Tetherd Cow Ahead

Tetherd Cow Ahead Presents: The Baffling Bible
Episode #4: Jesus and a Blind Man

For today’s consideration:

•Is the man actually afflicted, or is Jesus ‘helping him along’?

•Will the blind man still go ahead and install Jesus’ blinds after he has been poked heartily in the eye?

•What can we infer about the sincerity of the blind man’s friends, seeing as how they’ve let him go wandering off all over the place in a very ‘theatrical’ shade of crimson?

Tetherd Cow Ahead Presents: The Baffling Bible
Episode #3: Daniel in the Eunuch’s Den

(An off-blog commenter took exception to me equating ‘eunuchs’ with gay men, to which I say Examine your own cliché my friend…)

It warms the cockles of my heart* to know that Cow Readers are ever-vigilant for tidbits to whet my whistle†. JR sent me the above flyer which was popped through his door recently by some vagrant evidently disenfranchised from the Land of Normal Thinking.

Let’s deconstruct it, shall we?

•IS EVOLUTION PART OF SCIENCE OR IS IT A TAX SUPPORTED RELIGION?

Given the tone of the nonsense that follows, this is probably meant to be a rhetorical question. Sadly for the person who wrote it, evolution is, in fact, part of science. A tax-supported religion is something like Catholicism or Scientology or Mormonism or just about any other whacky belief system that calls itself a religion. Governments seem to be real happy about allowing those kinds of organizations to accumulate cash and avoid their social financial responsibilities. Calling yourself an Evolutionist, on the other hand, doesn’t attract any tax benefits. Trust me – if there was even the remotest chance of that, I’d have the certificate.

•HAS EVOLUTION EVER AIDED MAN IN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND PROGRESSION?

Well, duh, yes. That’s why we’re not in still in caves hiding from Big Noise and Light That Come From Sky When Gods Make With Much Falling Water. You idiot.

•WHAT ARE THE FRUITS OF EVOLUTION?

Well, I really want to say ‘bananas’ here but that would just be flippant wouldn’t it? What do you mean by that you loon? It’s a question that defies any sense whatsoever. I couldn’t make up a stupider question if I spent a month trying.

•WHAT ROLE HAS IT PLAYED THROUGH RECENT CENTURIES AND WHAT ROLE DOES IT PLAY TODAY?

You really are a halfwit, aren’t you. Evolution plays the ‘role’ of having gotten us where we are. Maybe you think it would do better playing the role of Hamlet? Or Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror? And ‘recent centuries‘? Hello? Missing the point bigtime there fella.

ALL QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED! ALL SIDES ARE SHOWN AND EXPLAINED THOROUGHLY AND FUNDEMENTALLY SUPPORTING MUCH EVIDENCE.

AND ALL IN CAPITALS WITH SPELLING MISTAKES AND NONSENSICAL SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION!

KENT HOVIND, A SCIENCE TEACHER AND A BIOLOGIST WITH A DEGREE IN PHD AND OTHER AREAS OF QUALIFICATION

Hmmm. A degree in PHD. That either makes no sense at all (surprise!) or possibly stands for ‘Phony Historical Dissertations’ or maybe ‘Preposterous Hysterical Diatribes’, seeing as Kent Hovind, a well-known Creationist, knows as much about science as George Bush knows about, er, science. As for ‘other areas of qualification’, well sure, if you accept a Bachelor of Religious Education from a non-accredited college, or a ‘Master’s’ Degree in Christian Education gained via a correspondence course as qualifications. I guess they could be considered ‘areas’ of qualification. As in, “Yeah, they’re in the general area, but not actually qualifications.” Of course, anyone with actual qualifications that meant anything could just say what they were.

– IS A FEARED OPPONENT IN DEBATES, AND YOU WILL KNOW WHY

Well, that’s true, anyway. He’s a feared opponent in debates because he’s a pig-headed close-minded bible literalist of dubious (if any) intellect, with a track record of making ridiculous and unsupportable claims. Richard Dawkins, a well-known champion of evolution, refuses to debate people like Kent Hovind because, really, who could be bothered? It’s not so much a fear of losing the debate, as a fear of losing your sanity.

Oh I can’t go on. Suffice to say that if you did waste valuable time visiting Kent Hovind’s ‘Dr Dino’ site, you would not get an explanation of ’60+ Hours of Science’ so much as an irritating spew of biblical silliness. How Atlantis quite fits in there I’m not sure, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that it’s included. They probably have stuff on UFOs and unicorns too.

As for the promise that ‘you won’t be dissappointed‘, well, aside from the fact that you might be dissappointed by the awful spelling, you certainly won’t be dissappointed if you’re looking for more of the kind of claptrap that the flyer spruiks. There’s LOTS of that.

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*What does that actually mean, ‘cockles’? Since when did you ever hear a doctor talking about your heart cockles? “I’m sorry Mr Smith, but it seems you have near-frozen heart cockles and we’ll have to operate”.

†And what the heck does that mean, too?

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Atlas draws my attention to a story at Times Online about a group called the Evangelical Alliance (representing ‘thousands of churches of most denominations worldwide’) who have handed down what they call The Ten Commandments of Blogging. It seems that church leaders have suddenly become aware of the actual landscape of the internet and are worried that God Bloggers might be falling prey to Satan’s wiles. This is entirely in keeping with my hypothesis that the thing that scares religions the most is that their followers might one day get access to actual facts and start questioning the fundamentalist status quo.

The Commandments that the EA has decreed* include such pithy paranoid edicts as: You shall not put your blog before your integrity (whatever the crap that means), You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind (OK, there goes 90% of the Blogosphere) and You shall not steal another person’s content (there goes the remaining 10%).

Also of note is the weighty You shall not covet your neighbour’s blog ranking. Be content with your own content. Wha? Does anyone really care about their ‘blog ranking’ so much that it needs a commandment?

I haven’t spent much time on blogs dedicated to Christian Evangelism (I mean, who could really be bothered?) but it seems to me that if the Christian corner of the blogosphere is in such dire need of guidance that the Powers That Be feel compelled to issue ‘commandments’, then it must truly be a seething Sodom & Gomorrah of iniquity and maybe I’m missing out on something.

I get the distinct feeling, though, that it’s all a ridiculous beat-up in the vein of the Vatican’s idiotic Ten Commandments of Motoring and with all that in mind, you can see that I have no choice but to post The Tetherd Cow Ahead Ten Commandments of Blogging:

1-10: Thou Shalt Not Create Blogging Commandments†. It’s pointless and stupid and will send you straight to Hell.

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*One has to wonder how they got the dispensation to do this. After all, the original Ten Commandments were personally handed to Moses by God.

†And yes, I am completely aware of the recursive nature of my actions.

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Tetherd Cow Ahead Presents: The Baffling Bible
Episode #2: Smitten Knees

I think you need to see the whole passage to get the full impact of this particular piece:

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
 
Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him,
so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.

Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written.
And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

This is the interpretation of the thing:
MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

For today’s consideration:

•If you were God, and you were going to write a message on a wall, would you use some kind of cryptic gobbledigook that could mean pretty much anything anybody wanted, or would you simply say ‘Belshazzar, you’re toast pal!’?

•Give examples of other times where God has been completely obtuse when He could have just gotten to the point (limit your examples to ten pages).

•What is it with God sending a ‘part’ of a hand to scribble on the wall? Was David playing with the rest of it somewhere?

•Why has Daniel used the word UPHARSIN and then three sentences later completely forgotten what he wrote and pulled another word out of his arse? Do you think he did it to see if anyone was paying attention? Or does the bible need a better proof reader?

•Is there evidence elsewhere in his writings that Daniel was doing a lot of PCP?

•Should God do community service for graffiti-related crimes?

•Would things have turned out differently for Belshazzar if he had used Dulux ‘Wash ‘n’ Wear on his walls? For instance, could he have expected a better finish?*

•If the joints of Belshazzar’s loins were loosened to the point of involuntary knee-smiting, would he be covered by health insurance? Discuss difficulties that Belshazzar might face with loose loin joints on public transport.

•God does quite a bit of smiting elsewhere in the bible – why do you think he chose not to smite Belshazzar’s knees directly, but instead have them smite one another? Do you think he did this because it was funnier?

•This story is the origin of the phrase ‘The writing’s on the wall’. As you now know, the writing on the wall is completely baffling and nonsensical, and thus, the saying makes absolutely no sense at all. Your project for this week is to make up another pithy saying based on a bible quote, that makes as much sense or less, and get it into popular usage.

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*Later that same night Belshazzar was slain by Darius the Mede.

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Tetherd Cow Ahead Presents: The Baffling Bible
Episode #1: Idle Hands

Consider the following:

•What was God doing dispatching evil spirits? Could that be considered a demarcation issue?

•How are we to understand Samuel’s second use of the word ‘came’ in the context of the evil spirit and Saul?

•Is the word ‘prophesied’ a euphemism as used here? What might be a more descriptive word?

•What are the possible consequences of prophesying in the midst of the house, as opposed to doing so in a room out the back with a lockable door?

•Who actually ‘prophesied’ – Saul, the evil spirit, or God?

•Whose hand was David playing with – his own or Saul’s. Or the evil spirit’s? Discuss the implication of each option.

•Give examples of ‘other times’ when David has played handsies. Include references.

Stay tuned to Tetherd Cow Ahead for more startling moments of clarity from the Good Book!

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*The Bible: King James Version

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