Steve, conservatives are delusional, but a lot of us have been talking about you and Baal worship.

Only when we humans finally rid ourselves of the shackles of organized religion will we manage to progress spiritually and reach our full potential.

Organized religion has been nothing but an excuse for wholesale slaughter for two millennium or more; destroy those that do not believe what you believe.

And on the actual article by this Barber character: he mentions nothing of the 1st testament of the Bible we see viciousness promoted by God himself that rivals these so called pagan rituals. Nothing of the Inquisition either.

Typical right wing nut job.

he mentions nothing of the 1st testament of the Bible WHERE we see viciousness promoted by God himself...
late night!

Someone had to invalidate Godwin's Law by surpassing the depravity of comparisons.

No one expects the Spanish Inquistion! Monty Pyton's surrealism pales in the absurd glow of the Christianist Wingnuts.

Steve, you haven't asked the right questions. I am sure you have been called worse. :-)

What is the religion of hate called? Oh wait, don't tell me, I can figure it out for myself.

I wonder if Bristol had her baby out of wedlock yet?

Calling upon the weak and powerless to make painful sacrifices at the demand of the powerful sounds more like Conservatism, as does shifting today's problems to the next generation.

I love the way association with an archaic religion is supposed to convey illegitimacy. Hey that shit is crazy! While of course the writer's belief in an imaginary friend is perfectly rational and modern. Decidedly 'unpagan' I suppose. From where I sit, the primary demarcation is between those who believe in invisible 'spirit beings' and those who don't. The differences between the spirit people pale incomparison to that first leap of logic that allows you to see and talk to something that isn't there. It would seem to me that they should all stick together rather than arguing about the nature of their invisible friends.

No one invited you?
Darn it Steve, you should have mentioned this before the solstice!

C'mon, you haven't been attending the baby burnings? Page 12, paragraph 3, subsection ii(a) of the Liberal Agenda clearly states that you are to attend 3 a year.

If you had been raised among Christian fundamentalists, you would have been compared to Baal many times already.

Wow, all these years I've been practicing Baal worship, and I didn't even know it. There I was, thinking I was just a regular-old hedonistic baby-burner, but it turns out I was part of organized religion. I'm so disappointed.

The thing about Matt Barber is that EVERYTHING he writes is not just repugnant and wrong, but totally, comically insane. Every time one of his furniture-chewing screeds crosses my inbox, I'm tempted to write something pointing out what a preposterous farrago it is, but as a rule, I force myself to resist, if only because otherwise I'd end up running a dedicated Laugh-at-Matt-Barber blog.

ALL PRAISE BAAL

It's ain't gonna happen, I know, but I'd just love it if Obama would do something terrifically pro-gay, just to watch fundagelical heads explode.

I'm a Reformed Baalist--just the orgies, please.

Christianity during the height of the Renaissance -- the so-called "rebirth" of learning -- looked a little like this: Citizens of a city would gather in the city square. In the square would be set up posts surrounded by piles of firewood. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants -- men, women and children -- would cheer as "heretics" were burned alive. These atrocities were performed in the name of the "God of love" and his son, the "Prince of Peace"

These "heretics" were dressed only in a thin shirt. It was especially festive when young women were burned, because their shirts would be burned away first, giving the crowd a glimpse of their naked flesh before the flesh blistered and blackened. The heretics most common "crimes" were to dare to suggest that the leaders of the Christian church lived too luxuriously while many of their congregations lived in poverty. Other "heretics" were burned because they believed that the church's rituals should be conducted in the local language, so the everyone could understand it.

Before they were burned, the "heretics" were tortured -- their limbs mangled and broken and their flesh torn. If they hadn't been executed, most of the "heretics" would have died slow, painful deaths anyway. The executions were conducted at the whim of the church leaders. If they particularly disliked one of the "heretics", the firewood would be arranged so that the fire would consume the victim slowly, prolonging his or her agony.

This Christian church reminds me of modern conservative Christians. They ignore their own holy writings while preaching intolerance and violence (like advocating attacks on countries like Iran and supporting the use of torture). Conservative Christians obsess about preserving unborn fetuses -- even those so new that they are nothing but a mass of undifferentiated cells -- while they ignore the children who have been born who suffer.

* * * *

My apologies if I have offended Christians who actually live by the words of the Gospels.

Sure, on first reading Baal worship sounds a bit odd, but hey, at least we aren't blood-drinking cannibals who weekly drink and eat our god's human form.

I mean, come on, decency demands you draw the line somewhere, right?

Humanity will not be free until we use the the entrails of the last Rightard pundit to strangle the last evangelical preacher...

I have to admit, I've never been compared to a Baal worshiper before.

On the other hand, I'm always asking myself "What would Baal do?"

WorldNetDaily can suck my baals.

It's proper name is worldNUTdaily.com

The reduction of women's rights, gay rights, environmentalism, and sex education to cult like worship makes me SO angry. I don't understand how anyone can honestly think such ridiculous things.

>..."offended Christians who actually live by the words of the Gospels."

Why would you apologize?

The 'gospels' are chock full of ritual sacrifice, slavery, genocide, incest, rape, pillage and other assorted forms of destruction... much of it directed by god. The part of the gospel I like best is where God sent bears to eat children who teased one of the prophets about being bald.

Don't apologize... it's all whack.

Like I always say, it's not a party until the bisexual baby-burning orgy gets rolling.

Does Matt Barber cite any references other than the King James Version translated, circa 1604 and his own fertile imagination?

Does Barber purport to read Hebrew or Aramaic? Does Barber purport to have knowledge of ancient Greek or Hebrew myths, or any myths? Is he aware the planets were considered as gods? In ancient writings, Baal was another name for the planet Venus.

Barber’s education was obviously akin to that of the Bush appointees to the attorney general’s office. Has Barber ever read anything besides the King James Version of the Old Testament?

This isn't a new line of "arguement." About 15 years ago I lived in Austin, Texas, and was channel-flipping and on local cable access came across some nut yammering about liberals as Baal-worshippers. The idea's just taken some time to work itself into the mainstream....

Buford, like a lot of conservatives you confuse the old testament with the gospels. I have read both and don't recall anything in the gospels arguing for " slavery, genocide, incest, rape, pillage and other assorted forms of destruction.." Ok ritual sacrifice but only the ritual sacrifice of Jesus. Now, the old testament is a totally different book.

The most stinging criticism of fundamentalist Christian leaders is that they have abandoned the prince of peace for the fire and brimstone of the old testament.

Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar.
The same could be said of the macabre rituals of the ancient Hebrew god of war and thunder.

Most Americans and all Republicans worship the dollar. i.e. they associate wealth with virtue. Myself I'll take Pantheism over Idolatry any time.

Irony time: even as the far-right accuses liberals of idol worship, it's the far-right which engages in idol worship by its deification of the automobile + the almighty dollar.

Hell, those are the US' two idols, and you don't even have to resort to metaphor to see their worship. Look as we defecate on the rest of the country as we worship the boundless acquisition of wealth.

More irony: didn't the religious right once refer to the pursuit of wealth as the 'worship of Mammon?' My, how things change...

-Z

Irony time: even as the far-right accuses liberals of idol worship, it's the far-right which engages in idol worship by its deification of the automobile + the almighty dollar. Zorro

Irony time - part 2: In the early days of Indo-European language, Cow and Money were the same word. Virtually every language from India to England have words that derive from it (ca'), such as cash, cattle, cow, change, chattle, etc.

Baby-killing is one of the oldest slanders made against any "outsider" religion by the dominant faith. The Romans said that Christians sacrificed babies at their "love feasts," when the Christians were dominant, they claimed that Gnostic Christians floured babies and tore them to shreds in an orgy like Barber's. Later on, Christians declared that Jews drank the blood of Christian babies at their rituals-- which justified exterminating them. The ignorant and bigoted of any faith have fallen for this crap for eons.
(BTW, I don't think Baal worship was anything like this, but I haven't done any research-- all I remember is an article in the Chicago Reader, some years ago when the Jewish Museum had an exhibit of Baal idols.)

People who symbolically drink the blood and eat the flesh of their god are the direct spiritual descendants of the followers of Baal. These are people who drop bombs on villagers to kill their children and poison the air, water and earth with noxious waste for profits.

Baal?

Crap. This whole time I've been worshiping Ball!

I think we need more articles like this so that these insane clowns can be exposed to the light of day.

More to the point, Gandalf the Grey, we need the mainstream media to pick up on the insane stupidity which is the right-wing's stock in trade. Not that I expect that the SCLM will ever bite the right-wing hand which feeds it.

-Z

This is what happens when you have religious zealots playing armchair anthropologists. And I suppose it will pass as serious ehtnohistorical analysis.

I resent the use of the word "stench" to describe the fragrance of charred human flesh.

Why don't we ask people who might actually know something about Ba'al worship here

Short snips from The Jewish Encyclopedia:

The wide-spread and primitive Semitic root ("ba'al") may be most nearly rendered in English by "possess." The term "Ba'al," therefore, which is usually explained as meaning "lord," is properly "possessor" or "owner," and is so used in a great variety of applications in common Hebrew speech.

[snip]

It is hardly likely that the passage embodies a reference to a god Ba'al whose worship was common throughout Palestine, for "the Baal," according to the context, does not necessarily mean anything more than Melkart, the deity specially honored by the Phenicians (Sidonians), and in fact it appears that there were many Ba'als in Palestine, each of whom stood on an independent footing (compare Baal-berith, Ba'alim, etc.).

[snip]

It is not correct, therefore, to speak of Ba'al as being a universal Semitic deity, nor even as being the object of a common Canaanitish worship. On the other hand, it can not be said that there was no god Ba'al, as a distinct divinity among inland or maritime Canaanites, for later usage points clearly to the use of the word as a proper name without any definition whatever.

[snip]

The Book of Hosea speaks eloquently and pathetically of the moral and religious ruin which it wrought in the days just before the fall of the monarchy. It was to the Ba'als that the popular worship of the high places was paid; or, more frequently, to Yhwh Himself with Baalish rites.

[snip]

Apart from the offerings of fruits from the earth and the firstlings of cattle, much is not known with regard to the rites of the popular Ba'al-Worship. Self-torture and mutilation characteristic of the Phenician type (I Kings xviii. 28) were probably absent from the simpler and freer usages of the primitive local observances. It is also doubtful whether the sacrifice of children, proper to the service of Molech, was ever a feature of inland Canaanitic Ba'al-Worship (Jer. xix. 5 is to be corrected by the LXX.). The shrines were little more than altars with the symbol of the Ashtoreth planted beside it—the sacred tree-stem or pole named from an old Canaanite goddess, Ashera, with whom Ashtoreth was identified.

[end snips]

Sorry for the snips but you have the link, so you can read the whole summary, if you want to.

So where does Matt Barber get "amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh congregants, men and women alike - would engage in bizexual orgies"?

He earned a post graduate degree at Regents University. One of the fundamentalist universities that takes pride in graduating people less informed than when they arrived as freshmen.

But then again, this is why Christianists rail against the educated people everywhere, disparaging them as elitists. Can you imagine what would happen if their children when to a real university? They might learn that everything they have been taught about the world up to that point had been a fanatical lie, used to keep the flock under control, "supporting the ministry". Gotta keep the flock from finding a more useful purpose for all those tithes, dontcha know!!?

Finally, a religion that speaks to ME. I mean, of course, in its modern form.

sorry about the link. I shoulda tested it!

Here:

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=B&artid=2

Not that I believe in the Bible or anything, but just to clarify a little more for Buford, the "Gospels" are the first 4 books of the New Testament only -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- and purport to cover the life (and sayings) of Jesus.

Everything else in the Bible covers something else. The Old Testament, of course, covers pre-Jesus. The rest of the New Testament is mostly by a misogynistic, probably latently gay guy named Paul. Then there's the wacky book of Revelations, by some OTHER guy named John, I think, who must have eaten some magic mushrooms or some ergot or something.

SteveT,

"offended Christians who actually live by the words of the Gospels."

That would be the gospels where people are told to allow those in power to beat them, ie "turn the other cheek"? A message where dying for no reason at the hands of proponants of evil is better than actually trying to end evil?

Christianity is nothing but a scam to force laity to obey clergy - who, miracously, can see the "invisible modifiers" that let them break supposedly inviolate commandemnts, while killing the laity for even minor infractions. Religion is a scam run by self-appointed con-men who want nothing more than to live off the hard work and sweat of honest people. Organized religion has been, is, and always will be, the most virulent opponent of freedom, equality, justice, humanity, and God.

The 'gospels' are chock full of ritual sacrifice, slavery, genocide, incest, rape, pillage and other assorted forms of destruction... much of it directed by god.

You must be reading a different New Testament than the rest of us. There are no Gospels in the Old Testament (the part with all of the cool slaughter and mayhem).

"Gospel" isn't a synonym for "Bible" -- it refers only to the parts with Jesus in them. It may include only Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants -- men and women alike -- would engage in bisexual orgies.

And this is different from a Congregational service how?

This is nothing new. Senator Inhofe made this point on The 700 Club a few years back-

ROBERTSON: What is the agenda of the radical Left? They talk about – aren’t environmental concerns sort of like a god to them?

INHOFE: It is. Look, Pat, I don't have to tell you about reading the Scriptures, but one of mine that I’ve always enjoyed is Romans 1, 22 and 23. You quit worshipping God and start worshipping the creation -- the creeping things, the four-legged beasts, the birds and all that. That’s their god. That’s what they worship. If you read Romans 1:25, it says, ‘and they gave up their God and started worshipping the creation.’ That's what we are looking at now, that’s what’s going on.

And it's staple of wingnut church sermons:
While visiting the Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va., a few weeks back, I heard a troubling, albeit thought-provoking, sermon. Pastor John Mabray addressed the ancient Canaanite practice of Baal worship and, though he didn't reveal it by name, connected the dots to its present-day progeny: liberalism. Baal, the half-bull, half-man god of fertility, was the focal point of pagan idolatry in Semitic Israel until God revealed His monotheistic nature to Judaism's forebears.

In his sermon, Pastor Mabray illustrated that, although they've now assumed a more contemporary flair, the fundamentals of Baal worship remain alive and well today. The principal pillars of Baalism were child sacrifice, sexual immorality (both heterosexual and homosexual) and pantheism (reverence of creation over the Creator).
http://www.rapturealert.com/2008/122108baal.asp

And see this:

In the New Testament Jesus stated "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Environmentalism glorifies another god, an ancient serpent of the earth, one whose rule was broken with the coming of the Messiah. God is not amused by the acceptance of strange gods before Him. http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/the_return_of_the_old_gods_a_c.html

Wait till the fundies discover modern art. Picasso alone is worth years of sermons.

I'm singing my favorite holiday carol right now

"Silver Baals, Silver Baals, infanticide time in the city..."

The difference between making this description of Ba'al worship and then suggesting that it is also a characterization of modern liberals and, say, doing the same thing with the blood libel against Jews is that people recognize the blood libel pretty quickly. Other than that, its the same thing.

Orgiastic Sex: Try it, you'll have a Baal!

Back when I was a grad student in the icy Northeast, each morning a couple of us teetotalers would wait in front of the hot water heater for the orange light to come on. At which time we'd treat the dept secretary to chants of "Baal is pleased. All hail Baal."

We weren't in the Religion dept, so we had no idea that sacrificing a small child would speed the process.

Belle:
First, kudos for the best nick of the month. And thanks for explaining the difference between 'the Gospels' and 'the Bible.' Some people here are so ignorant of 'sacred scriptures' you'd think they were Fundamentalists. (Atheists like me actually read the damn things, just because they are fascinated at how the ideas contained have been changed over the years.)

One minor quibble, students and writers in the field are suggesting that the misogyny in the epistles does not come from Paul -- who used women messengers to convey his writings -- which meant they would explain them, and hence 'preach,' and who commended his hearers to treat the women as his messengers.
Instead, the comments seem to have been added by someone like Tertullian, who really was the source of much of the anti-woman thread in Christianity. (Watch out, Prup's getting pedantic again. Don't worry, like malaria, the attacks fade with time.)

I see there has been a Ba'al Movement in these comments...

Heh, I'm glad you put this up Steve, regardless of whether in response to my email suggestion. I'm not sure whether to laugh at this, or be truly appalled (can I be both?)

BTW note the bizarre irony of these frightening right-wing kooks comparing modern liberals and attraction (allowance, actually) to abortion to an ancient *fertility cult.* - They're the fertility cult, with their revulsion of interfering with conception etc. That's a defining trait of the kooky far right: irony blindness.

Also, in line with other comments: modern conservative worship of the almighty dollar and self interest is it's own form of "Baal worship": combined with their religious snootery, a Pharisaical indulgence.

Sorry I skimmed and didn't see my name (ctrl-f-ed for "Neil" not "N.B."), thanks Steve. Yeah, this one raised some eyebrows!

They've been calling you a Baal worshipper and worse for years; you just haven't noticed. Must've been preoccupied with those bisexual orgies, drinking infants' blood and whatnot.

Archaeologists have indeed found large numbers of infant burials from Punic (Carthaginian) times on the site of Carthage -- but the ritual context is debated (did they die naturally? in the first millennium BC many ancient Mediterranean societies cremated their dead as a rule)? Some archaeologists have suggested that child sacrifices did take place, but the context was very high infant mortality in ancient (or, indeed, before the 20th century) times: sacrifice one child to the gods and maybe the others won't die.

But I bet that Matt Barber's getting his stuff from Flaubert's Salammbo (one of the Great Bad Historical Novels of the 19th century, besides Ivanhoe and Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii).

This guy teaches law at Liberty University? Now we know who taught constitutional law to Monica "I took an oath to protect the President" Goodling.

Shucks. I've been a liberal all my adult life, and I haven't been invited to any orgies. Maybe I haven't contributed enough to the ACLU.

There's a difference between a Ba'aller and a Ho'oper.

"The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of "mother earth."

What NUTS! An orgy? Shit, now all you need is to fake sincerity, as opposed to orgasm. Witness:

A ritual of political convenience that was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting "God" to bring rain for the fertility of "Georgia"

Where are all these orgies and sex parties? I have been looking for them for a LOOOONG time and never found them. Don't think I would like the buffet, but it might be nice to have a little mind bending sex with a variety of strangers and celebrate the Holidays (Sorry Bill-O).

"men and women alike -- would engage in bisexual orgies"

If its a bisexual orgy, isn’t the "men and women alike" a bit redundant?

Where are all these orgies and sex parties? I have been looking for them for a LOOOONG time and never found them. Don't think I would like the buffet

You're in luck, we're having our Winter Solstice orgy tonight at the Oakwood First Baalist Church, down on 7th street between Washington and Decatur. Cookies and punch in the Fellowship Hall afterwards.

Is it just me, or does the winter solstice baby-burning orgy season get earlier every year?

Since I know I am preaching to the choir, might I remind you all what Matt Barber's real gripe is; Baby sacrificing, or in his mind the modern equivalent "reproductive freedom" or "choice."
Lets just forget that the "director of Cultural Affairs" at the laughable Liberty University probably did absolutely no research to see if there was actually a connection between modern orgies and modern abortion, because such research would probably show that most orgy attendees have never had abortions and most women who have chosen to get an abortion have never attended orgies, and focus on why he thinks modern abortions have spawned from modern orgies. Because he believes that we have orgies as a form of religious practice that will in our hopes lead to us being able to get abortions as our way of giving thanks for being able to practice our religion.
I can agree with Mr Barber to an extent in that, like Obama, I consider sex sacred, and will further say that I consider every time that I have sex a religious experience (don't know if Obama feels the same way as I do on that later point). And I often give thanks to the creator for allowing me to enjoy sex, but I don't give thanks by offering an abortion; I give thanks by loving my wife, which of course leads to more religious experiences.
To avoid an unwanted pregnancy, I just use modern technologies, for which I am also thankful that my wife agrees to use them with me. As a result we have had sex, I mean religious experiences, several thousands of times in past 9 years of our marriages, but have not had an unwanted pregnancy.

The religious right just all took a collective crap in their drawers together. Now that's bonding.

Barber appears quite unfamiliar with the "thou shalt not lie" commandment, but such is the case with christian religious fanatics that believe their version of God is a dumb ass of the first order like they are.

Well, dang. And here I've been worshiping *Vaal* all this time. I feel stoopid.

Wow, this is what it looks like when people who thought God was on their side lose big time. This and Pat Boone thinking we're the same as the terrorists who attacked Mumbai. They are so desperate they are totally delusional, I agree. What is totally scary is that some people will read this stuff and buy it.

It is religion that has retarded scientific advancement for the benefit of humankind. For instance ancient Ionian civilization first developed the scientific method in about the 5th century BCE. It was then that the atom was first considered but since it contradicted Plato, the Ionian civilization was eliminated and with it the body of knowledge it had compiled and the scientific method eliminated. It took 2,000 years for what the Ionians had developed to be rediscovered and implemented. Finally in 1991, when the Universe changed so that Galileo's excommunication could be rescinded because until 1991 the universe revolved around the earth. If my memory serves me correctly, some heretics were murdered for not believing the universe revolved around the earth.