Nipped In The Bud
Why do men have nipples? I know it's not a new question, but it came to mind again recently due to an itch - on my left nipple to be precise (and on which the itch was quickly dispatched by a bit of judicious rubbing, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know).
According to the book of Yahwey, the first human was made out of soil (or the slime of the earth - depending on which translation you read). I will refer to that human as Human A. Yahwey then created a place with a lot of trees in it, put Human A there to look after it, and issued a fairly rudimentary job description in the form of a list of dos and don'ts.
After he'd done that, it occurred to Yahwey that Human A could do with some company, so (instead of making another Human) he made a bunch of animals and birds, and for some reason known only to him, got Human A to come up with names for them all. Quite a task - must have taken a while. If I'd been Human A I might well have been tempted to say, "leave it out, guv'nor. That wasn't in the job description!"
Next, it dawned on Yahwey that none of the numerous lifeforms he'd created was a suitable partner for Human A (a bit slow on the uptake, for a god, you might think). Not having thought of it before, he immediately addressed the issue via the first instance of cloning, thankfully while Human A was under anaesthesia. He clearly hadn't thought about a human partner for Human A up until this point, so one wonders why he made Human A with redundant features in the first place (nipples), and in addition to that, a reproductive system which makes no sense whatsoever without a counterpart in at least one other human body?
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Some people, who assert the book of Yahwey is absolutely spot on in every detail, would mumble something about Yahwey working in mysterious ways, and ask who we are, as poor sinners, to think we could ever comprehend Yahwey's master plan. Actually, they'd probably shout rather than mumble, and conclude by saying that anyone who even thinks about the possibility of questioning anything in the book of Yahwey will face dire consequences - "You just wait and see! (So nerr, nerr, na-nerr nerr!)"
Others, who also place great value on the book of Yahwey, but could be described as reasonably intelligent, roll their eyes and say, "It's a metaphor, dummy!"
Oh, right! How silly of me! A metaphor! Like the story of Yahwey interfering with a young woman to create a human version of himself who gets himself into serious trouble with the authorities, so much so that they torture him to death, but, because he's a part of Yahwey, comes back to life after a day or so is a metaphor?
Well, no, they say. That's not a metaphor. That really happened! Which leaves me distinctly puzzled. How do we know that the former story is a metaphor but the latter is not? What criteria do we use to decide what's metaphor and what's not? Is it a chronological thing? Everything up to a certain point is metaphor and every thing after is for real? Is it that the 'old' bit of the book of Yahwey is metaphor but the 'new' bit is not? It's probably just as well I'm not asking these questions 500 years ago, at which time nothing in the book of Yahwey was a metaphor, and suggesting it might be was a sure fire way of getting yourself burnt alive.
It seems to me that this metaphor business is just another variant of the propensity, amongst those who laud the book of Yahwey, to cherry pick from its pages; something which appears to be the default behaviour these days. Is there nobody, today, who is prepared to display the courage of a certain Thomas (no, not the doubting one) who took a razor blade to the pages of the book of Yahwey and produced a slim-line version containing only cherries, according too his taste?
Be that as it may, it still hasn't explained why I have nipples, which very occasionally itch. For an answer which seems reasonably well thought out, with some evidence to back it up, you could always look here.
Disclaimer: Those nipples are not mine!
