Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why oh why? Delilah?
- Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,
  Samson has been asking himself the same question since Long Ago, BCE. Delilah was Samson’s wife; she coaxed him into revealing that his long hair was the secret of his Herculean strength, and then gave him a quick trim and betrayed him to his enemies. Fortunately for Samson, Old Testament God (before he got all New-Agey and lame) was cool with guys who bludgeoned hundreds of non-believers to death, so he got his revenge in the end.

  I always think of this story when Trolling Fundies decry the morals of modern entertainment. Here’s a tale prominently featuring thousands of beating deaths. At the end, the hero commits what can only be called a low-tech suicide bombing; he pulls the Philistine temple down on himself, killing “many more as he died than while he lived.” (Judges 16:30). But if someone says “fuck” on TV, the world will explode and we’ll all be cast into hell. Or something.

  When I was a kid, I had a set of View-Master discs featuring illustrated bible stories. The only thing more awesome for a pre-adolescent boy than a picture of hundreds of beating victims and their jawbone-wielding assailant is a picture of hundreds of beating victims and their jawbone-wielding assailant in 3-D!

  In other news, Wikipedia has an entry for hair. Seriously? Does anybody sophisticated enough to look things up in an online encyclopedia not know what hair is?

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why are Tom and Jerry so mean to each other?
- Jennifer

Dear Jennifer,
  The struggle between a physically powerful oppressor and a diminutive but intellectually gifted challenger is as old as the biblical story of David & Goliath. And considering the liberal ways that the bible borrows from previous mythology, chances are it’s considerably older. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera simply transposed the ageless struggle into the anthropomorphized animal oeuvre and added modern household instruments of torture to the combatants’ arsenals.

  Alternate Answer: Because cats like to eat mice, whereas mice generally prefer to remain uneaten. Duh.

  And let me say, for a sprightly lass of 6,010, you’re still looking great. Don’t worry about that slight equatorial bulge. It happens to all of us after our mid-5,000s.

  Atheist and self-described “tumbleblogger” Ryoga M celebrates his 1,000th post with the start of a new feature looking at “the greatest plot holes in Bible stories.”

God: Oh man! It tastes like chocolate strawberry and brandy. But don’t eat it, or you’ll live forever! I mean, die! Die. Forget I said live forever.

  It’s funny. Go read it. And tell him that, while he’s poking about in Genesis, he should take on the creation myth.

There have been a couple of bible stories (about, not from) in the news in the last few weeks. One was about the “Jefferson Bible,” a version of the four canonical Gospels that Thomas Jefferson worked over with a pair of scissors. He cut out all of the miracles (including the big reveal resurrection) and inconsistencies that he could find, and pasted it into a book he called The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

The other was about the planned online publication of the Codex Sinaiticus. The Codex is a Christian Bible, written in Greek and dated from the Fourth Century CE. It contains the oldest surviving complete copy of the New Testament, including books that were later eliminated from the canon, and is missing verses that are included in the current version. The most notable omission is in this early version of the Gospel of Mark, which ends 12 verses earlier than later versions, without mentioning the zombie resurrected Jesus.

Because I am that kind of solipsist, reading these stories got me thinking about my deconversion. I didn’t have a sudden epiphany. It was more a long slide away from my childhood faith. But it was studying the bible seriously that turned on the boosters and sent me careening toward apostasy.

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