For me it is the Tower of Babel in the Bible.

God was afraid of a tower to the heavens?

Really?

What kind of nincompoop is he that this scares him? So stupid he probably did choose Joey Boy as a personal prophet.

A story teller is only as good as the reference material he has to work with. Back in the days before the Webb telescope the heavens were just a few clouds away and light years had not been lit, so, of course God would be worried he'd have humans popping up like gophers once the tower was complete as he sat in his throne just a few hundred yards above wishing for some peace and quiet rather than having to play "whack-a-mole" on some humans.

So some story teller comes up with this fun story having no idea that out of all the lore he and his cohorts are recording that one day this will be selected from many similar to be in God's Own Book that rules much of the world forevermore when all he wanted to do was entertain his kids around the fire place and make them laugh.

I don't think it's the story that's dumb. It's the people who believe it that are.

The Adam and Eve story is horribly dumb, but I have to pick Abraham being told to kill his son for a test.
Wait. I think Jonah and the whale is dumb.
No, wait. How about the talking donkey?
Wow, how to choose out of so many?

I can't think of Abraham & Isaac being dumb. It's too horrifying for me to see it in those terms.

There is no better indication that the God of the Bible was stuck in the Bronze Age, with Molech the devourer of children, Baal, and the other bloodthirsty Canaanite deities.

Gee, that sounds like a great time to select and preserve for our morals and traditions!

>with Molech the devourer of children, Baal, and the other bloodthirsty Canaanite deities.

I like how Yahweh makes a big deal about there being no other gods before him right off in his commandments. He must be jealous or afraid of competition.

Then the story evolves into him claiming there is only ONE god, after admitting there were others worshipped.

THEN the story evolves into the Trinity, trying to claim that is really one god too. Apparently God needed his "laws" updated or something by his son who is himself.

I'll stick to Aesop's fables. They actually seem to teach morals and make sense.

But doesn't that make historical sense?

YHWH started out as a tribal God, the God of Israel, the God of our fathers. Then the priestly and royal class was taken into captivity, interacted closely with Zoroastrian captives from Persia, absorbed their monotheism as well as a lot of their imagery and numerology, and then upon the return to Israel added that to their new religion and "discovered" the Book of Deuteronomy. So the tribal God becomes a universal God, the Lord of Lord and King of Kings--both of which are respective titles for Ahura Mazda and for the Shah.

If we can strip away the subsequent history, both religion and our personal burdens, and look at the events and the books it produced, the story becomes fascinating. Think of the influence that small group of scribes and statesmen in one of the poorest regions imaginable had on the world through their three closely related legacies; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Pretty good for dirt farmers in the hills.

True. It certainly worked.

Dawkins can be proud of them for their memes and their genes.

I’d choose the story of Job. God put his faithful servant through unspeakable horrors just to win a bet with Satan.

How about the one where Nephi commits cold blooded murder and yet Laman and Lemuel somehow remain the bad guys?

The story of Judah and Tamar. Genesis chapter 38.

Judah the son of Jacob had three sons. Er, Onan and Shelah.

Tamar was the wife of Er. Er died without offspring so Judah told his son Onan to sleep with Tamar and raise offspring in his brother Er's name.

Onan however always pulled out and spent his seed on the ground.

God, yes God, was angry about this and killed Onan.

Judah's third son was too young to sleep with Tamar, so Judah told Tamar to live with him until his son was older.

In the meantime, Judah goes on a trip. Tamar gets to the city ahead of him and poses as a prostitute. Veiling her face.

Judah sleeps with her, gets her pregnant and then leaves his seal and staff with her until his servant can bring her payment in the form of a goat.

Tamar skips out of town, heads back to Judah's house and pretends everything is normal.

Later on her pregnancy starts to show and Judah, being all righteous and stuff, decides to burn Tamar alive.

Then Tamar turns the tables, shows Judah his seal and staff and Judah decides, ok, nevermind, you're not going to burn. He then becomes the proud daddy of twins, basically replacing the two sons he lost.

They never say if Tamar sleeps with Shelah.

Remember, this is a wholesome story fit for elementary and jr high kids.

This one takes the cake.

TG

Oh. Tie!

Boyd KKK Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For me it is the Tower of Babel in the Bible.
>
> God was afraid of a tower to the heavens?
>
> Really?
>
> What kind of nincompoop is he that this scares
> him?

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/7?lang=eng

Jews wandering in the desert for 40yrs.
As if they had no way of knowing the way back to Jerusalem from Cairo and didn’t encounter a trader who knew the way?
Like they didn’t see the sun rise in the East every morning and set in the West?
We are supposed to believe Jews were ever that GD dumb?

Jews were ever that GD dumb?

Huh? They weren't Jews. And where do you think the bible came from???

The Jews who followed Moses around in the desert for 40yrs were not Jews?
News to me!

You double down on mistakes with remarkable aplomb.

The people who supposedly followed Moses out of Egypt were not Jews: they were Hebrews or Israelites. One of those tribes was Judah, representing perhaps 10% of the Israelites, but it did not have a separate existence or a distinct territory until it entered Canaan.

"Jews" are a combination of the descendants of Judah and Benjamin and they are named not for their ancestors but for the land of Judah where they set up shop in Canaan. That's why the progeny of Benjamin counted as Jews.

But yeah, there is not a single mention in the OT of "Jews" following Moses around Sinai for 40 years.

Not to mention that there is no actual evidence that there was a Moses, or any Israelites in Egypt. So there's that.

Hence my use of the word "supposedly" in my first sentence.

There is no evidence of even a Hebrew people until 1000-800 BCE, and the Jewish people and religion did not precipitate out of Canaan until the return of the elite at the end of the Captivity in the 6th century BCE,

So on both Biblical and historical grounds, there were no "Jews" following "Moses" around after the "sojourn in Egypt."

That story may not be the dumbest in scripture but it's surely in the running.

Parting of The Red Sea always seemed to me super dumb. I was always thinking, hmmm, God can stop armies but in this case pharaoh was so bad ass even God had to yell, "Run!!!!!"

God was forced to have himself killed and become a flying Jewish zombie in order to forgive people their sins because a woman made from a rib that got tricked by a talking snake.

I prefer levitating Hebrew zombie.

After the flood, 600 year old Noah got drunk on wine and lay naked in his tent. His son Ham saw this but didn't cover Noah's nakedness. Angry Noah cursed Ham's son and his descendants. ???

The entire Book of Revelation. Or does that acid trip deserve its own category?

Revelation picks up a lot of the themes explored in Ezekiel, Second Isaiah, Second Daniel (no longer in the Protestant Bible), and some of the other more mythological parts of the OT.

Viewed in that context Revelation makes a lot of sense and hence becomes one of the better stories in the Bible!

The dumbest for me is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham and his wife were so old, trying for so long for a baby and god finally blesses them with a son. Then god is like, "I know everything already but I feel like YOU don't know how deep your faith in me is. How about you prove it to yourself by sacrificing your son to me?"

The boy Abraham so desperately wanted.

The boy god had blessed him with.

Anyone else looking objectively at this story about an old man hearing a voice in his head telling him to kill his child as a sacrifice, would probably assume either mental illness or that the message did not come from a being that should be followed/listened to. A malevolent creature that seeks the suffering of humans.

But no, everyone who believes this story ignores the fact that this horrible, awful vile thing was ASKED of Abraham and they focus on the part of the story where an angel stops him. As if that proves god is good. As if that erases the fact that Abraham, in his mind, did not expect god to cancel the order last minute. He went up to the mountain with intent to plunge a knife into that little boy. To kill him on the altar for his god. Which, cognitive dissonance reigns, because everyone who believes this story is true in the very next breath says this example of faith is commendable and we should ALL aspire to be that dedicated to god, that if he asked any of us to do such horrible, wicked things, we would simply do it out of devotion and love for him, with no expectation of a last minute angel to rush in to stop us.

It's the stupidest, evil shit I ever heard.

When was the last time you founded a nation? I never did, nor did I ever want to. Because I'm not a psycho nut job. Nationalism is not for normies.

Wooden submarines with bathtub plug hatches (big enough to squeeze through cuz no doors), crossing the Atlantic, have to be the dumbest thing.

Agree. (But God loves you!)

If any humans parented even remotely like God did in the Bible, we'd be arrested (for murder, abuse, mental illness, incompetency, etc.).

Let's start at the beginning...
According to the Bible (Genesis 2:7), this is how humanity began: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." God then called the man Adam, and later created Eve from Adam's rib.

Sounds reasonable to me...

Yeah. And . . . what get me is this:



"On the first day, God created light in the darkness. On the second, He created the sky. Dry land and plants were created on the third day. On the fourth day, God created the sun, the moon and the stars."

If the sun was created on the second day what was the light on the first day? There wasn't even a sky until the second day. Was god wondering around with a candle or lantern doing his creating?

Then the plants got created before the sun? No photosynthesis for you plants! Which shoots holes in this "intelligent design" Christians like to trot out when cornered.

OOops I meant to say "if the sun was created on the FOURTH day not the second.

...as children. And because they don't know any better, children are more likely to believe that these stories are true, and many of them continue to hold on to those beliefs throughout the remainder of their lives even when the evidence against these stories ever actually happening is pretty solid.

I think that one of the things that made me begin to question the efficacy of the Bible as a child was the fact that what I was being taught in school didn't match what the Bible was saying. I just found it odd that the blind school I attended in Los Angeles (until the end of third grade) didn't teach that Earth was created in 7 days; that women came from the rib of a man; that there were talking serpents in a place called the Garden of Eden, among others. I didn't know about the relationship between religion and the sciences back then nor about the debate between the adults about what should and shouldn't be taught in public schools. But I *did* know that I was not being taught what my Roman Catholic religion said in public schools.

What I'm saying (and bringing it back to the topic of this thread) is that while we can all laugh at the stupidity of these Bible stories now, I'm willing to bet that many, if not most of us, believed the vast majority of these stories to be true as young children and that it was only through time, public education, and a willingness to question everything as adults, that got us around to realizing how stupid and unfounded the Biblical accounts really were and are.

As a child, I believed in a man who came down a chimney to leave gifts...and we didn't even have a fireplace!

One thing that struck me was the story of the parting of the Red Sea.

As I became a teen, and spent many an hour on water ski's behind a boat. I learned that lake bottoms are very soft, and deep in mud.

Then I began to wonder? How in the he** could you move (per the bible), over one million people through a sea bed in a day or so without them at minimum becoming mired in the mud.

Then I began to see the stupidity and contradictions in many of the stories.

Oh, come on SiG. With gawd, nothing is impossible. That’s what we were taught. If I had ever really thought about it, I would have just figured that gawd dried up the muddy bottom for them.

TG

Well if he did it for them, why not me. I mean trying to get a Vega out of 12 inches of mud at 1:00 A.M. on a Saturday night and you have to be at church at 7:00 A.M.

I could have used some help then.

Maybe I needed a big staff and booming voice, like CH had in the movie.

That would have been the perfect time for "Hahaha! Where is your God now?".

A related problem regarding the Israelites on their travels is how could a million people exist in Egypt, depart Egypt, run around a very small region for 40 years, and then enter Canaan without any leaving a trace in the historical, archaeological, or economic records of any of those places?

The sources I have seen (thanks, Google) put the entire population of Egypt at 1400 BCE in the range of 1-2 million. Surely the loss of one million Israelites should have left a mark.

There is a National Geo series where they explore bible stories and compare them to current archeology and other applications.

One of the segments goes over the story of the Israelite exodus, it is looked at from every angle to modern knowledge. I really enjoyed it, and one of the many observations presents an idea that the bible was misquoted and it was not the "Red Sea", but the "Reed Sea", which is more like a wetlands area.

If you have access to Disney+, with the Nat Geo included, you will find the series there.

Yes, the Red Sea/Reed Sea is an important problem. The Reed Sea, if I recall correctly, is about two feet deep.

God drowning the Egyptian army in two feet of water sounds so much more plausible.

The Egyptians rode very short horses.

Well yeah, if you want to get all technical and nit-picky.

Agree with CrispingPin and blindguy about Job. The story of Lot and his daughters after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a runner up just for being sickening. Do people seriously want their kids reading about liquoring up someone to commit incest? Twice!

As a nevermo, I have no knowledge of BoM stories and only a vague
knowledge of Bible stories but I always thought the story of Noah's Ark to be preposterous.

Me too, cinda. Preposterous is a good word for it.
I hope you are doing well! Good to see you around.

Boyd KKK Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For me it is the Tower of Babel in the Bible.
>
> God was afraid of a tower to the heavens?
>
> Really?
>
> What kind of nincompoop is he that this scares
> him? So stupid he probably did choose Joey Boy as
> a personal prophet.

The word "dumb" does not mean "stupid", it means someone who cannot speak properly as in "deaf and dumb". Ironically, the *real* meaning of the word fits better.

But it's still ableist language.

It doesn't fit. Confounding languages didn't make them mute.

Swing Ball should buy a dictionary.

What? You sayin' some words have more than one meaning? That's crazy talk right there.

But of course crazy has two meanings too I guess. "I'm crazy about Sue even though she's crazy!"

It's annoying, isn't it? Just when you think you've mastered a word, it goes and changes on you.

Who would have noticed that "dumb" took on a new meaning just a century or two ago???

The bible is the living words of God. And one must learn to use them as God intended.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2023 05:36PM by Elder Berry.

Can you say that in Hebrew followed by some Greek*?
















*Answers will also be accepted in Reformed Egyptian and pure Adamic.

Lol. I wish I could but I'm dumb in both.

EOD is like that: dumb in any language.

  
  

Perhaps, but all is not lost.

But you can still have yourself a nice caper or a bit of a gambol as you cavort through life.

You've brought to my mind the happy-go-lucky Jack Cavortian

Matthew 8:28-32

28 When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.

29 “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

30 Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding.

31 The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

32 He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water.


Now, if I had owned those pigs I would have been royally pissed at one Jesus.

The problem nowadays , though, is that there is never a herd of pigs nearby when you need to cast some demons out. Perhaps casting them into a presidential debate would work as well?

Orson Whitney said that Joseph Smith said that the Tower of Babel wasn't designed to reach heaven (a "fairy tale," he called that idea). Instead it was built to reach the City of Enoch which was at the time hovering over the area like a UFO.

----

There are too many candidates for Dumbest Story to pick just one, so I'll put forth what IMO is the funniest story in scripture: the sons of Sceva.

Acts 19:13-16

13 Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.

14 And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so.

15 And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?

16 And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

Jesus is god
who sacrificed himself
to himself
to appease himself

I don't think that is dumb. If you were God who else would you sacrifice?

I can think of a person or two.