#because he is a mass murderer and you can allegedly say it is a psychotic break

[notfeelingthyaster]

like i get bruce won't kill joker or whatever (boooooooooo 🙄) but doesn't new jersey or gotham have death penalty? if not, there's no way for joker to be tried by federal justice after how many war crimes this man committed? and then promptly executed, bc i don't think the insanity plea holds to multiple accounts of mass murder, serial killing and premeditated kills

[catcomixzstudios]

How To Life Chapter 40 - Judaism

The Abrahamic Quartet Part I: Kill It Until It Gets Better

Man, I REALLY hope you end up liking the stories from this one, because at least three other chapters won’t be shutting the fuck up about how good this one is.

Welcome to part one of the story about the God of Abraham. This is all part of what is known as the Old Testament. The people who follow it today are called Jews, though they may also be referred to by several slurs as well because humans are pricks like that.

I have alot of issues with the faiths that sprung from Judaism, but I find this one itself nice overall. Generally speaking, Jewish people (whether devout followers or just culturally so) are pretty kind and laid back individuals. You probably won’t see any going door to door trying to convince you to join their faith. But the mostly calm nature of the people in the faith is almost baffling considering the God of it is completely and utterly psychotic.

As usual, let’s start from the beginning. God came and created the universe, planets, stars, and everything else in the span of a week (he takes a day off because even God needs a tiny vacation from all that). He got pretty proud of a certain place, the Garden of Eden. He creates two humans named Adam and Eve. God told them to have a good time and all that, but to NOT eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I assume that Adam and Eve had roughly the intelligence of squirrels, so that goes about as well as expected.

Later, a talking snake comes down from the tree and offers Eve an apple from it. Since Eve lacked the specific knowledge that would have told her this is a bad thing to do, she does it. And then gained the specific knowledge that that was a bad thing to do. Whoops. Of course she got Adam to try it too because she didn’t want to be the only one in trouble.

God showed back up and was pissed about what they did and told them to fuck off. This completely avoidable event is considered the fall of man. The pair had a couple of sons, and one of them infamously became the first murderer by killing his brother. Because God liked his sacrifice to him more. Everyone’s kind of a dick here. The murderer, Cain, is cursed and he became that person at the family reunion nobody talks about.

For many generations, people began to spread more and more. Apparently, everyone was totally evil and God decided “Fuck it, I’ll just kill everyone and start over.” As it turned out, the only not-evil people in the entire world are Noah and his family. He told Noah to get two of every animal and shove them on a huge-ass boat. Noah did, and then God flooded the Earth, killing literally every single other human being and creature. It’s okay, they were all allegedly bad. God said so. The waters recede, and he pinkie swears via rainbow to never commit mass genocide by flooding the Earth ever again. How thoughtful.

A short time after, a bunch of people try building a tower-city. This pisses God off for some reason and he separated them and made everyone speak different languages. Though their languages were now different, I imagine there was something they were all saying shortly after this that expressed their deep disagreement with that decision.

Eventually, we’re introduced to Abram. He heard a voice in his head claiming to be God that says he’ll have a ton of descendants, but they’ll be oppressed in a foreign land for several hundred years, BUT ALSO they’ll get a ton of land. Abram changed his name to Abraham and cut off part of his dick as a covenant between himself and this voice in his head. Thankfully everyone else went along with it too, or else he’d be considered nuts.

Soon enough, this voice in Abraham’s head calling itself God told him to murder his son to prove his loyalty. Without a moment’s hesitation, he’s totally willing to do it, but God stops him at the last minute like, “Jesus Christ bro, chill the fuck out.” I imagine Abraham’s relationship with his son from that point on was pretty shaky.

The next few sections are mostly God judging people and folks having kids that will impact later parts of the plot.

Past that, we get to the Exodus. The ruler of Egypt, called the Pharaoh, was getting freaked out about all the Israelites and wants all of the newborn babies thrown into the Nile River. One baby was saved by being put on a floating basket and is double saved by being rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter. She named him Moses and raised him. Moses was pretty happy with his life, then God appeared to him in a burning bush (it can never be anything normal with this guy). God tasked Moses with leading his people out of this hell-hole and to the land that was promised to Abraham.

Moses tried asking the Pharaoh nicely to let them go, but Pharaoh naturally didn’t want to lose his main workforce. God sent down a bunch of plagues on Egypt in response. Eventually Moses and the rest of the Israelites got the hell out, but they are pursued by the Pharaoh (a strange choice considering all of the plagues that were cast on him, but whatever). Moses is a level 10 wizard or something so he parted a sea as a way for his people to safely cross and escape the pursuing Egyptians. As one last “fuck you” to them, the sea closed up on and killed them.

After the Israelites escaped, they pretty much wandered the desert for a while. They rightfully panicked about dying, but God created water and magic for them. They eventually reached a mountain that Moses ascended to speak with God. After a bunch of climbing back and forth with various people, God eventually bestowed his most important laws with Moses; the Ten Commandments.

While that was going on, everyone ground-level started getting antsy. They just kind of forgot about all of the awesome stuff God had done for them and just started worshiping a golden calf they made. God’s naturally pissed, but Moses pleaded for him not to kill them all. Then later, the original tablets that contained the Ten Commandments are busted, so Moses had to go up the mountain AGAIN. It’s kind of a bad day all around.

Once that’s finished, he went down to them all and preached all of the important stuff for the faith. The identity of this religion truly took form. And I’m sure nothing bad ever happened to those people or their descendants ever again.

That’s pretty much the major stuff from the Old Testament. Most of the stories beyond that are about the spread of God’s people. They can usually be summarized as “A follower of God (or many) isn’t/aren’t having a good time. Some less faithful/non-believers are ruining it for everybody else. God/his follower(s) kill the shit out of that person.” It does sequel-bait a bit by mentioning awaiting the arrival of a messiah that’ll make everything super rad. And boy howdy, will there be sequels.

I will admit that Judaism is, like just about every other major faith we know about, very fascinating to study and sprung up a beautiful culture. One point of interest is that it’s a faith following a single god rather than hundreds. This is actually kind of problematic; at least when there are a ton of gods, they usually keep themselves busy by being dicks to one another. Sure, humans usually got caught in the crossfire, but we weren’t usually the target. Here… well, things take an uncomfortable turn.

I personally take a more critical view of this faith when it comes to the god. I have no qualms with saying that he’s a complete asshole. Worse yet, he blames us for everything that goes wrong, even when he’s clearly the one who screwed up. Beyond the introductory parts, God gets more and more bloodthirsty.

At least if it had a neat afterlife, I might get excited, but there really isn’t much mention of it in Judaism. It’s mostly just God being a weird prick (my favorite example of this is 2 Kings 2:23-:24, where God sends two bears to murder 42 children for making fun of a guy that was bald).

GOOD IDEAS:

- A vast majority of Jewish people (culturally or religiously) are very good people despite the fucked-up deity at the center of it.

- Books like Ecclesiastes have some good bits of advice.

- The sequels are generally more tame (if a bit boring).

BAD IDEAS:

- Lots and lots of murder, rape, slavery, and occasionally misogyny.

- Has a “might makes right” mentality about most things.

- Monotheism is less exciting and means more humans getting their shit pushed in.

LIKELIHOOD OF TRUTH: ~44%. The beginning of the Abrahamic God’s quartet is one of confusing dickishness and murder. I can see the appeal of a single god that actually seems interested in the well-being of humanity (or at least, the part that worships him), but beyond a few good aspects sprinkled in here and there, it’s mainly just unpleasant. Thankfully though, God apparently chills out between the Old and New Testament.

(Previous Chapter) | (Archive) | (Next Chapter)