Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxn.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxn!pez From: pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) Newsgroups: net.origins,net.religion,net.religion.christian Subject: The true God lives in the real world Message-ID: <304@pyuxn.UUCP> Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 20:58:11 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxn.304 Posted: Thu Aug 15 20:58:11 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 06:24:14 EDT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway, N.J. Lines: 111 Xref: watmath net.origins:2122 net.religion:7411 net.religion.christian:1082 There are alot of people on this net who talk alot about God. Then there are alot of people who yell at them and tell them that they're making a bunch of ``wifhful thinking'' assumptions, which prompts them to yell back and say that they're not, and so on, and so on. What people like Mr. Hubeynz and Mr. Rosen and their colleagues fail to realize is that the predominating evidence shows that there most certainly is a God. What people like Mr. Boscovich and Mr. Wingate and their colleagues fail to realize is that the evidence indicates that this God is an asshole. Allow me to explain. Let's think about the origin of the universe and where God fits in. If you think of God as the creator of the universe in some space-timeframe outside our own, then you're left with the open question of who created God and His space-timeframe, and so on, and so on. So the best we can do is have God created along with the whole universe. Thus His claim to the title ``creator of the universe'' is most likely a sham. Think about it. In fact, the claim that He created anything at all is a sham. Heavenly bodies, life, mankind, all evolved out of the natural forces of the universe. But what are the great things that God has taken credit for since this creation? Throwing people out of the Garden of Eden and hiding it forever from mankind. A great flood that destroyed virtually all life on Earth. The violent destruction of two cities. The murder of every firstborn Egyptian son. The obliteration of the native inhabitants of Caanan. In other words, all destructive forces. This God is not a creator in any sense of the word. Instead, He is a destroyer, a damager who rips through the world of nature to wreak His havoc of destruction. Think about this for a minute. Scientists do a fairly good job of explaining the scientific laws that govern our universe, but when it comes to certain deteriorating destructive forces, they just throw up their hands and say, ``Well, that's ENTROPY.'' Well, what is this entropy if not the will of an evil Damager-God vindictively engaging in destruction at every turn? Ever hear the maxim ``It's so much easier to destroy something than to construct something?'' Ever wonder why that was? In a world of supposedly equal and unbiased physical forces, why is destruction so much easier than creation? Scientists will say ``that's entropy,'' but isn't that just begging the question by giving the phenomenon a name? I see this as unequivocal evidence of the existence of an evil Damager-God. I see this as especially applicable to our lives as human beings. This Damager-God sees us as playthings to toy with and mutilate for pleasure. Take a look at the way wars wind up being fought for the stupidest of reasons. It's as if someone deliberately made some stupid destructive mistake just to provoke a war, despite the best efforts of human beings to avoid it. Take a look at our own daily lives. No matter how much we prepare or take precautions against something, it (or something else we ``forgot'') occurs. I put the word forgot in quotes with good reason. Ever prepare really hard for an event, laying out everything to be done, only to forget something anyway? How could that happen? Could it be that the Damager-God damaged your mind to make you forget, just to cause you trouble and provide Him with a good laugh? When I first read Tim Maroney's ``Even If I Believed in Your God'' essay a few years ago, I recognized some really good points there. Since that time, I've come to recognize a lot more. His writing exposed the nature of the Biblical God by dissecting the Bible itself. What I realized later was that Tim had reached the wrong conclusion. Tim thought ``This picture of God is so full of contradiction and lies that it cannot be true.'' I thought ``This picture of God is so full of contradiction and lies that it could only be the product of a God as evil as the one it depicts.'' Look at how the Damager-God teaches you with His books that all He does is good. In infesting your minds with the desire to believe in a good, loving father figure, He offers you Himself as that image. When you see his destructiveness and damaging and still believe and pray to Him, He gets the last laugh again. He has you in the most bent over position you could possibly dream up. You want Him to be your loving father. You still believe that He is even when He unleashes His destructiveness. And what's more, you accept that destructiveness as ``good'' just because He was the one who did it. He's trapped you, to use Rich Rosen's language, in your own wishful thinking. Like Pavlov training his dog through intermittent reinforcement, he answers the prayers of some of his followers, just enough to keep the rest of them praying, tongues hanging out, tails wagging. He's trained you to want to believe in Him as the loving father, and He uses that against you to keep you believing. What does all this mean? It means that life is basically a war with God. God kills us all in the end. (``Entropy'' causes our bodies to wither away and die.) But He has His share of fun stringing out our lives, toying with us, delighting in our suffering, and then claiming ``That's not me, that's the evil Satan.'' (Actually they're one and the same.) Which gets the faithful back to their assigned task of praying and paying homage to Him, and associating any possible reprieve of pleasure that may present itself in this life with that evil Satan. To top it all off, He gives you the illusion of self and free will to make you feel responsible for all that He does to you. What more perfect system of tyranny could possibly be envisioned? I wonder why I capitalize words like God and He and His when referring to this monster. Just a bad habit, I guess. I wish there were letters smaller than lower case with which to begin His name. Unfortunately, my ``religion'' as it were (call it ``maltheism'' if you like) offers little hope, little advice as to what we can do in the face of a hideous evil monster Damager-God. He has even built into us a revulsion to suicide that prevents us from taking our own lives, ending our misery and His opportunities to abuse us. The best we can hope to do is fight Him at every turn, gain some happiness against His will, grapple with Him for it every chance we get, and spit in His face as we do it. Perhaps someday science will discover a way to shred the fabric of space-time and destroy His entropic evil. But who can we pray to in hopes that they will? -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez