From there, give your attention to first life. Watch it stutter and start, nearly obliterate itself in the oxygen catastrophe, watch it grow larger and expand in variety only to gaze on dispassionately while it is mostly annihilated some sixty five million years ago. Then see how life recovers, and watch how the mammals begin their ascendancy to fill a void left by the death of dinosaurs. Now wait millions of years, until you see the first apes straighten to two legs and stagger blinking into the light, afraid, alone, dying mostly of their teeth or in childbirth.
Watch the rise of the Neanderthals, with their hopes, rituals and protoreligious burials unanswered, then watch as they decline, dwindle and die. We mere mortals know that Homo florensiencsis discovered fire and likely made hunting tools but you will be able to see with clarity how closely these long dead cousins mirrored our intelligence. Enjoy the discoveries, waiting, watching, until some two hundred thousand years ago the first anatomical humans rise to enjoy a life of fear and early death. Wait further still, until some five thousand years ago you decide to reveal yourself to a man called Abram, and reveal to him the concern that has been most keenly pressing for this immense chasm of time:
"This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.
And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.
And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.
He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant."
It seems the Westboro Baptist Church are not arbiters of divine intention. It is not 'fags' God hates, but foreskins, specifically Abram's, his sons', his descendants and his slaves.
But what has incurred His righteous anger?
It is not often that I foray into Old Testament territory, but when I do I recognise that we have the advantage of being able to call on learned Jewish thought. Here I bow to Rabbi Maimonides (pictured), likely the most well known and prolific Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages. As both a scholar of the Torah and a respected physician he is ideally placed to elucidate. He described circumcision as
"...the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible...None of the activities necessary for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby, nor is procreation rendered impossible, but violent concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed are diminished. The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable."The free will so magnanimously offered at a price of suffering and death is reduced, diluted and restricted in God's first covenant with his chosen people. How many mothers and fathers cried tears for lost sons by enforcing this practice in a bronze-age culture? What deaths resulted from hacking at flesh with sharpened rocks in an age before what we would now consider rudimentary hygiene and medical care? The oft trumpeted and frankly dubious health benefits cannot be cited without explaining why Christians did not also deserve such bounty.
Yaweh in Genesis promulgates that failure to mutilate the genitalia of one's slaves and helpless infants is a crime so abhorrent as to require banishment. Later Paul in Galatians 5 rules that those wishing to continue the practice have failed so egregiously that they should instead castrate themselves. Is this the absolute source of unchanging morality that serves as foundation to the moral argument?
