The Curse of Cain

One of the optional modules I chose for my course is Myth, Epic and Folk Tale, in which we study various old texts that have endured down the centuries and, despite having been reworked and re-edited time and again, have remained influential to this day.

Presently, I'm reading the King James Bible.

I've attempted to read a version of the bible before (out of curiosity), but couldn't even get through the first few short chapters before my attention wandered. Whether it's the version I'm reading or the fact that I have some genuine motivation this time, I'm now making better headway and have just read chapter 4.

By now, many of you probably know my standing on religion. No one can say with absolute certainty whether or not there is a god - some almighty creator who started the whole thing - but what I can say with a great deal of confidence is organised religion is full of shit. Everyone single one of them has been built up by a handful of people with an agenda to control the masses, and nowhere is it more evident than in their own teachings.

"You can do this. You can't do that. This group of people (who I just happen to be a part of) are always right and never to be questioned, and anyone who disagrees will be judged and punished by our particular all-powerful ghost (though if wanna take a few shots yourself, it can't hurt your chances of getting into that big glowing cube in the sky)."

That said, if that's what you're happy with and makes you comfortable and you don't try to force any of rhetoric down anyone else's throat, fine. There's no harm in that.

However, there is a particular group within every religion for whom that isn't enough. These are, of course, the fundamentalists.

Fucktards; each and every one.

For example, female VP wannabe Sarah Palin believes of her own gender; "...in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Genesis 3:16) All of which seems particularly harsh when Adam's punishment for the same sin - eating of the tree of knowledge - was to eat from the tree of life and live forever, tilling soil and fucking his submissive wife.

Also, only 5 pages in and I'm already finding typos and continuity errors. When referring to God, the rule is to always use a capital - he is He; his is His; etc - so it's a little confusing when He's in conversation with Cain and the lower-case is used, especially when there's no paragraph break for a change in speaker and no quotation marks at all.

At this particular point, having just killed his brother, Abel, Cain is one of only three people in existence (himself and his mother and father, Adam and Eve), so he's talking about when he says, "...I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me"?

It's also worth noting the lower-case of 'earth'. Even if there were more than three people in existence - including himself - he's unlikely to meet any of them wandering around in the ground.

People take this stuff literally.

LITERALLY!!

If it wasn't for one of them being the leader of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, and another poised to potentially take his place, it would be hilarious...