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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Even if I DID believe...
Message-ID: <5576@unc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-Jul-83 20:38:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5576
Posted: Sun Jul 17 20:38:30 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Jul-83 21:51:57 EDT
Lines: 108


    There is one fact that seems to be overlooked by many of the "I'm
a Christian so I'm right" people on this group.  They seem to assume
that the only reason that some of us aren't Christians is that we
don't believe in their God.  This is, at least in my case, a
misconception on their part.

    If I had undeniable proof of the existence of Yahweh, aka Jehovah,
aka Adonai, aka El Shaddai, aka Yahweh Elohim, the father of Jesus and
the ancient leader of the Semitic peoples, I still would not worship
the bastard.  If an angel appeared to me and removed my appendectomy
scar so I could never deny its reality, I still would not be a
Christian.  My primary reason for not being a Christian or Jew has
nothing to do with my lack of belief in their god.  My primary reason
is that the Bible is a disgusting book describing the behavior of a
god without the morality of an average high school student.

    As Bob Langdon admits, that God does what he wants, when he wants,
without even an attempt at self-justification, and all for what
reason?  According to Bob, all for his own greater glory.  Oh, how
charming.  For his own glory he condemns billions to eternal torment,
drowns millions of innocent beasts and thousands of children, orders
the slaughter of entire cities down to the last man, woman, and child,
creates a race that he knows is flawed and will hurt itself (so that
in their pain they can worship him better), refuses to deal with any
other god on a friendly basis, restricts the normal expression of the
sexual function, rains doom on those who dare to try to be as
knowledgable as he is, and so on.  Jesus preaching love in no way
atones for these many hideous crimes; lest we forget, it was at this
time that he created Hell.  Please don't embarass yourself by claiming
otherwise; it is at no time mentioned in the Old Testament, and the
wrathful and threatening god of the Old Testament would hardly omit
any chance to terrify his worshippers.

    The simple fact is that most of us, given omnipotence, would be
able to do a far better job.  What would you do if given omnipotence?
If your answer is anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's
something a little skewed in your perception of mankind.  There is no
question that this is the greatest evil in the world today.  The
second thing would be to abolish disease, right?  This doesn't take
"infinite mercy", just normal compassion.  God's supposedly infinite
mercy is apparently the same thing as no mercy at all.

    Suppose you were a god and there were other gods.  What would you
do?  What I would try to do is the same thing I do as a person among
other people -- try to make friends or at least truce with as many of
them as possible.  The Judeo-Christian god does rather the opposite.
Or suppose you were a god and there were no others.  What would you
do?  Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles to keep
people from delusion.  No such luck in the case of Jehovah.  He
demands absolute fidelity without any demonstration of his existence
beyond, perhaps, some manifestations of the sort that you can get
from any religion.

    What would you think of a man who saw that a deadly mission needed
to be done, that this mission would require suffering beyond endurance
and a hideous death, and decided to send his son on the mission
instead of going himself, when he was just as fit?  I doubt that you
would think very highly of him.  Enough said on this point.

    One thing in particular woud keep me from worshipping this god.
That is the fact that he desires worship.  The only reason why this
would be is that he gets something out of worship, perhaps power,
perhaps just pleasure.  In the former case, it would be totally
unjustifiable for me to increase the power of this hugely arrogant and
malefic being.  In the latter, well, I don't LIKE this deity, and I
don't think it deserves such a reward for its heinous career.

    I can see the responses to this now.  "You can't judge God by the
same standards as man." In that case, why is it that I keep getting
told that God is good?  Are there two meanings of the word "good", one
of which forbids murder, deliberate starvation, infecting people with
disease, and so on, and another which allows these things?  I suggest
that there is already a word for the second meaning.  That word is
"evil".  If you think that it's OK to worship an evil god, that's your
business, but you can't expect me to do the same.

    "Everything God does is really good, even though we can't always
see that it is." Well, you'd have to do an awful lot of good to
counterbalance the perpetual starvation of the human race.  Maybe we
Americans have it so good that we can't see this, but most of the
people in the world are starving.  Children are dying by the
truckload, not for any sin, but just because there isn't enough food
for them.  If you could see these children, and you had food, you
would give food to them.  (Either that, or you are an unfeeling
monster.) Not so with the god you worship.  He sees their bellies
bloat, sees them run out of nutrients and rot alive, sees their brains
dying, and doesn't do a single thing, despite the fact that he has an
unlimited supply of food to give.  Another example of his mercy.

    "Don't ask such questions." People who say this are cowering
slaves, beneath my notice.  They would as soon serve the devil as god
in their blindness and faith.  No amount of evidence could convince
them that the devil was bad; their basic assumption is that they are
correct, so they are untouchable by any rationality.

    I do not believe in the reality of Jehovah, except as a
psychological phenomenon, but if I did believe I would not worship
that horror.  It could send me to the Hell it's made for those it
dislikes, and I would walk in proudly, knowing that I was no slave to
be broken down by force.

______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney

duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill