Smiting the unbelievers

One question I have for people who believe that there are powerful, invisible beings in control of the universe is why those beings don't seem to object more strenuously when they are disbelieved in or mocked outright.

I'm not just talking about deities here, as you'll see in a moment, although mythology does provide a great many examples of tales which, if true, should give scoffers pause.  The Greeks gods, in particular, were always smiting people for pretty much nothing.  Remember when Athena turned Arachne into a spider for claiming that she was the best weaver ever?  Or when King Salmoneus of Pylos was vaporized with a thunderbolt by Zeus when he claimed to be a god?  Then there was poor Actaeon, who was turned into a stag and then ripped limb from limb by his dogs just because he happened to catch a glimpse of the goddess Artemis naked.

Looks from the picture like Actaeon was naked at the time, too, which certainly ups the creepiness factor and makes it understandable why Artemis freaked out a little.  But it still seems like an overreaction to me.

The Norse gods were a little better in that regard, although not if you were a Frost Giant.  Odin and Thor were always smiting the crap out of the Frost Giants, which is probably why you see so few Frost Giants around now.

And look at Yahweh in the Old Testament.  Given how many of his own followers he slew for various minor offenses, it's a wonder there are any of them left, either.  He killed seventy people just for looking at the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel 6:19, bringing up visual images of the melting Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  God also was not above using animals to do his dirty work -- remember how he sent bears to help out his pal Elisha in 2 Kings 2:23-24, and the bears ripped apart two dozen children who had teased Elisha about being bald?

And let's not even go into how Yahweh killed virtually the entire population of the Earth during the Great Flood, men, women and children, just for some unspecified "wickedness."

So, we have some serious precedent, here, that being a non-believer, or (worse) an outright scoffer, isn't a safe thing to do, inviting being turned into or eaten by various animals, struck with lightning, drowned, or just suffering a generic smiting.

And here I sit, healthy as ever.  Odd, that.

All of this comes up, however, not because of anything connected directly with religion.  You probably know about the Reptilians, a race of shapeshifting evil cold-blooded aliens who have infiltrated the political world for nefarious reasons.  We're talking about some serious bad guys, here, worse even than Ann Coulter.

Now, belief in the Reptilians does share some of the same characteristics as religion, in that it requires faith-based acceptance of powerful entities whose existence, by definition, can't be proven.  So it is perhaps unsurprising that this week, on the wonderfully weird blog Phantoms & Monsters, we found out that like Zeus and Artemis and Yahweh and the rest, the Reptilians do not take kindly to being taunted.

A man who gave his name only as "Matt R." was interviewed a week ago with Daniel Ott of The Edge Radio Show, a weekly broadcast that bills itself as "exciting interviews on topics such as 9/11, Angels, Near Death Experiences, Planetary Anomalies, Black Ops, to Alternative Science, Prophesies, Lost Continents, Aliens, Cryptozoology, Bio Warfare and much more!"  Matt R. was describing his various abductions by Reptilians (he's apparently had more than one), and Ott made some kind of wisecrack about Reptilians.  Here's what happened next:

In the last 10 minutes of the show, the host cracked a joke about killing reptilians.  What can only be described as an inhuman growl jumped into our conversation immediately after.  Apparently, whatever reptilian was on the line wanted to voice their displeasure with his joke.  During this conversation, I was sitting inside a parked car with the engine off. I was talking on my Skype app, over my phone's 4G connection.  There was no other radio or computer anywhere near me.  I can't think of anything that could have produced a growling noise that vivid.  That certainly didn't sound like line interference.  There are no audio files or ring tones on my Samsung S3 that sound like that.  There was a deep guttural quality to it, which made it similar to what I've heard from reptilians before.  Mr. Ott does not have a history of pranking people on his program.  And I know there is no possible explanation for generation of that noise on my end.

And I'm thinking, "that's it?  A nasty growl is the best that the ultrapowerful, black-hearted controllers of the Earth can do?  After crossing the galaxy in their faster-than-light spaceships, infiltrating the government and replacing world leaders by assuming human form, and engaging in all sorts of evil stuff from genetic engineering of alien/human hybrids to inducing Miley Cyrus to "twerk" at the Video Music Awards, the best they can manage when someone threatens to kill them is a 'guttural growl?'"

Maybe that's why supernatural entities get so little respect these days.  I mean, if a god appeared in my classroom and turned a mouthy student into an earthworm, I would definitely stand up and take notice.  Depending on who the student was, I might even sacrifice a sheep or something as a way of saying, "Thanks."  And just think of all of the people in the world who really deserve being vaporized by lightning bolts.

If Thor is up there with his hammer, I know we'd all appreciate it if he'd get up off his lazy ass and use the thing, preferably starting with someone like Bashar al-Assad.

But of course, that sort of thing never happens.  It's kind of inconvenient, the way we never get any direct evidence of all of these things we're supposed to believe in, isn't it?  I mean, I've scoffed at both Reptilians and various religious beliefs pretty much continuously for two decades, and I haven't even heard so much as a growl.

Of course, you never know what's around the corner, so it could be that I'll get struck by a meteorite or something on the way to work today.

If that happens, won't I feel silly?

The wrath of Herman

We have an interesting story developing in Illinois, where a church pastor has raised some eyebrows by calling down the wrath of god on a federal judge.

Herman Jackson, who is the bishop of the Ark of Safety Apostolic Faith Temple of Cicero (a suburb of Chicago), ran afoul of the law last October when he was arrested on charges of fraud, with allegations that he had been swindling state day care funds.  Jackson was already notorious for a conspicuously flashy lifestyle, with a fleet of luxury vehicles that included a Bentley, a Jaguar, and two Mercedes, and a second home in Georgia, leading non-church-members to suspect that Bishop Jackson may have other priorities than spreading the word of god.

Be that as it may, Jackson was arrested and then freed on bond, but had a directive to live in the bedroom in his church rather than returning to Georgia to be with his family.  Jackson objected to this condition, saying that he needed to drive his 15-year-old son to school, an excuse that in my opinion ranks right up there with "the dog ate my homework" in believability.

So the judge overseeing the case, Sharon Johnson Coleman, refused to let him go.  Jackson blew his stack, and said, "Because of Judge Sharon Coleman’s continual mocking of God’s ecclesiastical order and the sanctity of family and marriage, the wrath of God almighty shall soon visit her home."

One guiding principle of life in the United States is, "Threatening a federal judge is a bad idea."  Speaking with the measured tone that befits her position, she said that she "has concerns about Mr. Jackson’s ability to comply with bond conditions and to appreciate the severity and magnitude of the situation in which he finds himself."

In other words: you can take your wrath of god and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Jackson, however, didn't back down, and continues to claim that the Almighty is on his side.  "I was in prayer.  This is what God told me.  I don’t have the power.  God has the power."

You have to wonder how all of the "America is a Christian Nation" people are going to respond to this.  On the one hand, you have a federal judge, who is clearly carrying out her sworn duty in prosecuting this wingnut.  On the other hand, you have a guy who sincerely believes that he's hearing the voice of god, and that voice is fully in support of everything he does.

Because, of course, "calling down god's wrath" kind of happens all the time in the bible, and when they read these passages, most Christians seem to shrug and say, "Well, you know, god is just like that."  We have, for example, 2 Kings 23-24, where the prophet Elisha is meandering about, and some kids make fun of him:

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!”  He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

Well, that's edifying.   And lest you think that this is the sort of thing that only happened in the Old Testament, that by New Testament times god had upped his dosage of antipsychotic meds, we have the lovely tale of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11, which goes as follows:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold?  And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing?  You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.  Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.  Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord?  Listen!  The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.  Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

I'll just bet it did.

So Bishop Jackson does have some basis for his actions.  Not that the wrath of god seems like it's all that easy to call down these days, for some reason.  In spite of the fact that the folks in the bible seemed to be able to get god to smite people left and right, for damn near anything, nowadays it doesn't happen nearly so often.  I know my dad used to regularly request that the wrath of god descend upon tailgaters and telemarketers, and I don't recall that in either case anyone dropped dead or got eaten by a bear.

Which is kind of a shame, now that I come to think of it.

So, I don't think that Judge Coleman has all that much to worry about.  But it'll be interesting to see how this plays out -- if she decides that what Bishop Jackson has said actually constitutes a threat.  If so, I'm guessing that even living in his church will cease to be an option, and he'll find himself being fitted for an orange jumpsuit post-haste.

So, that's our news from the wacky religious fringe.  I live in hope that even the devout Christians who hear about people like Bishop Jackson don't believe his fire-and-brimstone pronouncements, although there are dozens of biblical passages that then require some rather awkward explanation.   So keep your eye on the Chicago area.  Let me know if you hear about bears in the vicinity.  Other than these guys: