Defending the Almighty
"God is not a bad God, Joe. You cannot prove God doesn't have reasons for human suffering."
If you guessed this little segment is an excerpt from another tireless attempt on the part of a Christian to try and explain to me the evils of my atheistic ways, you guessed right. There is nothing unusual about this, of course, but it always brings to mind how believers can be so anxious to defend the will and honor of the creator of the universe.
The God of the Bible was never created, nor can he be destroyed, we are told. He exists, defining all concepts that govern existence, as the first and only cause of the universe. He sits, enthroned in glories unspeakable, with complete control over his creation. Nothing happens without his knowledge or consent of it. He has the power to hold the Pleiades Cluster in his right hand, along with the seven seas. He can be at one end of the universe, inside a quasar at any one moment in time, and right smack dab in Peoria, Illinois at the very same time. He can create or destroy in a mere thought. He is the traditional god idea of the Christians and of the world's great religions, yet he needs to be defended by lowly creatures, flesh bags like you and I: small, weak, slow-moving, lacking in intellect, short-lived, and often contemptibly unwise. Man is confined to one small planet on the outer fringes of the Milky Way. He is woefully ignorant of the mechanics of how the universe works. On top of all that, man is easily manipulated and led astray, prone to delusions and insanity, irrationality and self-destructive behavior, and yet man is the being who is called upon to defend this deity's existence! Since when should pauper peasants be responsible for representing the honor of the King? The absurdity compels me to scream!
If you guessed this little segment is an excerpt from another tireless attempt on the part of a Christian to try and explain to me the evils of my atheistic ways, you guessed right. There is nothing unusual about this, of course, but it always brings to mind how believers can be so anxious to defend the will and honor of the creator of the universe.
The God of the Bible was never created, nor can he be destroyed, we are told. He exists, defining all concepts that govern existence, as the first and only cause of the universe. He sits, enthroned in glories unspeakable, with complete control over his creation. Nothing happens without his knowledge or consent of it. He has the power to hold the Pleiades Cluster in his right hand, along with the seven seas. He can be at one end of the universe, inside a quasar at any one moment in time, and right smack dab in Peoria, Illinois at the very same time. He can create or destroy in a mere thought. He is the traditional god idea of the Christians and of the world's great religions, yet he needs to be defended by lowly creatures, flesh bags like you and I: small, weak, slow-moving, lacking in intellect, short-lived, and often contemptibly unwise. Man is confined to one small planet on the outer fringes of the Milky Way. He is woefully ignorant of the mechanics of how the universe works. On top of all that, man is easily manipulated and led astray, prone to delusions and insanity, irrationality and self-destructive behavior, and yet man is the being who is called upon to defend this deity's existence! Since when should pauper peasants be responsible for representing the honor of the King? The absurdity compels me to scream!
So you have meatbags, trying to convince other meatbags that an invisible man exists, and that this invisible man is the better one than any of the other invisible men of other religions and cultures. A Muslim, using reason, could come along and convince a newly converted believe in the Christian God that the Muslim God was the real one, and this would mean that the belief in the Christian God was never a sure thing to begin with. Conversions are made every which way into every faith and denomination, but none of them have certainty, just plenty of zeal and self-deceit that they each are right and the others wrong.
Meanwhile, the Creator of the universe is sitting up on high, watching as floods and mudslides destroy homes and take lives. Strands of the flu virus mutate and spread, becoming more dangerous than before. Terrorists plant bombs on school buses full of children. Bodies are mangled into lifeless heaps of pummeled protoplasm in auto accidents, and for what? The theists will tell us why - because God has decided that we need work to do, cleaning up all the mess He made or allowed to happen. He could, quicker than a nanosecond, bring an end to evil everywhere and vanquish every doubt as to his existence. He is, after all, omnipotent. It would cost him nothing to rectify the world's wrongs, but like a lazy son who makes his crippled father do his work for him, the God of the Bible throws this responsibility in our laps, knowing that among the children of men that he created, there are those wayfaring souls who will boldly and eloquently defend him and make him look as good and as noble as a President or King.
(JH)
Meanwhile, the Creator of the universe is sitting up on high, watching as floods and mudslides destroy homes and take lives. Strands of the flu virus mutate and spread, becoming more dangerous than before. Terrorists plant bombs on school buses full of children. Bodies are mangled into lifeless heaps of pummeled protoplasm in auto accidents, and for what? The theists will tell us why - because God has decided that we need work to do, cleaning up all the mess He made or allowed to happen. He could, quicker than a nanosecond, bring an end to evil everywhere and vanquish every doubt as to his existence. He is, after all, omnipotent. It would cost him nothing to rectify the world's wrongs, but like a lazy son who makes his crippled father do his work for him, the God of the Bible throws this responsibility in our laps, knowing that among the children of men that he created, there are those wayfaring souls who will boldly and eloquently defend him and make him look as good and as noble as a President or King.
(JH)