Showing posts with label deformation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deformation. Show all posts

Of Trees and Men

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Warning! Read this first! What you are about to see is not an internet prank or a hoax, but is very, very real and VERY, VERY disturbing! Prepare yourself!

In 34 years of life, I don't know that I've seen anything that actually outclasses this in terms of producing horribly unsettling feelings. Worse than blood, guts, or violence from a Hollywood horror flick, and worse than anything that's been shown as an alien virus from outer space invading a human body is Dede's (a.k.a. "Tree man's") condition. This poor man suffers from the typical HPV virus that so many of us get and have without even knowing it. But unlike our bodies, Dede’s body doesn’t have the genetic requirements to fight it off. The result is his freakish appearance as the virus hijacks his cells.

This guy was an Indonesian fisherman whose wife left him because of this condition. He lost his job and even sold himself as a circus freak for a while, but the ridicule became too much. And that's not all; the guy can't work, bathe, take care of his teenage daughters, or do anything without the support and assistance of his family.

He's been begging for help – any help – and when the doctors in his homeland could do nothing, he was out of luck. Then, finally, help came in the form of a skin doctor from the U.S. who volunteered to help him. But still, there are no guarantees. He will never have a normal body, even with the help of modern science, though he might be able to use his hands again.

My question is, what can those who believe in a divine Creator possibly say to this? What was God thinking when he created this man? Where was Jesus and his grace? What would this man have done had he been born in a time before modern medicine? How could he have had any quality of life at all, much less a prognosis for improvement?

It's seeing things like this that never fails to reaffirm my atheist convictions. If seeing children dying from cancer is not enough, if seeing gross bone deformities and massive, out-of-control tumors isn’t enough, just getting a gander at this poor guy is a one-way-ticket to heathen-ville U.S.A. Nope, it's safe to say that no compassionate deity would have allowed such a terrible thing. Our bodies would not be so poorly designed that cells go crazy like this had we been created by a heavenly tailor.

But I wonder what kind of quibbling our Christian readers will offer us when they see this? What excuses for the Almighty will they give us for this genetic monstrosity? And the really sad part is, Christians believe that if this man chose to kill himself to get out of a life of misery and ridicule, he would go straight to hell, having his own blood on his hands. So he’d suffer not only in this life, but in the one to come. I really am glad I'm an atheist!



(JH)