Why we love the LORD who hates (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; Lorde; Clevver.com, Clevver News; Shalom Auslander

What do Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey, Britney Spears, and Amanda Bynes have in common? Aside from losing their childhood innocence to fame, money, illegal drugs, and the Illuminati? They have all been bashed by pop superstar Lorde! 

G-d d-mn, I hate filthy sinners!

You think Lorde is bad? What about "the Lord"? The Lord is a name for the many Gods of the Judeo-Christian Bible -- Yahweh, El, Elohim, Adonai, and many other titles and personal names, many of them plural, even as we all pretend it's a monotheistic "there's only one God" faith that somehow emerged from a rich polytheistic history.

Hope you're not tracking my sins, God.

The Bible was not rewritten to make it monotheistic, just translated in ways to cover up its polytheism. But no one covers up how angry their "angry God" is. So more honest readers, or those familiar with more than one biblical language -- Greek, Coptic (Egyptian), Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and so on -- say, "There's only one true God" as if all the other ones in the Bible are fake. And "God is love...but don't read the Old Testament because that was the old deal; here's the new deal."

Who's even keeping score? - Come on, dad.

Why does this angry, jealous, proud God, this GROUP of Gods, constantly referring to themselves in chapter after chapter of their bestseller in the plural, HATE so much?

"God is love"? Many Christian fundamentalists and Jews say different: Who can argue with Shalom Auslander's many points? Has any Christian read the Book of Judges (Sefer Shoftim, ספר שופטים, is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible), the Old Testament where the Christian Gods (the Lord) revel in war, command killings, and order other atrocities?

Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander on reading the Bible as history and realizing what it means to be a punishing God's "chosen people."

The Bible is dangerous reading.

Is it any wonder that Christians may be the world's most formidable terrorists, crusaders, invaders, rapists, conquistadors, (hypocrites?), enslavers, sexists, patriarchs... The God(s) of the Bible revel in cruelty, revenge, destruction, punishment, smiting, scaring, threatening. And yet we love it/him/them. It must be Stockholm Syndrome at work deep in our earthling psyches.

Christian forgeries?

"The Old Testament doesn't count!" Come on, we're modern people. God only became love in the New Testament? Angry dad, happy son, no mother, mysterious dove -- this is the "Holy Family"? What about giving Asherah, prana (the real "holy spirit," the subtle-breath full of chi), Mary, and direct mystical experience their due? The Catholics (and Buddhists) give Mary (as Guan Yin) plenty of attention, and we don't know who Asherah is.

God wants us to stone, kill, rampage

• [God's wife] Asherah, Tree of Life, Snakes Tree of Life (date palm), Asherah [wife], and the God of the Bible. The snake eats the plant of eternal life, from the Huluppu Tree, in the Gilgamesh Epic...
• God's wife "Asherah" edited out of the Bible Was God's wife edited out of the Bible? Atheist claims the Almighty had partner known as Asherah (Daily Mail, March 19, 2011).
• God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible - Almost

TED: Doubt versus Belief (audio)

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; NPR/TED Staff (NPR.org, 11-24-13); SCPR.org

Believers and Doubters

Why do some of us believe in something greater than ourselves, while others of us do not? Can our doubts bring our beliefs into sharper focus? Or what is the difference between belief and faith? TED speakers, courtesy of Guy Raz and National Public Radio, offer personal perspectives on belief from all ends of the spectrum, from ardent atheists to the devout faithful.

Devil vs. Super Devil ("Family Guy")

First, the daughter of the Christian televangelist Billy Graham, Anne Graham Lotz, speaking for her elderly father on the difference between (rational) belief and (emotional) faith. Lesley Hazleton asks, Is doubt essential to faith? Former Catholic and SNL comedienne Julia Sweeny explores the journey, How does a person go from believer to atheist? Then Alain de Botton asks, What can atheism learn from religion? Finally, Indian Hindu intellectual Devdutt Pattanaik wants to know, Are there any universal beliefs and truths? LISTEN

• Contribute your story to The Moth radio hour (PRX)

Kimberly Reed (themoth.org, 11-12-13)

A high school quarterback leaves Montana as a promising son and returns years later to reveal a shocking secret; a boy from Sierra Leone describes his transformation from innocent child to cold-hearted soldier; a teenage girl discovers how to control her errant parrot; and a construction worker discovers the up-side of his girlfriend’s one-year prison sentence. LISTEN

Storytelling with a Beat

(SnapJudgment.org) American life is much richer and diverse than we usually get to hear on NPR. Host Glynn Washington is doing something, bringing us Snap Judgment's amazing array of stories with extras only available to the podcast audience and the story-behind-the-stories on Facebook.

 

This American Life

(512: House Rules, 11-22-13) Where we live is important. It can dictate the quality of the schools and hospitals we have access to, as well as things we will experience -- like cancer rates, unemployment statistics, or whether the city repairs roads in our neighborhood. On this week's show, stories about "destiny by geography." Much of this story is told to Nancy Updike by ProPublica reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose series on the Fair Housing laws in modern America -- with more stories, research, and interviews — is here.

 

More comedy, more stories:

• WITS: Margaret Cho with Josh Ritter
• RadioLab (startling stories)
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• The World (a BBC-American look)
  
• The Story
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• Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! (news as comedy)
• Ask Me Another (northern comedy)
• Car Talk (Harvard and MIT car fixers)
• Off-Ramp (local Los Angeles stories)
• A Prairie Home Companion (Garrison Keillor)
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• On the Media (incisive look into the medium)
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• On Being (formerly "Speaking of Faith")
• Take Two Evenings (California stories)
• Bullseye