Episode X: Angels

God's Favorite Trio of Moses, Eleazar, and Phinehas are some of the more execrable figures in world religion. I'll let the Bible itself tell the story. This is from the Book of Numbers, particularly the section dealing with Yahweh's orders for the Israelites with regard to the Midianites:

The Israelites took the women and children of the Midianites captive, and seized as booty all their beasts, all their herds, and all their wealth. And they destroyed by fire all the towns in which they were settled, and their encampments. They gathered all the spoil and all the booty, man and beast, and they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses, Eleazar the priest, and the whole Israelite community.

Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commander of the army. "You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor... Now, therefore, SLAY EVERY MALE AMONG THE CHILDREN, AND SLAY ALSO EVERY WOMAN WHO HAS KNOWN A MAN CARNALLY, BUT SPARE EVERY YOUNG WOMAN WHO HAS NOT HAD CARNAL RELATIONS WITH A MAN. (!!!!)

The Lord said to Moses: "You and Eleazar the priest and the family heads of the community take an inventory of the booty that was captured, man and beast, and divide the booty equally between the combatants who engaged in the campaign and the rest of the community" The amount of booty came to... 32,000 human beings, namely, the women who had not had carnal relations. Numbers, 31.

So, Yahweh, Moses, and Eleazar, in this one little episode are between them responsible for the mass murder of tens of thousands of defenseless humans, and not just adults mind you, but also infants. Yahweh, the source of modern morality, is very explicitly an ardent adherent of infanticide. But not just that... he also goes in for sexual slavery it seems, as we see here in the 32,000 virgins fortunate enough not to have been instantly slaughtered who are given over as property to the Israelite soldiers. Mass Murder with a delightful side of Baby Slaughter and Institutionalized Mass Rape. WHO... THE... FUCK... reads this and says to himself, "You know, I'm going to model my life on these guys?" My only hope is that the people who profess to love this book have not, in fact, read it, because if they have...

But maybe the Midianites, (and their babies?), deserved to be slaughtered and sold into sexual slavery. After all, a couple of Israeli soldiers DID sleep with Midianite women, and ended up saying prayers to another god in the process, and God clearly couldn't NOT punish an entire civilization to a sadistic, psychopathic degree for the actions of a few of its prostitutes:

While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people profaned themselves by whoring with the Moabite women, who invited the people to the sacrifices for their god...Thus Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, and the Lord was incensed with Israel. The Lord says to Moses, "Take all the ringleaders and have them publicly impaled before the Lord, so that the Lord's wrath may turn away from Israel." So Moses said to Israel's officials, "Each of you slay those of his men who attached themselves to Baal-peor."

Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions, in the sight of Moses and the whole Israelite community... When Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Numbers 25.

I used to live in San Diego. A few people in San Diego, as I understand it, used to go down to Mexico to partake of prostitutes and alcohol. I don't remember a single politician advocating that all of Mexico should be burned to the ground, its entire male population, man and child, slaughtered, as well as all of its mothers and wives, and all of its girls sold as slaves. And we had some pretty crappy local politicians, mind you. If any human were to suggest a thing, he would be thought a monster of unthinkable proportion. When Yahweh demands it, however, it's a thing to be celebrated, told and retold, and venerated? And then to use a figure like this as your authority for denying rights to others - so that the end message is that, as a man, you can kill another man, a woman, a baby, force a girl to become your sexual slave, burn a town to the ground - but Under No Circumstances are you to kiss another man!! THAT would be wrong! It is baffling.

- Count Dolby von Luckner