Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sorry, No Tattoos for You

When checking out a recently discovered blog (Across the Great Divide), I came across a link to a story on another site called the Friendly Atheist, which offered up this image:

Man showing his right arm, tattoed in blackletter Thou shalt not lie with a male as one does with a woman. It is an abomination. Leviticus 18.22
The man pictured is a friend of another man who brutally attacked an openly gay man. The friend was interviewed on TV and displayed his tattoo for the reporter.

Here's what the Friendly Atheist had to say about the tattoo:

It’s a tattoo reading “[Thou] shall not lie with a male as one does with a woman. It is an abomination. Leviticus 18:22″. Who else sees the problem here?

Leviticus also forbids tattooing. In the very next chapter.

“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:28″

...On a more serious note, I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the inconsistency involved when people cherry-pick passages of scripture.
Reading through the comments, I came upon this wonderful phrase from a commenter named martymankins: "Irony is best served on a plate of exclusion from reality."

The Friendly Atheist, by the way, is a site whose authors hope "to bring people of conflicting views together in positive dialogue by helping them to not take themselves too seriously."

1 comment:

Ms Sparrow said...

Leviticus is full of silly laws that no one believes in anymore.
The chapter has instructions on diagnosing and casting out lepers, but nothing about those carrying TB. Yet, TB is quite infectious and deadly while leprosy is one of the least contagious of all communicable diseases. Now, it seems that God would have known that but people were so grossed out at leprosy that it seemed more important to them.