I remember being a young Jew and being taught about Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, especially the events that led up to that. According to the story, God killed the first born male of all the Egyptian families. Being the first born and male - this was a sensitive issue for me. From my perspective they were saying that God would kill me if I had the wrong parents. I took a look at my parents and thought - Holy Fuck! - I'm in trouble!

The Jews had to mark their houses by killing a goat or a lamb and smearing the blood around the door so that when God came to kill children, he didn't accidentally kill the wrong ones. God is all powerful - but he's easily confused and needs to have things marked so that he doesn't make a mistake. And - God had to be appeased with animal sacrifices or he's going to come kill your children.

Now - if I told you there was this guy in the neighborhood who was going around slaughtering first born males of everyone who didn't have goats blood smeared around their door, we'd lock that guy up and make him the poster boy for the death penalty. But this is God we're talking about here who's the insane criminal. God - the all powerful creator of the universe - who knows everything - and loves us all - is also a mass murderer of children. Even at the age of 5 I wasn't buying it and I was living in a world where the adults were stupid scary people who were trying to force me to believe things that made absolutely no sense at all. Fortunately for me though I had parents who had their own lives screwed up so much that they didn't have it together enough to force this nonsense on me the way most kids were forced. And being a Jew wasn't nearly as insane as what the Catholic kids in the neighborhood went through. I'm afraid of how I might have turned out if I actually bought any of this nonsense. But every day parents are abusing children by filling their heads with this sort of religious nonsense.