This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Monday! Time once again for – yep, you guessed it – Monday School. It’s STILL “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!” but by all means feel free to think of it as “The Sensible Alternative To Christian Superstitions” if you prefer.

Today’s Lesson: Does ANY Of The Bible Make Sense?

Gee, I don’t know. Every time I pick it up and go looking for a sensible claim or statement, an absurdity lodges in my eye and I have to run to my bathroom mirror in hopes of removing it before infection sets in. (NOT an easy thing to do, by the way, considering I’m usually laughing so hard, my sides hurt.)

Here are a few of the absurdities I’ve removed from my eye in the past and now have tightly sealed in a jar atop my desk:

1) Genesis 1:14-19 details the third day of creation. It basically says that gOd made the sun, the moon, and the stars to cast light upon the earth and to help us tell day from night and mark time. Unfortunately for the author of Genesis, it turns out that fewer than 10,000 stars are visible to the naked eye. According to a report that appeared on CNN last summer, that leaves approximately 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars that are not visible from earth except with telescopes that have only been around for the last few hundred years. In fact, astronomers now estimate that there are more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches all over the world. (In contrast, you could probably hold 10,000 of those grains in one hand.) If gOd created stars to cast light on earth for our benefit, it would seem that he only succeeded about once in every 7,000,000,000,000,000,000 attempts. Not very good for an allegedly omnipotent deity, is it?

2) Cain. The Bible’s story of what it claims to have been the first human born on earth is full of things that’ll make you twitch if you think about them. Here are a few:

A) According to Gen. 4:12, Cain is condemned to be a fugitive and a vagabond for killing his brother Abel, yet Gen. 4:17 tells us he actually settled down and founded a city.

B) Gen. 4:14-15 tells us that when Cain complained to gOd that someone would find and kill him for his crime, gOd put a mark on him to protect him. This would seem to contradict Gen. 9:6 (“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man”) and those Bible passages that claim gOd’s laws are just and eternal. It would also seem rather pointless, since the only other two people on earth at this point seem to have been Cain’s parents.

C) Gen. 4:15 actually quotes gOd as saying “whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” Does that mean gOd will kill that person seven times? Neat trick, that. (And isn’t it odd that a gOd who went to such extraordinary lengths to protect a murderer couldn’t lift a finger to protect the innocent Abel in the first place?)

D) Gen. 4:16 tells us that “Cain went out from the presence of the LORD….” Exactly how does one escape the presence of a being who’s allegedly everywhere? (“The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good” – Proverbs 15:3)

E) Gen. 4:17 tells us that Cain found himself a wife and had a child with her. Where the heck did SHE come from? Was she Eve? Was she Cain’s heretofore unmentioned sister? Was gOd creating people on the sly? You tell me – the Bible sure doesn’t!

3) According to Gen. 6:2-4 “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose” and had children with them. The mind boggles. Isn’t Jesus gOd’s only son? Are we supposed to believe that these other sons had carnal desires and human-compatible sex organs? Are we supposed to believe that these gOds or demi-gOds could find true happiness with mere mortal females – and in the days before modern antiperspirants, no less? On what basis might Jewish people and Christians say these passages are true and divinely inspired while rejecting all those Greek myths about Zeus and his affairs with human women? Maybe DNA testing might prove whose gOd fathered which people, eh?

4) Gen. 6:6 tells us that “it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth….” This is merely the first of many passages in the Bible that tell us that gOd repents.Other passages, however, tell us that gOd does not repent. Go figure.

5) Gen. 6:19 and 7:8-9 tell us that Noah took the animals into his ark two by two. After the Flood waters abate and it’s safe to leave the ark, what’s the first thing Noah does? He builds an altar and sacrifices some of the animals to gOd (Gen. 8:20). DOH! Kinda like firefighters celebrating the end of the Chicago Fire by burning down part of the town that escaped the flames, isn’t it? Except that Chicago didn’t become extinct in the process.

6) Incredibly, Gen. 8:21 tells us that gOd didn’t smite Noah for killing and burning some of the last remaining animals on earth – no, gOd allegedly liked the aroma! Mmmmmm! Nothing like smoke from a dead animal to gladden the heart of a perfect, loving being, I guess. Personally, I would have settled for a card.

7) Gen. 22:1 tells us that gOd tempted Abraham. James 1:13, however, assures us that gOd doesn’t tempt any man. (And in Malachi 3:6, gOd himself tells us he doesn’t change, so don’t try the old “that was then, this is now” argument.)

8) “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him [Moses], and sought to kill him” (Exodus 4:24). Well, gee – you’d think that an omniscient being would have picked someone else to be his prophet rather than pick one he’d end up wanting to kill, wouldn’t you? Unlike other cases where gOd wanted someone dead, however, gOd is foiled this time when Moses’s wife, Zipporah, takes a sharp stone and circumcises their son. Apparently that’s all it took to assuage the lOrd’s murderous anger – the cutting of an innocent infant’s penis. Sick, isn’t it? Too bad Moses didn’t have a lawyer as shifty as Paul was when he presented us with the “real” meaning of circumcision in Romans 2:25-29 – the poor kid might have been allowed to sleep in peace.

9) “As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up-one on one side, one on the other-so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword” (Exodus 17:11-13). Well, gee – how long before the Bible-addled Bush puts a stone under Rumsfeld and orders Cheney and Powell to keep his hands up in a desperate attempt to win in Iraq?

10) “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven’” (Exodus 17:14). Hee! The fact that the Bible mentions Amalek and has kept the name alive for centuries kinda makes a liar out of gOd, doesn’t it?

11) “….the LORD hath sworn that the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16). Wait – didn’t gOd just promise to completely blot Amalek out? How can you have war with someone “from generation to generation” if you’ve blotted them out? (What’s the penalty if the lOrd swears to do something, then doesn’t, anyway? Do all the other gOds and lOrds get together and beat the crap out of him or do they just mutilate the penis of one of his close relatives?)

These are just a few of the things that make me shake my head and laugh when I pick up a Bible and leaf through it. Did I miss your favorite chuckle-inducing passage? Please share!