God's Fifth Killing: Onan spilled it on the ground (so the Lord killed him, too)

And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife... And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground... And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also. Genesis 38:7-10

This is one of my favorite Bible stories.

God kills Er for being wicked, and then kills Er's brother, Onan, for ejaculating outside the vagina of his dead brother's wife.

I think you can see what God was thinking here.

But if not, listen to Pastor Steven L. Anderson. He'll explain it all for you.

Here's an excerpt.

Tonight I want to look at this story about what caused God to kill somebody.

I mean, we're talking about a man who did one thing wrong that we know of in the whole Bible. I mean, one thing was mentioned that he did that was amiss, and yet God took it upon himself to personally kill him.

Now ask yourself this question.

How many people in the Bible did God personally kill?

Now that's a good question.

I counted 2,301,427 that God killed directly or indirectly (only included those that the Bible gave exact numbers for) and 33 million or so (with rough estimates when exact numbers are unknown).

But how many people did God kill directly? That, I haven't yet counted.

I guess I better get busy and do that.

God's Fourth Killing: Er was wicked in the sight of the Lord (so the Lord slew him)

And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him. Genesis 38:7

This is the first of God's named murder victims.

We know his name (Er), his father's name (Judah), his mother's name (Shuah), and his wife's name (Tamar). And we know that "he was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him." But that's it.

God killed Er for doing something, but the Bible doesn't say what it was. So what did Er do?

Did he get drunk and lie around naked in his tent and then curse his unborn grandson (and all of his descendants) with slavery because his son saw him drunk and naked? No that was Noah, "a preacher of righteousness".

Did he abandon his first son to die in the desert and then show his willingness to murder his second son for God as a human sacrifice? No that was Abraham, a perfect Friend of God.

Did he offer his two virgin daughters to a sex-crazed mob of angel rapers and then get drunk and impregnate them? No that was Lot, a just and righteous man.

So what was it that pissed God off so much that he just had to kill him?

You'd think if it was important enough to kill him, it would be important enough to tell us why.

The Bible and the Quran agree: Lot was a just and righteous man

Before going on the God's fourth killing, I thought I'd mention something about Lot, since he played such a large role in God's second and third killings.

I don't know how anyone could read the story about Lot in Genesis 19 and still believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.

Lot offers his daughters to a crowd of angel rapers and then gets drunk and impregnates them. That's all the Bible says about him.

And yet Lot is one of God's special heroes in both the Bible and the Quran. It is one of the things they agree on.

Here's what the Bible says:

God ... delivered just Lot ... that righteous man. 2 Peter 2:4-8

And here's the Quran:

And unto Lot we gave judgment and knowledge... And We brought him in unto Our mercy. Lo! he was of the righteous. Quran 21:74-75

Lot ... did We prefer above (Our) creatures ... We chose them and guided them unto a straight path. Quran 6:86-87

God preferred the just and righteous Lot above all his creatures. You can't get sicker than that.

God's Third Killing: Remember Lot's Wife (Forget Jesus)

Although this is God's third killing event, it is the first of God's 2,301,427 countable victims.

It's interesting that God's first victim is unnamed in the Bible. God killed Mrs. Lot without even knowing her name.

And what was it that got God's attention? What did she do that caused him to kill her?

She looked back at the place she had lived all her life. She looked back as her family, friends, and neighbors were being smashed and burned to death by God. She looked back.

And, of course, the angel told her not to. Or did he?

And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters ... And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee... Genesis 19:15-17

Who was the angel talking to here? It sounds to me like it was Lot. Did the angel tell Lot's wife not to look back? Did Lot tell his wife? Would it matter to God if no one bothered to tell her? Would he kill her anyway?

Who knows? Or cares. A God who would kill a woman for looking back as everyone she has ever known (except for her just and righteous husband and her father-fucking virgin daughters) is being burned to death is a monster God. An arbitrary, random killer.

I have met Christians who ignore this story, as they ignore pretty much everything else in the Old Testament. They sometimes call themselves "Red Letter Christians," meaning that they base their beliefs on the words of Jesus.

But Jesus believed in the story about Sodom and Gomorrah; he believed in the story about Lot's wife. He saw nothing wrong with any of it. In fact, he said that when he returns at the end of the world it will be just like that. You can check for yourself in your Red Letter Bible. Here's what he (supposedly) said:

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife. Luke 17:27-32

Jesus had no problem with God's first two mass murders (the flood of Noah and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah), or with God's killing of Lot's wife. It'll be just like that at the end of the world, if Jesus has anything to say about it. He is just as nasty as the Old Testament God. Maybe nastier.

So remember Lot's wife. And forget Jesus.

Did God create the Ichneumonidae?

OK, I missed Darwin's birthday, but it's still Darwin Week. So I thought I'd post one of my favorite Darwin quotes. Here it is:

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. -- From a letter to Asa Gray, 22 Mary 1860

The ichneumonidae is a family of wasps. A very big family. It is, in fact, one of the largest families in the largest class of animals, the insects. There are over 60,000 species of ichneumonid wasps, each one, according to creationists, specially designed by God. My question for them is the same as Charles Darwin's: Why? Why would a beneficent and omnipotent God do such a thing?

To understand the question, it is necessary to know a bit about the ichneumonids. First of all, most are parasitoids, which means that their larvae develop inside the body of a living host, which they slowly eat alive. Eventually, when the wasp larvae pupate, they erupt out of the body of the host that they have gradually consumed, tormented, and destroyed as larvae.

It is easy to see how such a thing could exist from an evolutionary standpoint. The body of a caterpillar is good food for larvae. It's not surprising that some organisms have evolved to take advantage of it. But what kind of a God would purposefully design it to be that way?

I have heard five different answers:

1. God originally made everything good; there was no suffering or death until the fall of Adam. Then all hell broke loose. Animals immediately began to kill and eat each other, and predators, parasites, parasitoids, and pathogens roamed the earth. (Answers in Genesis)

2. God made things nasty right from the start just to show us how important we are to him. He knew that Adam would sin, so he made nature cruel to show us the serious nature of sin. (Dembski's Defective Design Inference)

3. God made everything good and then Satan messed everything up. (Satanic Insects)

4. God likes it just fine the way it is. He created it that way for is own pleasure. He likes to watch things suffer. (David Snoke)

5. God couldn't help it and had nothing to do with it. He would have liked to create a kind and peaceful world, but he had to let things play out according to the laws of nature, over which he had no control. So the ichneumonid wasps just evolved, along with everything else, over millions of years while God sadly watched from a distance, unable to affect the outcome. (Ken Miller)

For each of these answers, though, I have a question.

1. How did things change so quickly? Were the 60,000 ichneumonid species specially created by God the moment Adam sinned? Or did God magically turn 60,000 butterfly species into parasitic wasps? Or did they all evolve (super)naturally in a few thousand years?

2. How do the ichneumonids teach us about sin? Until about the time of Darwin no one (except God) even knew they existed? Yet God created them just for us, just to teach us a lesson?

3. So Satan created the Ichneumonids? Along with scorpions, spiders, snakes, and sharks? He must have been a busy guy!

4. How could a kind and loving God create things just to watch them suffer?

5. A God who can't create or control anything isn't a God at all.

Here are some cool videos about the Ichneumonids.

The first one is from David Attenborough's marvelous "Life in the Undergrowth."

And here's one showing a Ichneumonid wasp (Megarhyssa sp.) drilling through the bark of an oak tree to deposit an egg in the tunnel of the siricid wood wasp, whose larva the Maegarhyssa lava will eat alive from the inside in the traditional Ichneumonid fashion (just like God intended it to be).

A Damnable Doctrine

Hell is the core of Christianity; it is what Jesus came to save us from. We all deserve to go there, and there is only one way to escape: believe the right things. (Just what those things are depends on who you talk to.) And if for whatever (and however good a) reason you should die without that belief, you will be tormented forever in Hell by the God who loves you. It is as simple, cruel and absurd as that.

Here is what Charles Darwin said about it in his autobiography:

I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

It was Hell that did me in as a Christian. I, like Darwin, couldn't believe that my family and friends and billions of other nonbelievers (and religiously incorrect believers) would be tormented forever in Hell for their honest disbelief. It amazes me that anyone could.

Hell is indeed a damnable doctrine. Darwin, as usual, had it exactly right.