of the King James version of the Bible.
Berkeley County Sheriff H. Wayne DeWitt denies that restrictions imposed at the county lockup in Moncks Corner, S.C., rise to the level of a constitutional violation or violate US law.
A Jewish prisoner seeking a Torah said he was told by jail officials that the prison only…
