Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!unc!tim 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