BookTalk.org

Beware: You always have to be on your guard with this Deity, he is a trickster!

Young Earth creationism evangelist Kent Hovind asserted this week that God had purposefully put contradictions in the Bible to “weed out” non-believers. In a YouTube video posted on Monday, the Christian fundamentalist responds to a follower who is troubled by a contradiction in the book of Acts.

“If I was God,” Hovind explains, “I would write the book in such a way that those who don’t want to believe in me anyway would think they found something. ‘Aha, here’s why I don’t believe.' And then they could go on with their own life because they don’t want to believe God anyways,” he continues. “I would put things in there that would appear without digging to be contradictions. I don’t think that’s deceptive, I think that’s wise for the Heavenly Father to weed out those who are really serious.”

http://www.alternet.org/belief/creation ... t-atheists

One minute 21 seconds:


The fluffy bunny in the background adds a special touch...

That's also why there's so much evidence for evolution. It's just a prank, bro!

And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
Acts 9:7

And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.
Acts 22:9

There's the contradiction that Kent Hovind explains away so successfully.

Hovind wrote:I don’t think that’s deceptive

i think Ken has Yahweh and Loki confused a little

or perhaps there really is a basis for Yahweh as trickster

yeah i was only joking says trickster Yahweh, y'all fell for that foreskin thing

It isn't only funny fundamentalists who go in for conspiracy thinking. Although I guess God was a conspiracy of one and different in that regard.

DWill wrote:It isn't only funny fundamentalists who go in for conspiracy thinking. Although I guess God was a conspiracy of one and different in that regard.

Three, one, it's all the same.

I am kind of intrigued by trickster-gods. Loki and Anansi are the most common examples, but mythology is full of them. Krishna seems to have been a bit of one, for example.

Some of that has to be due to the pervasive practice of story-telling, and the usefulness of trickster motifs in such a framework. The Tar Baby may be the most famous, or perhaps Midsummer Night's Dream.

Thomas Hardy included an interesting character, the Reddleman, in "Return of the Native" based essentially on his learning about tricksters in anthropology.

LanDroid wrote:

And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
Acts 9:7

And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.
Acts 22:9

There's the contradiction that Kent Hovind explains away so successfully.

That's some impressive 'splainin'.

one of my favourite tricksters was the one Campbell mentioned

he wore a hat red on one side and blue on the other

back at the pub after a hard days work one lot say did you see the stranger with the red hat?

the other lot say, are you stupid, it was blue

and a fight ensues

the next day he walks back along the same road in the opposite direction

Regarding god as a trickster, Douglas Adams wrote this in The Restaurant At the End of the Universe.

“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha". It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.'
'Why not?'
'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.”

The brick in the hat part is explained here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DontPanic/comm ... nd_of_the/

Murmur wrote:Regarding god as a trickster, Douglas Adams wrote this in The Restaurant At the End of the Universe.

“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha".

Douglas Adams is not a favorite of mine. Speaking of types who never give up, he seems to me to be someone who works away at finding humor even when he isn't coming up with much. But he is very good when he hits the sweet spot.

The original Garden of Eden story is even worse than the way Adams puts it. It seems God is seriously concerned that humans might become immortal. (Evidently written before the Jews imported Persian ideas of life after death.) This would evidently be some kind of cosmic disaster which God feels responsible to avert. I do not have much clue why, or what sidelong comment the author might have had in mind with this setup. But it isn't a matter of God deliberately setting them up to fall, as Adams puts it, and it most definitely is not a story about God's loving care for humans.