As a continuation of what I wrote in the previous post, allow me to once again journey through the life of this somewhat obscure holy man, Noah, and the aftermath of the ecological disaster which the OT God had supposedly unleashed; a deluge of rain that blanketed the Earth's surface and obliterated almost all land creatures on Earth.
After the Flood: Funky Time for Noah?
Genesis Chapter 9:1-17 is more or less related to the immediate aftermath; God gives the sole survivors of the massive flood instructions, some rehashed and drummed repeatedly(Such as the "Go forth and multiply" command), others pertaining to the resuscitation of life on the devastated planet, some dietary (eating meat minus the blood.....hmm, I wonder if God has anything to do with the Eucharist.......) and a mishmash of other nonsensical diatribes, such as establishing a covenant with Earth via a rainbow (Rainbows, it seems, never existed before Noah's Ark......perhaps prisms didn't exist before the deadly flood?).
At this point, Noah had three sons, Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, and a grandson, who was the Son of Ham (Maybe he was the guy who coined the hamburger???).
It is a tad difficult for us, as affluent as we are living in the age of technology, to comprehend this sheer expanse of wasteland that may have startled Noah more than he would have liked: He was, according to the bible, 600 yrs old at the time of the flood. An extremely patriarchal old man, with a bunch of stinky, noisy creatures, stuck in a boat with his entire family for 150 days, that must be one hell of an ordeal.
By the time the Flood had supposedly receded, this old relic of a creature has survived some pretty amazing odds thus far (Not to mention that he was already 600 yrs old!!!); he probably was counting his lucky stars and yes, he could not have forgotten the one benevolent God who, in his divine and infinite wisdom decided to obliterate almost everyone and everything except him, his family, and some million-odd creatures on his putty boat!!!
Yes, the old man had reason to cheer and celebrate, and let his hair loose for the first time in a hundred years. And so it was, he created the first "party-time" bonanza in the ancient world:
Genesis 9: 20-21 explains rather too candidly:
20And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
While the bible did not state the extent of his alcohol abuse or the rate he abuses the seemingly innocuous drug-cum-beverage, he did have a jolly good time. And when drunk men sleep, oh well, they tend to go naked, don't they?That would be fine, really, considering the old dinosaur was sleeping naked in the privacy of his own tent. But alas, fate had something quite more humiliating for the old twit:
Genesis 9:22-24 explains this rather embarrassing moment:
22And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
24And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
Ham Catches Peek of Noah's Wee-Wee, Grandson Canaan Suffers Curse on Behalf of Daddy's Voyeurism
Noah Puts Curse on Noah, and Presto! Slavery is Now Justified for Another few Millennial. Sorry Niggers. The Lord made Me Do It!!!
Ham had unwittingly committed the worst possible crime against humanity (This may be a torturous task, but try imagining this: Everyone on this planet is dying or already dead, your only option to stay alive is to stick with your family, which your father lords over): Stuck with no one else but his family members and a strict, disciplinarian of father-figure who is now Lord of the remaining homo sapiens, he could not have chosen a worst time to taunt his 600-yr old father, who in this grand age still had enough fire in his belly to invoke a curse in the name of God, not at Ham the offender, but Ham's son, Canaan! (In the bible, it is not uncommon for sons to be punished on behalf of their father's misdeeds. Talk about a gross miscarriage of justice....).
Genesis 9:25-26:
25And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
The biggest winners out of this odyssey of lewdness and opulence? The two brothers, Japheth and Shem: Both get to reap the rewards of Canaan's voyeur-inspired stupidity by covering up their father's itsy-bitsy bits in a bid to "mask" the shame:
But alas, the damage was already done.
Genesis 9: 27:-
27God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
And as for Noah, the old gaffer still had a further 350 yrs going for him!!!!
Genesis 9: 28:-
28And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.
The Noah Odyssey: A Justification for Slavery?Besides other OT laws which justifies slavery, this particular story is often used to explain the three major "races" in the Old World (Remember that Noah and his family were the only human beings who managed to survived the catastrophic flood): Japheth pretty much became the alpha male of the White Europeans, Shem became the patriarch of Asians and the poor Niger bastards became spawns of Canaan, who had to bear the indelible mark of his father's lewd deeds, hence, the dark skin of the Negroes! How very convenient.
How a tale of peekaboo can snowball into one huge mega-disaster is beyond me, not to mention the gross misjudgment of a totally insane, super-centenarian who got so pissed drunk that he couldn't even notice his son taking a peek at his naked, shriveled body. Add to that, eternal damnation in the form of slavery for his grandson's lineage long after the incident is over. What kind of morals do we want to attribute to such an atrocious, irrational and amoral story????
Reading the Bible as A Moral Book?
It is difficult for me, and I am sure the same goes for other atheists, to fathom how the bible can get away with such nasty little anecdotes of misplaced morals and ethics and still be heralded as a moral code.
If you want to learn about morals and virtue, the bible is a little too far-fetched for such an endeavor. Try the book of Marquis de Sade instead. At least it isn't third grade porn.
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