you mean to tell me crazy thirty years ago wasn’t crazy two thousand years ago?

“take it on faith”, they say…

…”they”, being my more religious friends. believe it or not, yes, i have some.

that’s what they say when you attempt to challenge their faith with logic. but if you, say, try and call into question something like the earth only being six thousand years old as the bible says, using carbon dating as an example, they respond with, “well, carbon dating has never been able to be really proven…”

so we recently wrapped up the “waco…the aftermath” series on showtime. highly recommended, as i would the first one. i’m pretty convinced michael shannon just can do no wrong. but it got me recollecting when waco went down, and all the popular opinions on the folk involved, and how they “kinda deserved what they got for following a crazy person”.

but was he?

he took multiple wives, most of them underage, and said that god spoke directly to him, and used him as his messenger. in the 1990’s, with our grasp of modern psychology and reality, he just needed someone to talk to, a script or several, and he’d had been right as rain, wouldn’t he?

so in the “modern age” (okay, thirty years ago, but relatively modern) god speaking to somebody who did all this is clearly bullshit and the ramblings of a crazy person. and those that believed him? well, they might be crazy, and at the very least crazy adjacent. none of that “it was a different time” shit. none of that “you had to be there” shit. nobody says any of this was “out of context”. most free-thinking, logical, educated, intelligent people would agree on these statements.

but two thousand years or more ago, when we had ZERO grasp of psychology, and there were no anti-psychotics, and your iphone would be viewed as witchcraft or wizardry? someone who was sleeping with kids and taking multiple wives and claimed god spoke to or through them? we’d better write that shit down – because GOD said it. that bearded guy with the six teenage brides said so! and all those stories got written down, and compiled, and became…

and now a good chunk of the leftover baby boomer generation (and far too many folks my age) want us to base the laws of our country on the ramblings of two thousand year old crazy people. what daphuk?