Sunday Sermonette: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds

The title is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and you can read the context here. He's basically saying it's okay to change your mind. Well then, I guess it's okay for God too. Here is Genesis 9, part the first.

9 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. ² The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. ³ Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

⁴ “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. ⁵ And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

⁶ “Whoever sheds human blood,
    by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
    has God made mankind.

⁷ As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”

As we shall shortly see, God does not in fact want everything that lives and moves to be food for us. And regardless of whether we are allowed to eat pigs and clams, a lot of it just isn't edible anyway. So you know, this just isn't true. Also, it is not true that all the animals fear us. I expect we're a lot more afraid of lions and grizzly bears than they of us, at least until we invented firearms several thousand years after God made this claim.

“Whoever sheds human blood,
    by humans shall their blood be shed;"

Hm. So why did God put a mark on Cain to make sure nobody would kill him?  And Lamech, in Genesis 4, who also confesses to killing a man and says that anybody who takes vengeance on him will in turn be avenged many times over? Later, God command the Hebrews to massacre people of conquered cities, and proscribes the death penalty for such offenses as gathering sticks on the sabbath.

So God is obviously batshit insane. Just sayin'.

I was late with this post because my electricity was out for 48 hours, from 2:30 Friday afternoon. Finally got my Intertubes back, now I'll have to find out what I missed.