In part 1, we considered the text of Ezekiel chapter 4 wherein it was stated:
“But as for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself; you shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side. You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung. Then the Lord said, ‘Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them.’ But I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Behold, I have never been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat ever entered my mouth.’ Then He said to me, ‘See, I will give you cow’s dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread.’”
We explained the long history of YHVH’s prophets performing hyperbolic, symbolic, allegoric, actions which are meant to illustrate a point and also elucidated the issues relating to the text and its specific instructions.
That which follows may not make sense if you do not read part 1.
Many issues arise from this text and Atheists have been on the top of the list of those who besmirch YHVH and the Bible because of it. It is their comments that we will consider below; some are attempts at humor, some are condemnatory and all are missing the point and offer great examples of how to embarrass oneself on the world wide web by proudly demonstrating one’s very own ignorance (which is hopefully what it is; a literal lack of knowledge).
Of course, as with any Atheist condemnation of anything at all, the primary answer is not an answer but a question which is, “Upon what premise do you condemn?” They may claim that it is unsanitary but a culture which suffers losses of human lives due to sanitary ignorance simply did not survive as the fittest and we are better off without their genes in the gene pool. They may say that it is wrong, bad, evil, etc. but those are just conclusions and not premises. In any case, they must answer the question and their answers, ultimately, lead to a bottomless pit of personal preference based assertions.
This is tantamount to the statement from a certain Dave from the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society who wrote the following:
“So, why is Adolf Hitler wrong? Because he murdered millions, and his only justification, even if it were valid, was based on things which he should have known were factually wrong. Why is it wrong to do that? Because I said so.” (emphasis added for emphasis)
At least he is honest; he realized that he has absolutely nothing upon which to base his condemnation but his own emotive umbrage. The issue is that when the bio-organism Dave goes mano-a-mano with a bio-organism of the Nazi variety; only the strongest will survive.
In any regard, Positive Atheism is a website that I have discredited time and time again as they are masters of misapplying, misunderstanding and misinterpreting the Bible’s contents, contexts and concepts.
See here for my articles contra-Positive Atheism.
They have a webpage titled “Positive Atheism’s Big Scary List of Holy Bible Quotations – Spiritual Guide to Gracious Living by the late Glenn Carver a Portland, Oregon atheistic activist distributed but not copyrighted by American Atheists” By the way; see here for my articles contra-American Atheists as they are just as unscholarly.
Therein they offer the following quote without elucidation and without even immediate context. Thus, it is meant to be emotive and leaves aside the sort of explanation that we offered in part 1:
“The Lord commanded: “And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.” — Ezekiel 4:12.”
The About website contains the writings of many people on many topics. Austin Cline writes about Atheism (which, of course, means that he does not write about Atheism but again Christianity as Atheism is, primarily, an anti-Christian support group) see here for my articles contra-Austin Cline.
To the article, “Myth: Atheists Cannot ‘Lack Belief in God’ After Learning About God” a commentator named Jeanne wrote:
“Nobody questions where Cain’s wife came from or why god would tell the children if Israel to make cakes with human excrement (Ezekiel 4:12-13.. “
Nobody questions where Cain’s wife came from? People have been asking that for a long, long time. Although, one wonders why as the Bible all but gives you her parent’s names; see the following article: Where did Cain get his wife?
As for the bread, the text does not state that “the children if Israel” were to make the bread but only Ezekiel. Then we get into the semantics behind her term, “cakes with human excrement.” What does with mean? If she means that it was an ingredient, then that is simply not the case, as we noted in part 1; it was to be fuel for the fire with which to bake it and YHVH ended up letting Ezekiel use cow dung instead.
The Patheos website has many authors who are supposed to, “Explore the world’s faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality!” An author who uses it to besmirch religion under the guise of writing about Atheism is Terry Firma who wrote an article titled, “Buddhists Take Pills Made of Poop (Different Religion, Same Old Crap).” Of course, an article about Buddhists turns into a besmirching of Christianity and a commentator named GodVlogger wrote:
“The Holy Bible has a recipe for poop bread:
“And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.” (Ezekiel 4:12-13)”
Well, “poop bread” is misleading, at best although, at least, they quoted the verse which makes the symbolic nature of the act clear.
Barry Duke wrote an article titled, “Holy crap – Amish-style!” for the Freethinker.co.uk website. After much worthless banter in the comments section (and 99% of comment sections are 99% worthless banter) a commentator named Talitha wrote:
“They are clearly getting their Dung mixed up.
Ezekiel 4:15 clearly states:
Then He said to me, “See, I am giving you cow dung instead of human waste, and you shall prepare your bread over it.”
Of course, what they [the Amish] should be doing is baking Dung Bread which is covered earlier in that Chapter:
Ezekiel 4:12
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.
I hope that helped y’all.”
Again “Dung bread” is misleading, at best.
The website Debate had a segment which pitted Atheism vs. Christianity with one of the debaters writing:
“You are trying to say that the bible is not true, how do you know this? Do you think that anyone could just think of humans excreting cow dung (Ezekiel 4:12-15)…”
Well, the term sarcasm comes to mind and also the fact that while they cite the text they do not quote it and misread it, at best as it nowhere states that humans excrete cow dung. Rather, human dung is replaced with cow’s dung.
Oleg Dei is the head of an anti-Christian support group which masquerades as a science education group; see here for my articles contra-Oleg Dei and his Science Club of Long Island.
The website Atheism is Dead was a predecessor to True Freethinker and Oleg Dei decided to troll-spam many of the comment sections to many articles in order to paste in the very same comment which included this statement:
“Eat Human Feces!
“And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.” (Ezekiel 4:12-13).”
Thus, he has discredited himself by claiming that the text commands that we Eat Human Feces! which it does not and also by offering a partial quotation which is self-servingly cropped.
On a truly sad note, the Religion is Manmade website posted an article titled, “Seth Andrews: Deconverted (atheist podcast).” The article is really just a just an embedded video with the little bit of text which follows:
“Seth Andrews shares parts of his own story, and he also shares the stories and perspectives of others who have traveled the path from religion to reason.
Eat Human Feces! “And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.” Ezekiel 4:12-13”
Well, there is either some plagiarism afoot or…well, whatever. It is just shockingly sad that part the reason why someone converted to Atheism is due to an utter misunderstanding of a text.
Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? (initially named Why Does God Hate Amputees?) is another Atheist embarrassment of a website; see :
Fundamentalist Theologian Asks: “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” and “Why Does God Hate Amputees?”
Atheists Fulfill Scripture: “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” / “Why Does God Hate Amputees?”
Within a forum in that website with the topic, “Ezekiel, you will bake your food with human poop, got that?” a funnyman named Jim wrote:
“Anything can make sense after spending long hot days under the desert sun. No wonder he heard God, with his brain baking.
God: “Eat poop”
Desert prophet du jour: “Sounds like a plan!””
This is called missing the point entirely and replacing reasoned discourse with childish emotive taunting.
The only saving grace is that another commentator named Graybeard wrote:
“To be serious for a moment, baking with cowsh*t is very common all over the third world. I’ve eaten stuff cooked that way and TBH it didn’t bother me at all – if the stuff’s burning, there will be no bacteria, etc. Not everyone has electricity and piped gas.”
On his own website, Robert Cargil wrote an article titled, “Still one of the oddest biblical commands: COVER YOUR POO! (Because God might step in it!).” The “God might step in it” part is a reference to a biblical text which describes that the Israelite’s camp, whilst they were nomadic, was to be clean as YHVH is with them and walks about their camp. Robert Cargil seems to miss the correlative point between physical cleanliness and holiness and just makes a crack about it—how sad, to miss an opportunity to actually learn something.
Again, a saving grace came by the way of a commentator named Steve who wrote:
“The use of animal dung in fires in fairly common. Human dung is less common and, as the following verse, Ezekiel 4:13, makes it clear that such food is unclean and being directed as a punishment. So it is not a regular method of cooking food. Many of the Israelite practices made sense given their circumstances. Consider the use of matriarchal decent in patriarchal society–very practical. It is interesting how the reading of something is so influenced by our experiences and backgrounds.”
Actually, the use of matriarchal decent in patriarchal society is not biblical but is an invention of Rabbinic Judaism.
The Killer Movies website, for some odd reason, published an article titled, “I am an atheist, thank God!” by Anthony Stark who wrote the following after quoting Ezekiel 4:12-15:
“Surely the supreme being would have better things to talk to his flock about. Their are [sic] as many stars in the sky as grains of sand on Earth, quite frankly no God of an organised religion is big enough for my Universe- and the above discussion in fact most discussions prophets have with God sound like the ramblings of schizophrenics. All that hearing voices etc. Could it be those who see God are mentally ill?”
And behold, another Atheist discredits themselves by missing the point which is that the action has symbolic significance and not just good ol’ grandpa giving you his recipe for bread. Note also that “no God of an organised religion is big enough for my Universe” but why is dis, or un organized religion (such as Atheism; see video here and article here) any better?
Moreover, note that this Atheist is actually simply stating that he will not, he refuses to, worship YHVH. The universe which he created in his own image is no match for YHVH as, obviously, YHVH would overarch and rule that universe. The Atheist cannot have that so he invents the consoling delusion of absolute autonomy, lack of ultimate accountability and sets himself as the god of his own universe. Thus, by the way, proving that believes in god and proves that god exists; even if it is just a human auto-deified one.
Also, note that just because many people claim to head the voice of “God” does not mean that they all do but, of course, it does not mean that no one ever has. Anthony Stark’s is a gross oversimplified generalization which leads him to wonder whether if all who have experiences with “God” are schizophrenic and mentally ill.
The Think Atheist website needs to actually do some of that so called think-ing as they posted an article with a title that we will censor as, “Religion, The Rapture and the recipe for Holy **** Cakes” by “Kevin (Idolizing Reason).” It is interesting that Kevin writes his name as such as he may idolize reason but, as an Atheist, he cannot account for reason. Reasoning to reason is unreasonable circular reasoning. In any regard, he writes:
“The god in the bible seemed to have a real sense of humor. He had his own special recipe for pancakes for the children of Israel…
“And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.” (Ezekiel 4:12-13)
Holy ****cakes? Bread made with dung?! One wonders what nutritional or moral value it would serve the people to eat human feces with their bread, as God had ordered. God here has also ordered the voyeuristic operation without explanation. Although in verses 14-15 the poor Israelites complain about eating abominable flesh, God (in his “wonderful” grace) changes his mind and allows them to substitute human feces with cow feces. Gee, thanks a lot God! (as if eating cow excrement makes much of a difference!)
Naw, I’m not into ****cakes and this notion of god gets crazier and crazier the more you read the bible. I really don’t intend to offend anyone, it’s just my take on the whole thing. Instead, if I’m going to choose a religion, let it at least be something believable… like “Jedi!” ;-)”
How can someone compound so many errors into such a short statement? The bread is baked with dung as a fire fuel and not as an ingredient. No idea to what the voyeuristic operation refers. It is also untrue that “the poor Israelites complain” as it was only Ezekiel. He does not even have to eat cow excrement but use it as fuel. And after all of this, and more, the besmirching condemner take a note from the politically correct commandments and tells us that, “I really don’t intend to offend anyone” oh good, because in that case, I would hate to see what he writes when he does intend to offend. Lastly, note the pop-culture mentality as he jokes about preferring the Jedi which is a reference to the Star Wars movies/books mythos about which I wrote within the article Everything I know about the occult, I learned from Star Wars.
The No Beliefs website was named after a truly faulty Atheist-group-think-talking-point-de jour which is that Atheists have No Beliefs. Well, regardless of to which Atheist demonizations/sects they adhere (about which you can learn here) they, generally, either believe that that God does not exist or they believe that there is not enough evidence for God.
In any case, the article by Jim Walker is titled, “Ezekiel Bread: Made with Human Dung” which is a reference to an actual bread available in health food stores by from a company named Food For Life. Jim Walker wrote:
“…Nor did Food For Life complete the recipe. They forgot the last ingredient! Either they did not read the third verse past 4:9 or they were embarrassed by the scatological implications because the last ingredient is human feces!
But what really shocked me is when I found out that Food For Life did realize its shortcomings. They are now introducing a new bread called Ezekiel 4:12!
Ezekiel 4:12 refers to bread baked with human dung! Yes that’s right: Human ****. Apparently they realized that to fulfill the actual Biblical recipe, they had to introduce this new bread line (probably forced on them by fundamentalists). I suspect they will probably drop the 4:9 bread in favor of this Biblically correct bread. Here’s the actual Biblical passage:
“And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.” (Ezekiel 4:12-13)
Note that some Christian apologists have tried to change the meaning of the passage by saying that the dung was used as a fuel, but this can’t possibly be true because you can’t use human feces as a burning fuel for cooking, not to mention that it would stink to high “heaven” if you did. Moreover, verse 13 explicitly states that it is defiled bread and verse 14 describes it as “abominable flesh.” There’s no way around it: Biblical bread is made with ****. In verse 14-15 the Israelites complained about eating human **** so God changes his mind (God changes his mind?) and allows them to substitute it with cow feces (as if that makes much of a difference). **** is still **** no matter which mammal species produces it.”
Obviously, the statement about the new Ezekiel 4:12 bread is a joke. This is much like the statements by Kevin (Idolizing Reason) and just as faulty.
Feces are not an “ingredient” and Christian apologists have not changed anything; as I explained in part 1. Also, why think that “you can’t use human feces as a burning fuel”? Once it is dry is it just another bit of bio-matter.
But what of the question, “God changes his mind?” It is a rhetorical question without any reason as to why we should think it odd. One can change one’s mind when they realize that they are wrong but can also have a change of mind if they had options A or B in mind, proposed option A and then allowed for option B. Note that Bible states:
“…if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it” (Jeremiah 18:10)
The Atheists’ theology may claim that YHVH cannot “change His mind” but biblical theology does not; in keeping with accurately discerned grammatical context.
The Eat The Bible website published an article titled, “Ezekiel 4: Eat Poop” which states:
“…in 5:1-5, Ezekiel must shave off all his hair and then 1) burn some, 2) cut some with a sword, and 3) scatter some–to show that different Israelites will have different fates when divine calamity strikes. At another point, God has him lay on one side for 390 days to indicate the number of years–also 390–that the Israelites will suffer God’s wrath (Ezekiel 4:4-5). And then there’s the time when God makes Ezekiel tie himself up and lock himself in his house, to show that the people won’t listen to prophets any more (3: 25-26).
But as absurd as some of these lessons are…”
Pause here in order to consider that which the Atheist considers absurd; lessons about how YHVH uses many ways to reach out to His people in order to call them away from folly and towards Him. Of course, the Atheist is avoiding just that; turning towards YHVH. Atheists cannot find YHVH for the same reason that a thief cannot find a police officer.
In any regard, the article continues:
“…God saves his most disgusting for Ezekiel 4:12.
This passage takes place during the 390 days (that’s over a year, people!) when Ezekiel is lying on his side. (I hope that the prophet isn’t a back-sleeper.) During that time, the Lord suggests–well, demands–that the prophet observe certain dietary restrictions:
“And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them into one vessel, and make bread for yourself” (4:9) Not so bad, right? Whole grains are good for heart health! Well, wait … God continues, “You shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung” (4:9-12). Yup, that’s right … on human dung. For over a year, Ezekiel must eat food that has been prepared over burning feces.
All of which makes the absolutely real Ezekiel 4:9 organic bread pictured above sound a little yucky, right? And hilarious! Biblical literacy is important, food movement!
But why does God make Zeke expose himself to airborne e. coli like that? Well, the Lord continues, “Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them” (4:13). In other words, when God throws his people out of the holy land (as He shortly will), they will have to eat unclean food among unclean foreigners. (At some point during this time, God–perhaps seeing the cruelty of his ways–allows Ezekiel to cook his food over cow dung. Thank heaven for small mercies, right?)
But couldn’t he let Ezekiel just say as much? Deliver a sermon on the temple steps where he cries, “If you continue in your ways, God will throw you out of Israel, and you’ll have to eat poop!” Wouldn’t that be sufficiently startling? And isn’t this months-long piece of performance art exquisite torture for poor Ezekiel, whose only mistake seems to be accepting God’s call to prophecy?”
Over all, this Atheists gets the point but rejects it when compared to his view that he knows better. Of course, he is dead wrong on regarding that they would have to “eat poop!” and, at least, got it right when noting that Ezekiel was to be “baking it…on human dung” as fuel.
This Atheists also restricts YHVH by thinking that Ezekiel could have just “Deliver a sermon” and that it would be “sufficiently startling.” Well, YHVH is not a cookie cutter and had His prophets do various thing in order to reach out to the people; from sermons to symbolic actions. Lastly, note the mindset of the Atheist; if YHVH asked them to perform this “months-long” actions, they would consider it too much of a hassle to, per chance, get his very own people to repent—sorry YHVH, too much of a bother, I got my own life to live. And then they are surprised when after an extended period of rebellion, YHVH turns them over to the world and leaves them to it.
Well, overall, a pretty sorry display on the part of the Atheists. They did teach us some great lessons in the folly of reading the Bible solely to pick fragments of texts and looking for trouble. They ended up discrediting themselves whilst leaving the Bible unscathed.