The Bible, Pt. 22: Exodus, Chapter 32 - 40

Continuing my Bible commentary from Part 21. Note that the whole series can be found here, and that all quotes are from the King James Bible.

Chapter 32:

1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

...

4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

So, Moses has been on the mountain, getting the many-more-than-ten commandments - and lots of interior decorating tips - from God. But after a few days, the Israelites say, "To hell with waiting around. Let's find us a new god."

Remember that these are supposed to be the best people God could find on the whole planet. Now, they've just witnessed their god bring ten horrendous plagues to the Egyptians, plagues which magically avoided the Hebrew people.

Then they watched their God part the Red Sea, turning the seabed to dry land on which they could walk, then turn it back into ocean behind them to destroy the Pharaoh and all his troops. Not just that, but God is still providing manna from heaven every day - except the sabbath - so they can just pick their food up off the ground each morning. Oh, and he's miraculously provided water in the desert, too - twice.

But now, they get impatient after only a month or so? Even though they're still getting magical food every day? And Aaron - Moses' brother and the guy handpicked by God to serve as Moses' spokesman - goes along with it? Heck, he doesn't just go along with it, he creates their new god himself!

I'm not sure what's more surprising, God's incredibly bad ability to recognize the character of ordinary human beings (remember the 'perfect' Noah, Abraham, and Lot?), or the unbelievably poor short-term memory and/or patience of his 'chosen people.' Either way, it's downright laughable, isn't it?

7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:

8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

Remember, the only characteristic God actually values in human beings is obedience, so he's royally pissed now. He's going to spare Moses, but he plans to wipe out the rest of the Israelites. Well, he's done this before - even worse than this - with Noah, and he clearly doesn't mind starting over yet again.

11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?

12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.

...

14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Moses knows just what to say: What will the Egyptians think about this? Remember, God kept hardening the Pharaoh's heart so God could demonstrate to the Egyptians, over and over again, how powerful he was. But now, if he kills all those people he's just rescued, what will the Egyptians say about that?

Well, this argument does the trick. Moses sure knows how to manipulate the Lord, doesn't he? So God "repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."

Um, say what? God was going to do evil? But then he changed his mind? Hmm,... neither of these things really fits the omniscient, omnipotent, omni-benevolent god Christians imagine, does it?

Admittedly, God repented of creating human beings in the first place in Genesis, Chapter 6, so this isn't the first time his omniscience has let him down (not that there's been any hint of omniscience in this god - not yet, certainly). And by almost any definition imaginable, God has certainly done plenty of evil in the Old Testament, too.

18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.

19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

OMG, there's singing and dancing! Well, Moses will certainly put an end to that,... by making them drink water with ground up flecks of gold in it?

But I guess there was more to it than that:

25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)

26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD'S side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

Whoa! There wasn't just singing and dancing, there was naked singing and dancing! And they didn't invite him? No wonder Moses is so pissed!

But Moses has just the solution for people who worship a different god: Kill the heretics! That probably wasn't too difficult, since his side had swords and their opponents were naked. And his side outnumbered the heretics 200 to 1. (Remember, there were supposed to be more than 600,000 men in total.)

And this is on the direct command of God: "slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor." Well, you certainly can't have freedom of religion, huh? How crazy would that be? Can you imagine just letting each person decide for himself which god to worship (or not)?

35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

Hmm,... I wonder what he did to Aaron? Remember, Aaron and his sons were to be God's priests, so what's he doing making a false idol? And really, why didn't God see that coming? God seems to be just a horrible judge of character, doesn't he?

Chapter 33:

1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:

2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:

3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.

Remember, God is giving the Israelites a land which is already home to many other tribes. They're coming as invaders, but not to worry, they've got God on their side.

Only, God is still pissed at them, so he's going to send an angel along, instead of joining them himself ("lest I consume thee in the way"). Very quickly, though, God is persuaded to change his mind (again).

11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. ...

12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.

...

16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.

17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.

Remember when Moses tried to get out of all this by assuring God that he wasn't eloquent, claiming that he was "slow of speech, and of slow tongue" (Chapter 4)? Clearly, that wasn't the truth, as he's now talked God into changing his mind twice in the last two chapters.

This time, God agrees to go with them after all, instead of just sending an angel.

20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

Wait,... what? God is going to show Moses his "back parts"? That sounds rather kinky, doesn't it? And note that Moses and God were just talking "face to face." I mean, it was just a few verses previously! I know the Bible isn't consistent, but this is ridiculous!

Furthermore, God showed himself to Abraham many times in Genesis. Similarly, in Chapter 32 of Genesis, Jacob says, "for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." But all of a sudden, "shall no man see me, and live"?

Chapter 34:

1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.

...

5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.

6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

And modest, too. Let's not forget modest.

7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Hmm,... I don't think I'd brag about that last part. Why should my great-grandchildren be punished for something I did? That's neither justice nor good morals.

11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:

14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Again, God promises to drive out of the Promised Land the people who already make their homes there. Nice guy, huh? Furthermore, he insists that the Israelites make no peace treaties with those people - and certainly not that they practice freedom of religion. Just the reverse, in fact.

So how often was this cited when Christians burned heretics alive, I wonder? How often during the Inquisition? How often during the centuries of European war, when Catholics and Protestants both tried to force their own particular religious beliefs on everyone?

Just consider how anti-Bible the United States Constitution really was - and is. Can you imagine getting the concepts of freedom of speech and religion from this book?

19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.

20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

Here, again, God insists on the blood sacrifice of every first born male animal and person. The firstborn of an ass you can redeem with a lamb, if you don't want to sacrifice the ass. However, if you can't afford a lamb, you must break its neck. The same also appears to be the case for "the firstborn of thy sons."

28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

This is the first we hear of "ten" commandments. The first time Moses was on the mountain - also for forty days and forty nights - there were a lot more than just ten commandments listed (and that's not even counting the interior decorating arrangements). But Moses broke those tablets, so he's back on the mountain again now, so God can write on the blank stone tablets Moses has made as replacements.

Again, it takes forty days and forty nights. Is God just a slow writer or something? After all, he's already told Moses exactly what he wants (in excruciating detail). But this time, it's just ten commandments. Unfortunately, we're not told what those ten commandments are. Not here, at least.

But we do get a repeat of all that interior decorating stuff. (For my sins, I suppose.)

Chapter 35:

1 And Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together, and said unto them, These are the words which the LORD hath commanded, that ye should do them.

2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.

3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.

OK, here's one commandment, I guess. Put to death anyone who works - or even heats his home - on the sabbath. You know, I'll bet there'd be a lot fewer Christians here in Nebraska if this one was still observed!

4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,

5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and silver, and brass,

6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,

7 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,

8 And oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense,

The rest of this, though - and the rest of the chapters of Exodus - is just Moses telling the Israelites about the interior decorating ideas of their God. And then all of them work to build to God's precise specifications.

Chapter 36:

8 And every wise hearted man among them that wrought the work of the tabernacle made ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work made he them.

9 The length of one curtain was twenty and eight cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: the curtains were all of one size.

10 And he coupled the five curtains one unto another: and the other five curtains he coupled one unto another.

And on and on. Are there any discrepancies between the two accounts? Beats me. If you want to compare the two, be my guest. I could barely stay awake reading this stuff the first time.

Chapter 37:

1 And Bezaleel made the ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the height of it:

2 And he overlaid it with pure gold within and without, and made a crown of gold to it round about.

3 And he cast for it four rings of gold, to be set by the four corners of it; even two rings upon the one side of it, and two rings upon the other side of it.

Again, my apologies, but I'm skipping most of this stuff. Trust me, you wouldn't want to read it, anyway. 38 verses in the previous chapter, 28 in this one, 31 in the next,... and we've read it all before, just a little bit earlier in Exodus.

It was excessive the first time. To repeat it all really goes beyond the bounds of reason and polite society!

Chapter 38:

1 And he made the altar of burnt offering of shittim wood: five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof; it was foursquare; and three cubits the height thereof.

2 And he made the horns thereof on the four corners of it; the horns thereof were of the same: and he overlaid it with brass.

3 And he made all the vessels of the altar, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons, and the fleshhooks, and the firepans: all the vessels thereof made he of brass.

Well, of course! What good is an altar without fleshhooks, firepans, and shovels?

Yeah, I said that before, didn't I? My apologies for repeating myself. :)

Chapter 39:

1 And of the blue, and purple, and scarlet, they made cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, and made the holy garments for Aaron; as the LORD commanded Moses.

2 And he made the ephod of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.

...

27 And they made coats of fine linen of woven work for Aaron, and for his sons,

Note that Aaron doesn't seem to have lost his position as head priest for the minor peccadillo of creating a new god - that golden calf - for the Israelites to worship when they got tired of waiting for Moses. No big deal, then?

42 According to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so the children of Israel made all the work.

43 And Moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the LORD had commanded, even so had they done it: and Moses blessed them.

Only five chapters this time and they're done. God's new house is ready for him.

Chapter 40:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 On the first day of the first month shalt thou set up the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation.

3 And thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony, and cover the ark with the vail.

4 And thou shalt bring in the table, and set in order the things that are to be set in order upon it; and thou shalt bring in the candlestick, and light the lamps thereof.

...

16 Thus did Moses: according to all that the LORD commanded him, so did he.

Well, OK, it's not quite ready. There are 15 more verses of God's instructions, and then another 16 verses or so of Moses carrying out those instructions. But now we're done.

33 ... So Moses finished the work.

34 Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

35 And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

36 And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys:

37 But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up.

38 For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

And God moves in. This is now God's home on Earth, apparently. It's a temporary home - a mobile home - until they get to Jerusalem and build a more permanent temple, but remember that it's going to take them another 40 years of wandering the desert just to get there.

I really hope when they do get there that we don't get yet another repeat of all this interior decorating stuff! But I'll worry about that when, and if, the time comes. For now, we're done with Exodus.

Next time, we'll start Leviticus, and I must admit that I haven't read one word of that chapter, not yet. So I have no idea what to expect. Maybe we'll find out together? See you then!

___
Note: This entire series can be found here.

Inciting violence on Fox Business Network

Double-standard is right! Can you imagine the screaming from Fox if someone had said, "They should be able to put the statue up, and then they should be shot right next to it" on any other network about some Christian group?

So what's the difference? Are Satanists "evil"? I doubt if they'd say so. They're foolish, if they believe that Satan - or any other god - actually exists, but plenty of people do. And in a nation with freedom of religion, that's not a crime.

But this shows the double-standard in our media - and in politics, too. Right-wingers can say whatever they want, and if it causes a controversy, it's nothing they need pay much attention to. Liberals would have been fired by now, and the Democratic Party would be in a collective panic, wringing its hands about anything even close to this bad.

Satanists certainly aren't progressives, since they're as faith-based as any Republican, but when you believe in freedom of religion, you can't just support the rights of people you agree with.

No free lunch, Congressman?

Funny, isn't it? Or maybe it's just depressing, I don't know.

Note that the "free lunch" part of this video is only about five minutes long. Someone screwed up, because there's a blank screen for awhile, then a different video clip (about how many Americans self-identify as liberals, and what that means).

Questions for Christians: Fight Club

This is a new YouTube channel for me, but it's pretty good.

NumberOneSon has a whole series on these Questions for Christians, but what really got me to subscribe was his Losing God video, which describes his deconversion from Christianity. Good stuff!

Distant Worlds: Shadows - beginner's tips, pt. 2

Empire Summary screen (F6)

In Part 1, we covered pirates and resources in Distant Worlds: Shadows. Now, we're moving on to money. There's a lot to it, and it doesn't work like you might expect.

Distant Worlds seems to have a right-wing, trickle-down economic model, where lower taxes actually do produce enormous growth with very little downside. Think of it as if Bushanomics had actually worked.

In this game, pretty much the only thing your government needs money for is the military, and even then, you can continue to pay your soldiers and maintain your ships without actually taxing the citizens. Scientific research does just fine, too, without money. Furthermore, you can bankrupt your government - drown it in a bathtub, if you want - and not only do your interest rates not go up, you never pay any interest at all.

The only thing you really need cash for is to buy a new ship or base, or to upgrade to a new design. Otherwise, you can go along just fine deeply in the red. Taxes aren't completely unnecessary, but this game really does seem to be a Tea Party wet dream.

Forget about how realistic this is. It's just a game, after all. But managing your economy is a critical part of it, so you really have to know how this works.

In Part 1, the first thing I suggested was to pause the game and set your tax rate to zero. Partly, that was so the pirates would see how poor you were, and not charge as much in their protection racket. But setting your taxes to zero also causes a huge boom in population growth and GDP growth. (Amazing how that actually works in a game, isn't it?)

You can experiment with this, if you want. It doesn't cause any problems at all to rapidly change your taxes to zero, then up to 40 or 50%, then back down again, and you can quickly see the results in the growth rate of your planet. If you set your taxes too high, your people will become unhappy, and you don't want that (keep them "satisfied," at least). But you can play with this to see what happens.

At the start, you've only got one planet - your homeworld. For a long time, that will be your empire's powerhouse, so you want the population and economy to become as large as possible. Well, if you keep your taxes at zero - or as low as possible - your planet's population and economy will grow very rapidly.

Later, you can raise taxes and make some real money. You'll need the money, because you'll be colonizing other planets, and while they're young, you'll need to keep their taxes at zero for the same reason. (Practically speaking, when they're young, you won't get much tax money from them anyway, even if you raise the rate sky high. So tax your homeworld then, and let the colonies grow.)

Derelict ships from long ago, great loot for bold explorers

So, how can you run an empire with no taxes? You can't, not entirely. But you can go a surprisingly long way, at least in Distant Worlds: Shadows. (I wouldn't try this in the real world.)

Take a look at your Empire Summary screen (F6). I've posted a screenshot from my own game, at the start of this post. Click on it to enlarge the picture, if necessary, because this is pretty important to understand.

Note that there's a state economy and a private economy. You have little direct control over the private economy, but it's very important, nonetheless. Your private economy needs to remain healthy - rich, even. If they've got cash on hand, they'll buy ships (and you'll get the money from building them, plus useful resources will move to your spaceport on civilian ships).

Note their expenses. The taxes they pay are calculated from the tax rate on each of your colonies and the size of the economy there. (You can see that same amount as revenue on the state side of the ledger, too.) They also pay maintenance on civilian ships and bases - note that this includes the mining bases that you build, since the private sector pays the maintenance on them - and their fuel costs.

Obviously, taxes are a big part of their expenses, but the number of mining bases you build and the cost of resources also factor in to their maintenance costs. Earlier, I suggested hiring pirates to smuggle resources to your colonies, if a colony was short of a strategic resource it couldn't get elsewhere. That's a valid and quite necessary tactic.

However, note that any such resources smuggled into your planets are quite expensive. If you go overboard with this, especially if you have them smuggle multiple resources to multiple planets, you can bankrupt your private sector by increasing their costs. Keep an eye on your private economy here. You want it to be as healthy as possible.

Now, on the state side, your "cash on hand" can be negative without any big problems. You won't pay interest on that, and you'll still pay your troops and maintain your ships. (Your research won't be affected, either.) The only thing you can't do is to buy new ships and bases, or update the ones you have to more modern designs.

I wouldn't let your cash on hand get too far in the red, just because you might need a new ship in a hurry, sometime. But you can stay in the red for a long time with no problem, then greatly increase the tax rate when you need cash to buy something, lowering it again afterwards. (As I say, I'd keep the happiness on your planets at least at "satisfied" when you do raise taxes. You don't want them to revolt.)

Still, don't you need taxes, even in a right-wing paradise? Well, sure, but there are other ways to get money. And the benefits to low taxes are so great in Distant Worlds: Shadows that you really want to think long and hard before spending any money at all.

Passenger ships, braving empty space and pirates for an exotic vacation

Let's look at expenses first. At the start of the game, you'll be paying pirates protection money, and that will likely be a big expense. But it's a necessary one, at first. Later, you'll be laughing at pirate demands, but not now.

Ship and base maintenance will be a big expense for the whole game. You can look at the details at the bottom of that screen. Note that you pay to build mining bases, but it's the private sector that pays to maintain them. That's important.

On the state side, too, the cost of resources makes a difference. If resource costs increase, the initial cost of ships and bases will increase and so will the maintenance cost of existing ships. Just something to keep in mind.

At the beginning of the game, you'll be paying pirate protection, but if that keeps you from needing to build more ships, you'll save on both the initial cost and the upkeep. Again, just something to keep in mind. Remember, you're trying to keep your costs as low as possible, especially in the beginning, so think about what you're building.

Troop maintenance is another big expense. Now, I would love to let the AI handle troop numbers for each planet, but it's been my experience that I end up with far more troops than I can afford. So I would recommend handling that yourself.

On the one hand, you don't want to lose colonies to invasion. On the other hand, invasion doesn't seem to be a big danger at the start of the game, when you haven't yet encountered another civilization. (Pirates will invade, but usually not in large numbers.) And later on, an enemy can simply bombard your planet, destroying everything, in which case your troops can do nothing, anyway.

Besides, troops are expensive, and it's critical that you save money. I can't say this often enough. You'll have to decide these things for yourself, though. It's all part of the game.

Then there's the revenue side. Note that your cash flow can be negative, but you can still make money most years when the "bonus income" is added in. Space port income is a big part of that. Remember that, if the private sector is flush with cash and has reason to need ships (mining ships, transport ships, passenger ships), they'll order them at your spaceports, and you'll make money from that.

This varies a lot. You'll get a rush of building sometimes, when a new opportunity opens up (like a new colony planet, for example), but then there will be times when your spaceport is pretty much idle. Still, think right-wing economic fantasies: if the rich get richer, they'll invest that money in new ships and factories and everyone will benefit.

Foreign trade bonuses will become important, once you encounter other empires (and especially when you make free trade agreements with them). Note that you have to keep piracy down, though. If pirates are everywhere, hassling your civilian ships, they won't be able to make much money (or bring you needed resources, either).

Finally, there's resort income. You won't have any resorts at first - they're expensive, and you need mining bases first. But resort bases are a great way to earn money. After all, you've got all those rich people, eager to go on exotic vacations.

You'll want to build resorts reasonably close to your biggest planets, and you'll want to look for spectacular scenery, which will give you a bonus. Note that any planet with a ruin can be a suitable location for a resort base (even though other locations might give a bigger bonus), and you'll start with two of them in your initial solar system. That's great, because your homeworld will be nearby.

Um, one caution: note that it's dangerous for construction ships to build resorts at some locations, at least before you have good technology. If you try, your ship might just disappear, never to be heard from again. :)

Obviously, you want to protect your resort bases and your passenger ships from pirates, too. In the screenshot above, you can see a string of civilian ships heading several sectors away from my home space. It turned out that they were mostly passenger ships, visiting an independent planet quite far from my homeworld.

I'm not sure what the draw was, although there was a pretty big population of aliens on that planet. Unfortunately, the whole area was infested with pirates. I had to send a fleet clear up there, just to defend all the passenger ships which were being attacked. And now I'm building a colony ship, hoping to add this planet to my empire (before some other empire gets to it first).

A small part of the technology tree

So, to review, you want to keep the tax rate on your homeworld as low as you possibly can, even when it shows you a negative cash flow. Try to make up the difference in other ways, if you can. When you need cash to buy something, increase the rate for awhile, until you've got as much as you need. Then drop it again.

When you start to settle colonies, keep their taxes at zero and rely on taxing your homeworld, which by then should have a huge economy and population. When your early colonies grow up, you can start taxing them, too.

Oh, one other tip. Long-range sensors are really, really useful, but it's expensive to build monitoring stations everywhere. However, if you manually edit the design of your gas mining bases (not your regular mining bases), you can add a long-range sensor to them.

This will add to the initial cost of your gas mining bases, true. And it will add to the maintenance cost of them, too. But note that it's the private sector which pays the maintenance cost on mining bases, and your private economy should have plenty of money, if you've been keeping tax rates low.

Don't do this on regular mining bases, because you'll have way too many of them. Sure, you'll have some overlap with gas mining bases, too, but not quite that bad. And if there's part of the galaxy where you need a long-range sensor, just build a gas mining base there. Not only will you get sensor coverage, you'll also gain a useful refueling station.

Now, enjoy the game! :)

___
Note: Most of my posts about computer games can be found here.

Rich vs poor - moral hazards and money immunity

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I know I've been posting a lot of these, but Jon Stewart has really been on a roll this week.

Can you believe that 99% of these moochers have a refrigerator? What's next, running water? Must be nice, huh?

And if you've got a refrigerator, where's the incentive to work? Of course, rich kids can handle their trust funds. That's different, right? I mean, if you inherit money, that doesn't sap your ambition at all.  They've got "money immunity," built up from a lifetime of having everything they want.

That's why we need to eliminate welfare, unemployment benefits, and health care for the poor, yet we also need to eliminate estate taxes. Because the rich can handle getting money for nothing. The poor can't. Right? Right?

These unemployment benefits were always supposed to be temporary, just like the Bush tax cuts for the rich. The difference is that these benefits are still going to be temporary. It's just that, with Republicans dragging their feet every step of the way, it's been slow climbing out of the economic collapse they gave us.

We bailed out the banks - we used tax money to rescue the rich from the results of their own folly - so the investment class is doing great. (Trust me. I'm not rich, but I do live on my investments. The investment class is doing great.) Yes, that was the right thing to do, but it was still rescuing the rich from the disasters they themselves created. But rescuing the poor? Oh, we wouldn't want to do that, would we?

Finally, as Stewart points out, welfare fraud means that we need to eliminate social safety nets for everyone, but bank fraud is just a few bad apples making honest bankers look bad. Double standard, anyone?

But I've got to say, as angry as I get at all of this stuff, what really burns my butt is to watch that smug asshole Stuart Varney talk about how people with little education don't deserve more money,... while right-wingers like him fight to make education as difficult, as ineffective, and as expensive as possible for the poor and even the middle class.

I'm glad that Stewart shows just brief clips from these people, because two seconds of them is about all I can stand!

Distant Worlds: Shadows - beginner's tips

My human (mostly) civilization in space, 2124

These are tips for beginners of Distant Worlds: Shadows and from a beginner. If you think I'm not qualified to give tips in this game, since I'm just a beginner myself, you might be right. But I think of it as being closer to the problem. :)

I've made two previous posts about the game, both from early last summer, and I'll try not to repeat myself. These are tips for beginners - people who've never played the Distant Worlds series and people, like me, who might have disregarded the advice to play a classic game first, preferring to start as an empire in the Age of Shadows.

Note that there are many options when beginning a new game, and you can decide for yourself if you want to change the default settings. For example, you can start in a somewhat richer solar system than average, if you want. (I did.) And I set space creatures to few, since I don't particularly enjoy that feature. With the most recent update, there's a setting for pirate strength, too, I see.

Whatever else you change, don't move Expansion away from PreWarp. If you do, you'll be playing a classic game, not the Age of Shadows start. After all, the whole point of this start is that you begin with no knowledge of hyperdrive, without even knowing what's in your own solar system. (That was hugely appealing to me, right from the beginning.)

Pirates, however, begin with hyperdrive and other advanced technology. They begin with military ships, when you won't have ships of any kind - or bases, either. Pirates retain some of the ancient technology planets have lost, and empires can't hope to defend against them at the start of the game. (Note that you can play as a pirate, but I haven't tried that, not yet.)

Anyway, when you start the game, pause it (press the spacebar) immediately and look around. There's not much to see, is there? Yes, you can see the planets in your own solar system, and you can see distant stars, but you won't know anything about them, not yet.

Before you unpause the game, go to your Colonies screen (F2) and set the tax rate on your homeworld - your only planet, right now - to zero. There are two reasons for that, and I'll explain one of them in a minute (the other will have to wait for Part 2 of this).

Then, order your planet to build a small spaceport. I normally use the Construction Yards screen (F10) to do that. Note that you build spaceports, and other orbital bases, from the planet itself. You build construction ships and, eventually, colony ships there, too. But you need a spaceport in order to build most other kinds of ships, both military and civilian.

You'll need a larger spaceport eventually, but speed is critical here, so start small. Then queue up some other orders, too. I'd build an Energy research station next, then a High Tech research station and probably a Weapons research station. I usually build a defensive base after that, and you might also build a construction ship or two (note my tips about changing the design of these, later in this post).

My homeworld

Some of this will depend on how much starting money you have. Note that you're setting up most of this before you unpause the game, and the point - one of the points - is to use up much of your starting money. You probably don't want to run out completely, but you want to be as poor as possible before the pirates arrive, and they'll arrive almost immediately.

The thing is, your local pirates will demand protection money, and you'll pay it. You've really got no choice about that. But if your tax rate is zero and you don't have a big pile of money sitting in the treasury, they won't ask for nearly as much money. That's important, because you'll be paying for awhile.

I got this tip, and another, here. It's not as gimmicky as it seems, either, because there's another good reason for lowering the tax rate to zero. But I'll get to that later (not till Part 2 of this, I'm afraid).

Pirates will be your main threat - nearly your only threat - in the early part of the game, and the AI will recommend that you cancel that protection agreement long before you're able to withstand an attack. I'd rather keep the payments low and continue to pay extortion for awhile, myself.

Even after you can build ships, you won't be able to match pirate ships, not for a long time. You can try to outnumber them, but fleets are expensive, and they can't be everywhere. This post isn't really about combating pirates (I talked about that here, though I've learned some things since then), but that needs to be a big part of your thinking in the early game.

Pirates will raid your planets, destroy your bases, and hassle your privately-owned ships, the lifeblood of your economy. And although they start strong enough, they can often find really powerful ships, derelicts from the past, since they get to explore space before you do.

If you expand too far, too fast, you won't be able to defend what you own, even after you do get capable ships. Note that I like to use frigates armed with rail guns in the early years, because those weapons bypass shields. You might have no hope of destroying a pirate ship, but if you can damage it, it might withdraw for repairs.

In this game, I've also used small, fast escorts, armed with a few missiles, just to distract enemies and give me a little time to respond. (I add a few to each fleet, but I let the AI handle the rest. I don't know how effective they are, but they make my civilization seem more realistic.) And fighters are really nice, too - especially when you can finally build carriers.

But for the most part, you just have to keep pirates in mind before you build... well, anything, really. If you build it, can you defend it? In general, bases can't defend themselves - certainly not for long. You've got to have ships which can get there in time and which can withstand the pirates when they do. (One priority, a little later, is long-range scanners, so you can see the pirates coming. I've got a tip for them, too, but not in this post.)

Anyway, as I say, that's not the focus of this post, and I don't want pirates to hijack this. There's just too much to say about that problem. Here, I want to focus on resources and money, because with enough of both, pirates will be dead meat.

When I played Distant Worlds last summer, resources were the big problem. I kept getting stuck, so short of critical resources that I couldn't build mining bases to get more of the resources I was lacking. There have been game updates since then, and I think this was toned down a bit. Resources are still critical, but I've had no real problem staying supplied in this game - so far, at least. Still, you have to keep a close eye on this, both at individual colonies and overall (at the Expansion Planner screen, F3).

An overview of my starting solar system

OK, you've started the game, those pirates are being paid off, and you've just built your first small spaceport. Now that you can build ships, you need to explore your local solar system. Note that you won't have hyperdrive for some time, so this is going to be painfully slow. To help with that, I'd manually edit the design for your exploration ships and add more engines - ion thrusters - and maybe some more directional thrusters for quicker maneuvering, too.

Yeah, that will add to their cost, but this will just be temporary, and you really want your first two exploration ships to be as fast as possible. If you're building any constructions ships (I wouldn't build more than two), you want to do the same thing. Manually edit the design to make them faster, much faster.

There are probably two derelict ships somewhere in your starting solar system (at least, there have been every time I've started a new game). I'd look around for them and send your exploration ships their way as fast as possible. Neither ship has hyperdrive capability, but they'll still be extremely valuable.

One of them will be damaged, and you'll need to send a construction ship to repair it. But while it's working on the ship, you'll get a research bonus. And when you finish, you'll get a useful ship, at least for a little while (after that, you can retire it at your shipyard for another research bonus).

The other ship can be boarded and used immediately. Unfortunately, I've never managed to get to that ship before the pirates do. But it's still worth trying, and you need to explore the whole solar system, anyway.

You'll discover some secrets, including clues to researching Warp Field Precursors, which will give you your first jump ship. Get to work on that immediately. It takes a long time to research, and Warp Bubble Generators will still be too slow to explore the stars, but they'll make a huge difference in travel times within your own solar system.

(Note that, when you finish exploring your initial solar system, you can scrap those first two exploration ships. There's no sense in paying maintenance on them any longer than necessary.)

You'll also discover valuable resources on the other moons and planets of your solar system, and you'll want to build mining bases on them,... eventually. At the very beginning, though, think it through. Without hyperdrive, you won't be able to defend them (even if you could afford to build a fleet of capable ships, which you probably can't).

Of course, you'll still be paying protection money to one pirate faction, and that might be the only one in your neighborhood. There might be dangerous space creatures near a planet, or there might not. There's a lot that goes into this. Is it worth the risk - and the expense - or not? Think about every mine, every planet.

Either way, you'll still get some resources, because your private sector will start ordering mining ships (and they'll pay you to build them, which is especially nice). Note how your spaceport will start building those ships automatically, if the civilian economy is doing well. Then watch them move around your solar system, mining resources and bringing them back to the homeworld.

All of that is automated, and they'll go where they're needed. You don't control the civilian economy directly, but it's very important to you. Once you build mining bases, they'll order freighters, too, and you'll get even more resources. But you have to decide what you really need and when. This is all a balancing act, and it's one of the great things about the game.

Strategic resources are critical, so you have to build mining bases. But you need to be able to protect them, too. Bases within your starting solar system are generally the easiest to protect, though not if you haven't even discovered hyperdrive yet. But then, if you're still paying off the pirates - as you should be - you should be safe from that particular faction, at least.

But bases also cost resources and money to build. We'll get to the money part later, but let me just say that there's a very good reason to go slow on spending money. On the other hand, if you go too slow, you'll run short of resources. And you can really get into a bind if that happens. Decisions, decisions, huh? But that's what makes this fun.

To begin with, note which resources are available on your home planet. You don't need to build mining bases at colonies, since you'll get those resources anyway. You need strategic resources at first, and it's more efficient for your freighters (not to mention easier to defend) if they're close to your homeworld.

You might not need any mining bases at first, but keep a close eye on the Expansion Planner screen (F3). Throughout the game, you'll want to watch for any unfulfilled demand from your empire (fourth column from the right) and take care of that before it gets out of hand. And keep an eye on civilian ships, too. If they're hauling resources from far away, it might make sense to build another mine closer to your colony.

At the very start, as I say, you might be OK with the trickle of resources you'll get from civilian mining ships. After all, you won't be needing much, at first. For your first mining bases, look for multiple strategic resources on the same planet - steel, lead, gold, iridium - a nearby planet, ideally. You'll also need a gas mining base in order to get caslon for fuel. Again, try to set up one mining base which will supply multiple resources.

Then focus on getting other strategic resources. Chromium and silicon seem to be very important at first, too, though you're going to need all of them eventually (and multiple mining bases, at that). Luxury resources are useful as well, since they keep your people happy and help your population and your economy grow. But strategic resources are critical; they're your priority.

If you don't have access to a strategic resource you need, feel free to offer a bounty to pirate smugglers to deliver that resource. This does give money to pirates, and it also makes everything more expensive for your private sector (keep an eye on how they're doing at your Empire Summary screen, F6), but it's far, far better than running into a production bottleneck.

To review:

1. Don't build more than necessary, especially when you're first starting. Money is likely to be a bigger bind than resources. Be as efficient as possible in placing mining bases.
2. Location matters. Nearby bases will be easier to defend, and the faster freighters can get to your mine and back to a spaceport again, the better.
3. Can you defend what you build? At first, the answer will be no, but that's why you're paying protection money to the pirates. Later, you'll want to cancel that (as soon as you can, but almost certainly not as soon as your advisers keep suggesting), so think about how you'll defend your outlying bases.

OK, I'm going to leave the money side of this for another post, since I've got a lot to say about that.

___
Note: You can find more posts on individual computer games here.

Did Jesus ever exist?

I suppose I've always assumed that there was a historical Jesus, if not a supernatural one. (The evidence isn't nearly good enough to accept the latter.)

I mean, I'd heard that some people think he was entirely fictional, but I wasn't sure if they could be taken seriously. You know how it is. Anyone can claim anything. But what did serious historians and bible scholars think?

Well, I was just listening to Robert M. Price on The Human Bible podcast (an older episode, from November, 2012) talking about Thomas L. Brodie's book, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

Brodie is not just a Catholic priest, author, and well-known bible scholar, but the director of the Dominican Bible Centre in Limerick, Ireland, and his book describes how he came to the conclusion that Jesus never really existed, but was always just a fictional character.

Oddly, Brodie still believes in the Christian God. According to the blurb at Amazon.com, "In a deeply personal coda, Brodie begins to develop a new vision of Jesus as an icon of God's presence in the world and in human history." Nice trick, that!

So I was even more surprised to learn that Robert M. Price agrees with him. (I shouldn't have been - and wouldn't have been, if I'd known more about his own books.) Price has doctorates in both theology and the New Testament, and he teaches philosophy and theology at the Johnnie Coleman Theological Seminary. I've been listening to his Human Bible podcasts, and they've been absolutely fascinating.

Now, I know that Bart D. Ehrman disagrees with both of them. I recently read his book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, and I'm currently reading Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Both are riveting.

But he has another book, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, which argues for a historical Jesus. I haven't read that, or Brodie's book, so I really can't say, myself.

But, clearly, the Jesus myth idea has the backing of some serious, knowledgeable scholars. They're still a minority, apparently, and there are certainly serious, knowledgeable scholars on the other side, too. Well, when it comes to the events of two thousand years in the past, intelligent people can disagree.

Did a historical Jesus really exist? I have no idea. Apparently, I have some reading to do, though I'm really not expecting that to settle the matter, one way or the other.

The evils of weed and texting

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OK, I just had to post these, mostly because of Bill O'Reilly's hilarious combination of weed and texting ("combine the drug aspect with the internet" ... "the texting epidemic"), not to mention his warnings about "intoxicating agents" (except for alcohol, of course, which is just good, clean fun to Fox 'News').

But yes, America really needs to be more like Red China, huh, right-wingers? Heh, heh. Forget the fact that the Chinese apparently text more than anyone else in the world. (After all, we expect such misrepresentation from Fox, don't we?) Are you really suggesting that the People's Republic of China is a good role model for America? Really?

When did Europe become the example of everything right-wing Americans hate, while Red China became their beloved ideal? That's just mind-blowing, isn't it?

But then there's this response, which is almost as ignorant:

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"Most of us age-out of marijuana use,..." No kidding! (Note that David Brooks hasn't "aged-out" of alcohol use, though. Beer parties, maybe. But certainly not wine and bourbon, which he thinks are wonderful.)

Yes, most of us "age-out" of such stuff. But what does that tell you? David Brooks used to smoke pot. Jon Stewart used to smoke pot. I,... ahem, I might even have smoked pot, myself. Were we harmed by it? We definitely would have been harmed if we'd been arrested and thrown in jail, as happens to other young people when we keep marijuana illegal.

So, tell me, Brooks, should the states also discourage the use of alcohol "on both moral grounds and health grounds" the way most states "discourage" the use of marijuana? Didn't we try that in the 1920's?

But no, this is how you think of alcohol, isn't it?

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Obviously, there is nothing stupider than beer commercials, and if you've fallen for that socially-accepted message you clearly don't have any brain cells to spare. No doubt we'll get such idiocy from pot when the big corporations start making money from it (at which time the opinion of Fox 'News' will change drastically).

That's not a good thing. And abusing pot - because some people will abuse it - is also not a good thing. But recreational use is another story, especially if you contrast it with the current state of affairs where we're simultaneously filling our prisons with drug users and the pockets of drug cartels with lots and lots and lots of money.

Coors and Budweiser are, after all, at least a small step up from the Sinaloa Cartel, don't you think?

The global warming hoax

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Heh, heh. I get this angry, too.

Do those people on Fox 'News' realize how ridiculous they sound? How could they not? Yeah, it's cold outside - today, in the middle of winter - therefore global warming is a hoax. Uh, huh. I'm sure scientists, with their fancy degrees and evidence and stuff can't top that, right?

This is faith-based thinking. Republicans have decide what they want to be true, and that's what they're going to believe. Period.

Hey, if you're not completely insane, yet you still vote Republican, you're an enabler. There aren't enough crazy people, even in America, to make a majority. And they're getting fewer and fewer (which is one reason for their increasing hysteria).

Republicans are devolving

(Pat Bagley)

Yeah, my apologies for the cartoon and the title of this post. I know they both contribute to people's widespread misunderstanding of evolution.

But you'll understand my intent, I hope, when you read this:

Belief in evolution among Republicans has dropped more than 10 percentage points since 2009, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

Pew found that 43 percent of Republicans said they believed humans and other living beings had evolved over time, down from 54 percent in 2009. More (48 percent) said they believed all living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

Incredible, isn't it? It's the 21st Century, almost 90 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial and more than 150 years since Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Evolution has been the foundation of modern biology for more than a century.

But in the most powerful nation on Earth, the Republican Party is marching backwards into scientific ignorance and superstition!

There's not much good I can get from that Pew poll. Even Democrats are shamefully ignorant about evolution, with only 67% accepting evolution (and that includes those fuzzy-thinkers who believe that God "guided" evolution).

Even 20% of the "nones" - the religiously unaffiliated - dismiss evolution, and another 13% think that it was guided by a god (which makes it clear, again, that these people aren't necessarily atheists and agnostics).

Overall, only 60% of Americans accept evolution, with a full third believing in creationism. Indeed, a similar 2005 study showed that America was second from the bottom among developed countries in its acceptance of evolution, above only Turkey. (Note that different polls put the question in different ways, so the specific percentages - though always pretty bad - vary.)

If there's one bright spot to this, it's that overall American attitudes haven't changed much in the last two Pew polls. Why is that a bright spot, given that the evidence for evolution just keeps getting stronger? Well, combine that with the fact that belief in evolution is crashing among Republicans.

The Republican Party is getting crazier and crazier, but it must also be getting smaller, if overall American attitudes haven't changed. What's happening is that sane Americans continue to leave the Republican Party, leaving the crazy behind. So, yeah, the crazy becomes even more concentrated as the GOP shrinks.

(Unreasonable Faith)

Still, here's another poll which points to the same problem in today's America:

In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, only 36 percent of Americans reported having "a lot" of trust that information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. Fifty-one percent said they trust that information only a little, and another 6 percent said they don't trust it at all.

Now, if you look at this one way, then sure, you can't trust what an individual scientist says. Scientists are human beings, too. Corporate scientists, in particular, can be under pressure to report only findings which support corporate goals (although the problem is usually that contrary results just aren't released to the public).

But what individual scientists say isn't important. Since the scientific method is designed to overcome such bias, it's the scientific consensus which can be trusted. Obviously, there are no guarantees, but the scientific consensus - if there is one - can be trusted to be the best explanation we've got.

After all, if you don't trust science, what then? Do you just believe whatever you want to believe, then? That's what Republicans do, and that's exactly why they distrust science - because science tells them the truth, rather than what they prefer to believe. (And yes, in that poll, only 20% of Republicans trust science "a lot.")

If you don't trust the science, where do you get your information? What's the alternative? Well, the alternative is superstition. This distrust of science tends to be propaganda pushed by people with an ideological motive and, almost always, a profit motive, too.

Science is self-correcting. The scientific method is designed to be self-correcting. And that's not something you can say about politics or religion or any other system of belief. Yes, be appropriately skeptical of what you read in the media. Be appropriately skeptical of what any person, scientist or not, claims.

But science is backed by evidence, which means that skeptical people can believe it - and should. As I say, what's the alternative?

Christopher Hitchens - the wish to be a slave

As you might have guessed, I'm still clearing out my Temp folder. :)

You've probably seen this clip before. I might have posted it myself. Certainly, I've posted excerpts from it, in various YouTube compilations of Christopher Hitchens' speeches.

But it's definitely worth hearing again. And the man himself is no longer with us, so we won't be getting any new speeches, any new debates.

Well, there are many others carrying on where Christopher Hitchens left off. True, they're not Hitchens. He was unique. But we're all unique. So we can enjoy this, remembering the man we've lost, while still recognizing that many other capable and entertaining atheists remain.

Lawrence Krauss - we provide our own meaning

"We have to force our ideas to conform to the evidence of reality, rather than the other way around."

That's evidence-based thinking in a nutshell. You can put all your faith in fantasy, but it's still fantasy, not reality. If you care at all about the truth of your beliefs, you need to match your beliefs to reality, rather than look for ways to justify whatever it is you want to believe.

That's why science progresses and why religion, if it advances at all, is merely dragged along kicking and screaming. (Read the Bible sometime, if you think that your religion hasn't changed. See those tracks in the sands of time? That's where religion was dragging its feet, as society advanced.)

The Bible, Pt. 21: Exodus, Chapter 24 - 31

This continues my series on the Christian Bible from Part 20. All quotes are from the King James version.

Chapter 24:

1 And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off.

2 And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him.

...

5 And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD.

6 And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

The previous four chapters of Exodus covered what Moses learned on the mountain (identified as Mount Sinai, here) from God. Prior to that, we had the Israelites arriving at Mount Sinai and their god descending on it in fire and smoke.

Although the rest of the tribe were forbidden to touch even the lower slopes of the mountain, on pain of death, God was going to show himself to them, to demonstrate that he really existed and that Moses was his prophet. But the people were too frightened to come near.

Now, in Chapter 24, we go back to that and see a somewhat different story, much more detailed. (And after this, we'll see more instructions from God, mind-numbingly detailed.) Clearly, as we've seen many times in the Bible already, these were originally two separate stories, almost certainly by separate authors, which have been combined into one.

9 Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel:

10 And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.

11 And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.

This isn't the only place in the Old Testament where God seems to be so similar to human beings that he eats with them. In Genesis, Chapter 18, for example, God and his angels eat and drink with Abraham - and wash their feet, too. (Note that God has feet, here, although there's no other description of him.)

12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.

13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God.

Does Joshua go with Moses? That seems to be the implication, doesn't it? But Joshua isn't mentioned again. Earlier, in Chapter 19, Verse 24, it's Aaron who was supposed to come up the mountain with Moses, but no one else. (Again, that's also the last we hear of that, although Aaron is with the rest of the nobles here.)

18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.

So, why did this take forty days and forty nights? After all, God already had the "tables of stone" written. Well, from what I can see, it's just because God is both a control freak and an overly enthusiastic interior decorator. (Just wait. You'll see.)

Chapter 25:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.

3 And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass,

4 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,

5 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,

6 Oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet incense,

7 Onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate.

8 And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.

9 According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it.

Until now, I've been enjoying this. Sure, some parts have been boring - the long lists of genealogies, for example. But for the most part, it's been an interesting story. Now, however, we go chapter after chapter with God describing exactly - in excruciating detail - how he wants his new home built.

Yes, when they get to Jerusalem (still forty years in the future), God is going to live among them in his temple. And he's very particular about every little detail.

Let me repeat that: God is going to live in the Temple. On Earth. In Jerusalem. That's what the early Jews believed, and that's why the Temple was so important to them. Yahweh was a tribal god - their god, not the only god - and he lived with them in the Temple. He had a physical presence on Earth, among his chosen people, on the land he'd given them.

Jewish thinking changed as time went on, of course - especially after the destruction of the temple and the diaspora. But also, different Jewish sects arose, with different beliefs. After all, if you weren't in the mainstream, you didn't control the Temple. And if you lived elsewhere, far from the Temple, you still wanted to worship your god. So their thinking eventually changed.

Here, however, God tells Moses exactly how he wants his new home to be furnished. Unfortunately, my eyes glaze over when I start to read it. Honestly, I can barely force myself to even skim these next few chapters. They're just incredibly boring. So, for my sake and yours, I'll try to keep this brief.

10 And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.

First, God tells him how to make the Ark of the Covenant - in excruciating detail, right down to the decorations. For example:

20 And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.

Then he describes the table, also of shittim wood (wood from the acacia tree), the dishes, the candlesticks, the bowls, etc. And we're just getting started!

Chapter 26:

1 Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them.

Now we get into the details of the curtains of the tabernacle - verse after verse describing them. And the size of the boards which make up the tabernacle, and how they're fastened together. And the "vail" (veil?) which "shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy."

There are 37 verses just describing that stuff!

Chapter 27:

1 And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits.

...

3 And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basons, and his fleshhooks, and his firepans: all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.

And now we're into the design of the altar. If you've ever gone to church, you probably remember the fleshhooks and the firepans, right? Heh, heh. No, this isn't the kinder, gentler religion you probably experienced. This was a god who wanted blood sacrifices - lots of blood sacrifices - and who, as the Old Testament mentions many times, really savored the smell of burning flesh.

In Part 17, I quoted a passage from Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity which described the Temple of Jerusalem as an abattoir the size of a small city. You might want to read that again, if it didn't sink home the first time.

This chapter continues with instructions for the court of the tabernacle, 150 ft. by 75 ft. in size. But the chapter is only 21 verses long, thankfully.

Chapter 28:

1 And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons.

2 And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.

This chapter is all about the design of those "holy garments" - again, in excruciating detail. (If you thought that God was obsessed with unleavened bread, that's nothing compared to his interest in fashion and interior decorating.)

That's it. Just 43 verses detailing the design of the "holy garments" Aaron and his sons should wear (as a hereditary priesthood). Well, at least we're getting through these chapters quickly, huh?

Chapter 29:

1 And this is the thing that thou shalt do unto them to hallow them, to minister unto me in the priest's office: Take one young bullock, and two rams without blemish,

Yeah, and guess what God wants you to do with those animals? Heh, heh. Yeah, this chapter contains 46 verses, most of them similar to this:

16 And thou shalt slay the ram, and thou shalt take his blood, and sprinkle it round about upon the altar.

17 And thou shalt cut the ram in pieces, and wash the inwards of him, and his legs, and put them unto his pieces, and unto his head.

18 And thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar: it is a burnt offering unto the LORD: it is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

Note that this isn't just once in awhile, and it's not just rams and bullocks, either:

38 Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually.

39 The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even:

40 And with the one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering.

It sounds just like a recipe, doesn't it? Coat lamb meat with flour and fry it in oil, then serve with wine? Coincidentally (or not), the priests do get to eat some of this stuff (some of the ram meat and the inevitable unleavened bread, at least), so it doesn't all go to waste.

But this is killing and frying two lambs every single day. Do the priests get to eat them, too? This  chapter doesn't say, but you really have to wonder about that recipe, don't you?

Chapter 30:

1 And thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: of shittim wood shalt thou make it.

We're back to interior design again, this time of an altar for burning incense (separate from the altar for burning animals).

9 Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon, nor burnt sacrifice, nor meat offering; neither shall ye pour drink offering thereon.

10 And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once in a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations: it is most holy unto the LORD.

This altar is just for incense (and no "strange incense," either!), nothing else. Well, blood, too, but only once a year. God has to have a little blood, right?

12 When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.

13 This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.

...

15 The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.

Rich and poor alike pay the same. No progressive taxation here! (I'll bet proponents of a flat tax love this verse, huh? But do they go along with all the rest of this stuff, too?)

The remainder of the chapter describes the hand and foot sinks and the composition of the holy ointment and the holy perfume - all very necessary, I suspect, given the blood they're drenching the temple with.

But re. that last:

37 And as for the perfume which thou shalt make, ye shall not make to yourselves according to the composition thereof: it shall be unto thee holy for the LORD.

38 Whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people.

No one had better make a perfume that smells like God's perfume! That's his signature scent, his alone.

Chapter 31:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:

3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,

4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,

5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.

OK, after six chapters of interior design, what's next? Well, deciding on which contractor God wants to do the work, of course! But that takes only a dozen verses or so.

12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

...

14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.

15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.

This is important stuff, which God emphasizes by repeating himself: if anyone works on the Sabbath, they must be put to death. There's no getting around this commandment, huh?

Note that, in Chapter 20, God also says to keep the Sabbath. That's one of his top ten commandments, in fact (going only by it's relative position among all the others). But there's no mention of any punishment for working on the Sabbath, not even in the following chapters which do prescribe punishments, even for such things as cursing your parents (which, as I noted, merits the death penalty).

But here, this is the only commandment mentioned (the rest being detailed - very detailed - instructions for building the Temple). Clearly, whoever wrote this part of Exodus wanted to make one thing clear: if you worked on the Sabbath, they'd kill you.

18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.

After forty days and forty nights, Moses finally gets those two stone tablets, apparently filled with home decorating tips. (But I'll bet you think this is the end of the interior decorating details, don't you? Ha! Not even close!) So it's time to head back down the mountain (still identified as Mount Sinai).

But not for us, not yet. This is a good place to stop, for now.

___
Note: My entire Bible series is available here.

The difference between religious and secular humanism

Here's Tom Flynn on the key difference between religious and secular humanism:

There's the difference between religious and secular humanism in its essence -- in a nutshell, if you will. Religious humanists yearn to "express transcendence and connection with others." Secular humanists are fine with expressing connection with others, but inasmuch as they are secular, they attach great importance to the recognition that ... hang on now ... there is no such thing as "transcendence" or "the transcendent."

Essential to the secular view is the insight, rooted in science, that reality is mundane. It's the domain of matter, energy, and their interactions -- and nothing else.

On that view, words like divine, spirit, and transcendent share one essential quality: they have no referents in the real world. There is nothing to transcend, because the domain of everyday experience is -- so far as we can see, and the range of our seeing has gotten pretty good in recent decades -- the whole of what exists. Being all that is, it cannot be transcended. There is nothing "above" it, nothing "beyond" it ... there's just reality.

Secular humanists recognize that "the transcendent" is an empty set. We say to those who yearn for a realm beyond that can never be, "Just deal with it."

Flynn is responding specifically to this post by Suzanne Moore in The Guardian (UK), and I'm definitely on Flynn's side in this (to the extent that, as fellow atheists, they're on different sides at all).

It's not that I don't value aesthetics. It's not that I don't value beauty, that I don't have feelings, or that I never get emotional. But the "magic" of life is that it's not magic. It's real. "Nature" is real, too. That's what's so neat about it.

"Spirit" is... well, that's a word I avoid, because all too many people use it in a literal sense, and there's simply no good evidence that a spiritual realm even exists. I know that some atheists use the term in a more general sense, and maybe they're just trying to find common ground with the faith-based, but I don't like it, myself.

Still, that doesn't mean, necessarily, that I dislike ceremony or ritual. When I was a kid, we had our traditional family practices at the holidays (we had oyster stew and chili on Christmas Eve, for example, which might not be typical for other families), and if I'd had kids, I would have wanted to continue them (no doubt merged with the favorite practices of my wife).

But magic isn't real. Some things are magical, in a sense, but it's not really magic. Social bonds are real, so even we atheists welcome them. Even we atheists feel emotions, and we're glad we do. We just don't make judgements about what's true and what isn't on the basis of unsupported feelings.

All too many people who've given up religion still have this fuzzy idea about a spiritual realm. Not Moore, I don't think, though she's getting too close for my tastes. And what do you make of a question like this?

This is what I mean about aesthetics. Do we cede them to the religious and just look like a bunch of Calvinists?

Say what? Did she forget that Calvinism is a religious movement? If John Calvin rejected aesthetics (and I can't say one way or another, myself), he did so for religious reasons. So what does that have to do with us atheists,... especially since we don't reject aesthetics?

Moore concludes with the observation that she's "not a good atheist." Well, she's not an atheist at all if she believes in a god. Otherwise, there aren't 'good atheists' or 'bad atheists,' because atheism doesn't work that way. Atheism is just a label for not believing in a god. Period. We don't have dogma, so nothing else is required.

Humanism is a lot fuzzier, which is why I don't use that label, myself. And, of course, you can be a 'good person' or a 'bad person,' whatever you believe about gods. But 'good atheist'? What does that even mean?

Anyway, I'm with Tom Flynn on this one. We know a great deal about the real world. We don't know everything, true. You can always add "as far as we know" to every statement about the real world. (As far as I'm concerned, that's just a given.)

But let's not start throwing around fuzzy terms - or even clear terms, if there's no good evidence backing them up - just because they might feel good. If we start doing that, what makes us any better than theists?

My dragon ran away

You don't believe I ever had a dragon? Trust me, I did. I really did. I couldn't see her (she was invisible), and I couldn't touch her (she was immaterial), but I could feel her in my heart.

Anyone who's ever owned a dragon knows exactly what I mean. What, you don't believe them, either? Why do you hate dragons so much?

This is from the Atheist Experience TV show, episode #699, with Tracie Harris and Matt Dillahunty.

Yahweh's amazing test

You know, I've been reading the Bible, and this is remarkably accurate. Except, maybe, the rational angel. (There don't seem to be many of those in the Bible.)

And yes, if you're wondering, I'm still cleaning out my Temp folder. :)

If at first you don't succeed,...

Proteus - the basics

Proteus isn't exactly my normal kind of game. In fact, I'm not sure it's a game at all. But this is neat, isn't it?

And right now, it's 66% off on Steam - only $3.39. So I really think it's worth checking out.

When I heard about Proteus (here), I did a search on YouTube, just to get a better idea of what it was. And some people are actually posting a "full walkthrough" or "full playthrough" of it. Heh, heh. Can you imagine anything that really misses the point more than that?

This video, on the other hand, was exactly what I needed. And I must admit that I saw places I wanted to go, while I was watching this. Proteus isn't a game, not really, and I wouldn't spend a huge amount of money for it, but I think it's going to be neat to look around there.

This particular sale ends January 2nd. Just sayin'...