Ken Ham is Bad at Hebrew

Via Getty Images

In a glaringly stupid blog post, intellectual lightweight and Answers in Genesis non-mastermind Ken Ham calls out NASA for spending money on space exploration:

I’m shocked at the countless hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the desperate and fruitless search for extraterrestrial life. Even Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” in our recent debate, happily gloated about tax dollars being spent toward this effort. And now, secular scientists are at it again.

His reasoning? The Bible clearly says the Earth is special and God made it that way:

Secularists cannot allow earth to be special or unique—that’s a biblical idea (Isaiah 45:18). If life evolved here, it simply must have evolved elsewhere they believe. The Bible, in sharp contrast to the secular worldview, teaches that earth was specially created, that it is unique and the focus of God’s attention (Isaiah 66:1 and Psalm 115:16).

Unfortunately for Ken, the Bible doesn’t say that. The Hebrew in Isaiah 45:18, Isaiah 66:1, and Psalm 115:16 does not explicitly say that God made our planet uniquely special. In all three of those verses, the Hebrew word used is ארץ, which simply means “ground.” Setting aside the fact that this stuff was written before modern astronomy, “ground” doesn’t necessarily mean “only Earth.” Even if עולם, which often means “world,” was used, he’d still be wrong, since that word can also mean “universe.”

The thing that frustrates me most about religion is when its loudest advocates often don’t have any idea what they’re talking about.

<h/t: Raw Story, Huffington Post, Gawker>

Sponsor An Episode!

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There’s a new perk up at the OMGWTFBIBLE Indiegogo! Now, if you donate $250 or more, you can be the official sponsor for an entire Exodus episode! That means you get a mug, a T-shirt, and you get an episode dedicated to you. Your name will be plastered all over it, you’ll get to chat with me for 30 minutes over Skype (or phone) beforehand, and you’ll get the official script used on stage. But hurry! There are only 11 of this perk available!

Shalom, OMGWTFBIBLE!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of crazy sex stuff in Genesis. I recently spoke with Andria Kaplan of Shalom Life for her #LoveJewce column about the weirdest, most provocative stuff. It’s all in the article there, so please check it out! For my part, I had this to say about rewriting the Bible:

“As Jews, our tradition of weekly Torah reading makes us all a part of the world’s longest-running book club,” Tuchman tells me in an exclusive interview. “I believe that reading it together and sharing our experience of the text and how it relates to our lives is central to our faith and can bring us closer together. With OMGWTFBIBLE, I’m hoping that I’m making that a little bit more fun.”

A least a little.

Episode 22

Behold! The extra-long Genesis Finale Episode 22 of OMGWTFBIBLE with a whole pile of guests is now available!

This episode was recorded at Beauty Bar in New York City.

There are so many ways to listen to Episode 22!

You can listen using the SoundCloud thingie above or by downloading here. Explore our SoundCloud and listen to past episodes here.

You can also: subscribe in iTunes, subscribe via RSS, or listen via Stitcher!

Nun Sings Flashdance, Wins Big Contest

Isn’t it crazy that only 20 years ago, if a singing nun won “The Voice of Italy” or whatever singing competition TV show we had back then, you wouldn’t hear about it until days later? Back in good ol’ 1994, you wouldn’t be able to immediately watch video of that nun singing “What A Feeling” from Flashdance? I mean, maybe you’d see it eventually, but it’d be on a weird video site called “Uncle Bobby’s Crazy Things” and it’d be a grainy realvideo file that you downloaded in a zip along with Arnold Schwarzenneger’s Japanese TV commercials and the unaired episodes of David Lynch’s sitcom. Also, this nun would’ve been 5 years old back then. It’s pretty wonderful that we live in world with ready access to so many insane things.

Here are some brief notes on this video.

  1. If our civilization is completely wiped out and this video is the only remaining artifact, I think future generations will actually do a pretty good job of piecing together how we lived
  2. Sister Cristina Scuccia’s English is very good. The only song I know in Italian is “Volare” and I’m pretty sure that’s not even what it’s called
  3. I really like #SisterAx. That is very clever.
  4. The nuns dancing in the audience are amazing. I am fascinated by the way they’re dancing. It’s almost as though they’re experiencing a never-felt joy that’s trying to burst through bones and joints that haven’t moved this loosely in ages
  5. The Times is already worried winning this singing contest will lead Sister Cristina to abandon Jesus: “The bigger question mark in a country where some polls suggest that a majority of Italian women aspire to television fame is whether success will go to the head of the 25-year-old nun, possibly leading her astray from her calling.”
  6. Also, what kind of polls are these? Television fame? Why are Italian woman aiming so low? Why not movies?

Also, here’s another video:

 

Episode 21

Behold! Episode 21 of OMGWTFBIBLE with Michael Malice is now available!

This episode was recorded at Beauty Bar.

There are so many ways to listen to Episode 21!

You can listen using the embed above or here. OMGWTFBIBLE is now on SoundCloud! Explore our SoundCloud here.

You can also: subscribe in iTunes, subscribe via RSS, or listen via Stitcher!

Episode 20 and New Episodes Pages

Behold! Episode 20 of OMGWTFBIBLE with Leah Vincent is now available!!

This episode was recorded at Beauty Bar.

There are so many ways to listen to Episode 18!

You can listen using the embed above or here. OMGWTFBIBLE is now on SoundCloud! Explore our SoundCloud here.

You can also: subscribe in iTunes, subscribe via RSS, or listen via Stitcher!

ALSO: The episodes pages is now totally overhauled! Each episode now has an individual page, so you can navigate through them all easily and comment on each episode right here on OMGWTFBIBLE.com!

The Holiness of OMGWTFBIBLE

I don’t know if you’ve realized, but by making fun of religion, OMGWTFBIBLE is actually serving a greater sort of holiness. In The American Scholar, Brian Doyle writes about the benefit of weaving humor into religion:

For all that religion has been a bloody enterprise through history, and for all that religious people seem often the most almighty easy people to offend, and for all that there are many people in my faith tradition who think I am an idiot to grin over the most colorful of our traditions, I think we should grin over the more colorful parts of our faith traditions. For one thing, they are often funny—imagine the wine steward’s mixed feelings at Cana after the miracle, for example—and for another, it seems to me that real honest genuine spirituality is marked most clearly by humility and humor. The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Meher Baba, Flannery O’Connor, Sister Helen Prejean, Pope Francis—all liable to laughter, and not one of them huffy about his or her status and importance. Whereas all the famous slimy murderers of history—Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, bin Laden—what a humorless bunch, prim and grim and obsessed with being feared. Can you imagine any one of them laughing, except over some new form of murder? Think about it—could laughter be the truest sign of holiness?

Who knew?

<h/t: The Daily Dish>

OMGWTFBIBLE Episode 18

Behold! Episode 18 of OMGWTFBIBLE with Ari Mandel is now available!!

This episode was recorded at A Gathering of the Tribes.

There are so many ways to listen to Episode 18!

You can listen using the embed above or here. OMGWTFBIBLE is now on SoundCloud! Explore our SoundCloud here.

You can also: subscribe in iTunes, subscribe via RSS, or listen via Stitcher!

What did you think of this month’s episode? What are your thoughts on Onanism? Did you have a weird experience with Rabbis and masturbation (hopefully not at the same time!)? Have anything you’d like to add on the whole Potiphar story? Let me know in the comments!

Tom Delays Hates Creativity

Hey, you! You know, that novel you’ve been working on for years? That beautiful work of art you threw your blood, sweat, and tears into? That business you built with your BARE HANDS? Continue reading