It occurred to me, as I read through the first three
chapters of Genesis today, that I had to treat this as a form of fan
fiction. I’ve always thought that the
bible begs to be crossed over with Stargate SG-1, and this might as well be the
time to do that.
If you’re unfamiliar with Stargate SG-1 I’ll refer you to
this blog post. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Spares me from having to re-invent the wheel.
With me so far?
From what I can tell in the Bible we will be dealing with four
character classes:
Name
|
Alignment
|
Major characteristics
|
Ori
|
Neutral Evil
|
Derives power from siphoning off mental energy through “worship”
|
Goa’uld
|
Chaotic evil
|
Requires human host to survive.
|
Tau’ri
|
Neutral Good
|
Modern humans
|
Ascended Ancients
|
Lawful Good
|
Evolved aliens who want to help others “ascend” to a higher plane/dimension
free of suffering
|
(Character alignment, with examples, for the non-gamer geeks
among us.)
You can likely already see where this is going. I’m going to simplify each character
description as I go, so if you go to the Stargate wiki and find yourself drowning
in details don’t worry, I’m not going to be that bad.
The whole series starts with a corollary to Clark’s 3rd law. The law being:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic
And the corollary shown here being:
Any sufficiently advanced civilization can distinguish the
difference between technology and magic.
In the beginning we see a “god” using “magic” to enslave a
group of humans using technology that the humans do not understand and they see
as magic and miracles. The Tau’ri don’t
understand it either, but they don’t understand how it works. They recognize what it is, advanced
technology, and from there they derive that the “god” is really an alien, and
one hostile to humankind.
When you take this theory, the idea of alien using advanced
technology to convince humans they’re gods and manipulation humanity for their
own ends, the stories in the Bible start making a lot more sense. This explanation even smoothes over a lot of
the questions and problems people have with the Bible. Of course it’s also pure fiction but if this
interpretation is both fiction and a better fit then how can we be sure the
original one is real?
This question lead me straight to Atheism.
Just to be clear I’m using the Youvision bible app, the KJV
and the Canonical reading plan simply because it let me start now. I want to have some wiggle room in case I
miss some days over the next year.
So in Genesis Chapter 1 we get a creation story. That’s it. It’s not a particularly good creation story, I find the Navajo stories much more entertaining, but as creation myths go it’s all right. It’s also completely incorrect, science has proven that, but as a historical document, a record of how those people at that time thought the world came about it has some value. The most interesting verse in the whole thing is Gen 01:29
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
God wants everyone to be vegan.
For some reason the story from Genesis 1 wraps over into
Genesis 2 and doesn’t end until 02:03.
When they wrote this back in 1611* they kind of screwed that up there.
In Gen 02:04 we start what some have called an entirely new
creation story. But upon reading this I
have to disagree. “In the day” means
that it was during the time that “God” was making the earth, or claimed he was
making the earth. It says that he lifted
a man from the ground and breathed him into life. Now we know that’s not possible. But have you considered a form of
transporter?
Oh look, it just rose out of the ground! Add an inhaler of a stimulant and all of a
sudden someone who was once somewhere else, sedated, and transported is rising
live from the ground. And then he
transports plants and animals and eventually even a woman. That rib thing also makes no sense, but hey,
what a good excuse for taking that tissue sample.
We get into a bit of geography here. Near as I can tell the writer was trying to
explain that this garden, this sealed off, security gated area, was all the way
over there that away. Far from
civilization at the time.
But then we come across the whole Tree of Knowledge thing. Why
oh why would this god put a tree like that in the middle of his little walled
off, sealed garden? To test their
obedience.
See, I believe that Lord God, as he’s been called since Gen
02:03, is really an Ori. And the Ori
derive energy by siphoning it off humans through “worship”. How better to test to see if your
brainwashing on your newly-acquired breeding stock is working then to put a
simple test out there and see if they fall for it. Make the result of their failure something
obvious and easily visible, like...nudity!
If they suddenly freak out over being naked that’s an obvious sign that
something’s gone wrong.
In Gen. 03 something does indeed go wrong. A Goa’uld shows up. The Goa’uld are serpent-like parasites that
require human hosts to survive. In the
Stargate SG-1 universe it’s argued that they are actually most of the “gods”
out there, especially of the Eqyptian pantheon.
According to Christian scholars all this was happening
around 6,000 BCE. According to Wikipedia
that puts us squarely in the middle of the Neolithic period.
People were farming then.
They were building cities. In India
they were sorting out copper and in China they were learning to write. Humans were starting the long
march towards becoming the Tau’ri. They
were, in other words, entirely useful at that point, a useful resource on a
planet full of useful resources. And
here was this Ori, right in the middle of it all, setting up his own little
breeding farm. No self respecting Goa’uld
is going to allow that competition to stand.
But they can’t attack directly. That could lead to thermonuclear size war and
ruin this lovely, lush little planet. So
the Goa’uld had to get all Cold War sneaky about it. So he snuck in there, through the security perimeter, and
talked the breeding stock into breaking the rule. And other than realizing they were naked exactly nothing happens.
Nothing
There was no good reason for them not to eat of that tree, other than that LG said not to.
LG comes back, gets a quick visual that the brainwashing isn’t holding as well as he would like, and has a temper tantrum equivalent to “I was going to make you special! I was going to take care of you! Now you can just go out and get a job like everyone else!”
Nothing
There was no good reason for them not to eat of that tree, other than that LG said not to.
LG comes back, gets a quick visual that the brainwashing isn’t holding as well as he would like, and has a temper tantrum equivalent to “I was going to make you special! I was going to take care of you! Now you can just go out and get a job like everyone else!”
So Adam and Eve do just that. And LG sticks a guard with a lightsaber at
the gate to his compound to keep them out.
Notice what scares LG the most though. Humans knowing the difference between good
and evil. Humans having knowledge.
See, the whole thing still hangs together.
* FYI, the bible was not faxed down from heaven
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version
The book I'm reading was published in 1611. It has a great deal of historical significance, but that's about it.
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