tim@unc.UUCP (07/18/83)
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 Hilljohnr@tekmdp.UUCP (John Rutis) (08/06/83)
I just have to answer this article by Tim Maroney:
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.
Are we reading the same book?!! I find in my Bible that Yahweh IS Jesus; read
the first chapter of John. Christ revealed the Father, who was unknown until
then.
I find a God of infinite compassion and mercy in both the Old and New
Testaments. You have to understand God's reason for man's existence and God's
plan for man before you can understand why God has done some of the things He
has.
God's created man as the first step in reproducing Himself! That's what I said,
we are to become God as God is God! In order to become God's very Sons, we
must develop righteous Godly character. Character is something God CANNOT
creat by divine fiat; it must be developed with the willing participation of
the one developing it. The vast majority of the human race will eventually
become the Sons of God; only a few will reject eternal life in God's family.
God gave Adam and Eve a choice: eat of the tree of life and receive God's
Spirit, eternal life, and rulership of all subsequent Sons of God, or eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and receive the rewards of sin.
(The tree of the knowledge of good and evil does not represent the knowing of
what real good and evil are, God taught them that; it represents taking upon
themselves the deciding of what is good and evil, which is a prerogative of
God. God tells us what is good and what is evil, our only choice is whether or
not to obey.) You know what happened. As soon as God was out of sight, Satan
stepped in and Adam and Eve rejected what God told them and followed Satan.
Read on to find out why God allowed Satan to step in. God had made Satan ruler
of the Earth before iniquity was found in him. Even though Satan disqualified
himself as ruler of the Earth by attempting to overthrow God, God did not
remove him from his throne because no one was yet qualified to rule in his
place (Satan was the greatest being God had ever created).
Adam (with his wife Eve as his partner) was given the opportunity to replace
Satan as ruler of the Earth. They blew it. Therefore, another had to be found
to replace Satan. That was Christ, the one who was the Word, the Spokesman,
before he emptied Himself to become a man. Christ has still not taken Satan's
throne, but He will soon. All those who are called to do God's work must (with
God's help of course) overcome Satan. For this they will be made rulers with
Christ for all eternity. (With God, the greater the ruler the greater the
service, the Father is the greatest Servant in the universe.) All those down
through history who were never called and so had no chance to know God's plan
will be resurrected in the great general resurrection. They will be taught
God's truth without Satan to influence them. They will have 100 years to build
character and accept or reject membership in God's family. Those who reject it
will be burned up in the lake of fire; they will NOT exist in suffering and
misery for all eternity. (I have hardly scratched the surface of this subject,
but I don't want to write a book. Every one of your statements in this article
would take a book to answer fully.)
Please think carefully about the implications of creating beings that are to
develop Godly character.
They must have free moral agency; be able to do anything, right or wrong. If
they did not have free moral agency, they would be robots; not able to do what
they want. There are only two ways God can make a world with no suffering,
pain, sorrow, etc. 1) Force everyone to conform to the right way, whether they
like it or not, and 2) Develop character in people so that they will always
want to choose the right and then get rid of those who WILL NOT develop that
character. God doesn't want robots in His family, so He has chosen the second
way. We cannot always DO right because of weekness and foolishness, but we
can develop the character to always WANT to choose the right. When God
changes us from mortal physical beings to immortal spirit beings, we will then
have the POWER to do the good we could only will to do before.
Why, then, has God hidden Himself from the vast majority of mankind down
through the ages? Why has He not been zealously teaching man the way he should
go so that mans troubles will be minimized?
If you will look carefully through the Bible, you will find that man has always
hidden from God, not the other way around. The first thing Adam and Eve did
after they ate of the wrong tree was hide from God. One of the major themes of
the Bible is man's rejection of God and His way. Man says, in effect, "Bless me
from afar God, but stay out of my life!".
Because of this attitude, God has kept hands off. He is allowing man 6000
years to try every form of government possible. This to prove that man CANNOT
rule himself. Then God will rule the Earth for 1000 years to prove that
following Gods way will lead to everything man has always wanted. Man's free
moral agency will not be taken away. Satan will be taken away and men will not
be allowed to do things that will harm others. They will still be able to harm
themselves by disobedience.
The whole message of the Gospel can be summed up by saying GOD'S GOVERNMENT IS
RETURNING TO THE EARTH!
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.
Do you thing Bob has a monopoly on the knowledge of God's reasons? But
WHAT is God's glory? It is to create billions of sons, each with all the power
and glory of the Father and Christ. (But forever ruled by the Father and
Christ.)
For his own glory he condemns billions to eternal torment,
Do you think, because the benighted clerics of the middle ages created a myth
that is still believed by millions today, that God is bound to it? If your
statement above were true, I would revile such a god too. It's NOT true! Only
a handfull will ultimately reject God's way. They will be destroyed in mercy.
They will NOT burn forever in "hell-fire". The vast majority will become God's
Sons; God as God is God!
Why will God destroy even those few? Revenge? Glory? No, He will destroy
them to be mercifull to them. Because they will reject God's way, they would
be miserable and unhappy for all eternity if they were given eternal life.
They would make all those around them miserable and unhappy. Therefore, it is
a mercy to them and everyone else to destroy them. Breaking God's laws brings
automatic misery, sorrow, pain, starvation, war, etc. just as jumping off a
tall building automatically brings injury and death. God hasn't made a bunch
of difficult arbitrary laws so He can gleefully zap us when we break them. All
His laws are for our good. They are in perfect harmony, just as the physical
laws which God also created are. What would happen if you went around
continually attempting to break the physical laws?
drowns millions of innocent beasts and thousands of children,
The world had become so corrupt in Noah's time (even the animals) that it was a
great mercy to cleanse the earth. All the people (including the children) will
rise in the resurrection to a clean, peaceful, prosperous Earth and be given a
full happy life. That will be their next conscious moment.
orders
the slaughter of entire cities down to the last man, woman, and child,
Those cities also had become so corrupt that it was a great mercy to destroy
even the children. Don't forget, their next waking moment will be in a
fabulous world without corruption, disease, war, crime, and all the other evils!
creates a race that he knows is flawed and will hurt itself (so that
in their pain they can worship him better),
Adam and Eve were created perfect. They were, however, incomplete; they did
not have righteous character - that had to be developed. God gave them free
moral agency. They were neutral. They were perfectly free to choose between
God and Satan. They chose wrong. They were equally likely to have chosen
right. Would you have had God do it any other way? Should He have restricted
their ability to choose? Should He have biased them toward choosing right?
(Man doesn't worship God better through pain, that's a pagan idea, you won't
find it in the Bible.)
refuses to deal with any other god on a friendly basis,
There is no other god that God can be on a friendly basis with. Satan is the
god of this world, but he is a being God created. Satan rebelled against God,
was thrown down, and has been trying to ruin God's plan ever since. The only
other "gods" are non-living idols.
restricts the normal expression of the sexual function,
Not at all! God made sex, and proclaimed it "very good". God does restrict
sex to marriage, but that is for man's good, not to chain him for no reason.
For example, one of God's laws is: If a man marries, he is not to be
conscripted fo military service or civil labor for one year; he is to spend
that year to "cheer up" his wife. How do you think he is supposed to cheer her
up; by telling her jokes from net.jokes?
rains doom on those who dare to try to be as
knowledgable as he is, and so on.
No one can even conceive of how knowledgable God is, but He does NOT restrict
us - He encourages us to learn all we can.
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 embarrass 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.
I'm not embarrassed to proclaim that there is no everburning hell as many
"christians" picture. No such thing is mentioned in the New Testament either.
The "gehenna" fire doesn't cause eternal torment, it burns up. Those burned
in it will be dead! (Again, Christ IS the God of the Old Testament!)
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.
I hope I would be wise enough to do the same thing God is doing. The
temptation would be great to relieve the suffering. However, what if, in
relieving the temporary physical suffering, a million more potential Sons
of God had to be burned up in the lake of fire and not exist for all
eternity? God's purpose is to maximize the size of His future family while
minimizing the number who have to be destroyed, even if it requires some
temporary physical suffering, even for innocent children.
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.
There are NO other gods the equivalent of God, so the rest of the statements
are irrelevant.
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.
A continuous sequence of miracles would become commonplace and make scientific
discovery almost impossible. If you think God does not want us to make
scientific progress, you're wrong.
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.
Christ was the God of the Old Testament. The One who formed man with His own
hands. He volunteered. If the other member of the Godhead had been the one to
come, then the one who became Christ would have been the Father and you could
have said the same thing. One of them had to do it. Was it any easier for
the Father to see His beloved Son vilely butchered than for his Son to be
butchered. What loving father would not give his life for his son? I would.
The point is, neither was father or son until Christ was born. When Christ was
born, He became the Son and the other member of the Godhead became the Father.
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.
Do you know what worship is? It's NOT a bunch of ritual mumbo-jumbo. It's
simply love and respect. It does nothing for God in itself beyond what someone
elses love and respect does for you. It is good for the worshipper.
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?
I would never say that. God doesn't require of us anything He was not willing
to come down to Earth as a man and do or endure Himself!
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.
Starvation and disease and all the other evils of the world come from breaking
God's laws.
"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.
I think bringing most of mankind into His family is an awful lot of good.
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.
Children are dying by the truckload precisely BECAUSE of sin! Not their
own, of course, but someones. Can you imangine what this world would be
like if God had provided unlimited food for everyone throughout history?
I can't help all of these children myself, but I do help one, do you?
I can't express in words how the plight of these children makes me feel;
God must feel it to an infinitely greater degree. But I can thank God
that when these poor children do die, their next waking moment will be
in the resurrection in a world of peace, prosperity, and happiness, where
they will be healed of all mental and physical disease and live a full
life with no threat of war, hunger, brutality, disease or any other evil!
God's mercy will be apparent in the very near future, when Christ returns.
(Before 2000 AD, I think - probably before 1990.)
"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.
The vast majority do now serve Satan, that's why all the misery.
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.
This is exactly the attitude that has caused God to choose to keep hands off
for 6000 years. As soon as man took to himself the choosing of what is good
and what is evil, and ignored God's definition of good and evil, he told God
"keep out of my life." Soon Christ will return and FORCE man to live in peace,
prosperity, happiness, abundance. This will probably make some people furious,
but the vast majority will be very happy.
As I said, each of these answers would take a book to answer properly. I've
already spent too much time in them. That's why my answers get shorter toward
the bottom. If you are really interested, I'm willing to explain in much more
detail, give scriptural references, etc. However, I won't claim I can do it
quickly. My keyboard is overworked too, writing manuals.
One last thought: most "christians" believe little of what I've said above.
The time will soon be here when we will all find out who is right. There are
three major possibilities:
1) Man will destroy the face of the Earth and himself with it. (no God)
2) The traditional "christian" teachings are right and things will go on
as they have been, manufacturing souls to be sent to Heaven or Hell.
(no god worthy of worship)
3) My statements above are true and Christ will return soon and restore His
government. (a God worthy of worship)
I know #3 is true; we will see soon.
John Rutistim@unc.UUCP (08/09/83)
This is a response to John Rutis's lengthy criticism of my recent
article entitled "Even If I DID Believe...", detailing my moral
objections to Judaism and Christianity. John betrayed a rather
extreme lack of knowledge of the Bible. I will use Bible quotes to
show this. One disclaimer: The thesis of my earlier article was that
even if a God as described in the Bible did exist, he was not fit for
worship due to his low moral standards. Consequently, I speak
throughout as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not.
Another disclaimer: I have used John's text unmodified; consequently,
any misspellings and such in his stuff are his.
Are we reading the same book?!! I find in my
Bible that Yahweh IS Jesus; read the first chapter of
John. Christ revealed the Father, who was unknown
until then.
Apparently not. The book I'm reading is called the Bible -- I
don't know which one you are using. For instance, check out Matthew
2:15 -- "... This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the
prophet: 'I called my son out of Egypt'." (This is of course in
reference to the flight of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph into Egypt.) Yahweh
said that to Hosea in Hosea 11:1. If Yahweh and Jesus are the same,
then the prophecy was not fulfilled and Matthew is in error. If Jesus
is the son of Yahweh, then Matthew is correct. Your Bible does
include Matthew, doesn't it?
A similar point holds with reference to Matthew 12:18, in which
the prophecy of Isaiah (in Is. 42:1-4) is said to be fulfilled in
Jesus. "Here is my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, the
favorite of my soul. I will endow him with my spirit, and he will
proclaim the true faith to the nations." Again, Jesus is fulfilling a
statement of Yahweh in which Yahweh speaks in the third person. This
means that either they are not the same, or Matthew is wrong.
I find a God of infinite compassion and mercy in
both the Old and New Testaments.
Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is a classic example of
wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of Yahweh. A sample
of this delightful tale: "They waged the campaign against Midian, as
Yahweh had ordered Moses, and they put every male to death.... The
sons of Israel took the Midianite women captive with their young
children, and plundered all their cattle, all their flocks and all
their goods. They set fire to the towns where they lived and all
their encampments.... Moses was enraged with the commanders of the
army ... who had come back from this military expedition. He said,
'Why have you spared the life of all the women? ... So kill all the
male children. Kill also all the women who have slept with a man.
Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man,
and take them for yourselves.'" Yes, friends, this is infinite mercy
and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got
upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the
young girls to be kept to rape later.
I could go on for quite a while in this vein. I don't think the
firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with your
verdict of compassion and mercy (Ex. 11:5,12:29). Then there are the
charming instructions about women taken in war, from Deut. 21:10-14.
And there is Deuteronomy 28:20-46, a long stream of invectives and
curses straight from the prophet's mouth, all about the nasty things
Yahweh will do if you upset him a tad. The entire book of Joshua
is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes
for space reasons -- I urge you to look them up for yourself.
You have to understand God's reason for man's
existence and God's plan for man before you can
understand why God has done some of the things He has.
God's created man as the first step in reproducing
Himself! That's what I said, we are to become God as
God is God! In order to become God's very Sons, we
must develop righteous Godly character. Character is
something God CANNOT creat by divine fiat; it must be
developed with the willing participation of the one
developing it. The vast majority of the human race
will eventually become the Sons of God; only a few
will reject eternal life in God's family.
First, you have contradicted the omnipotence of God, which I doubt
you meant to do. Second, this entire paragraph is fabrication. It is
not supported by the Bible. It is not ruled out by the Bible, but
where do you get off stating it as definite fact? There are any
number of other models possible.
God gave Adam and Eve a choice: eat of the tree of
life and receive God's Spirit, eternal life, and
rulership of all subsequent Sons of God, or eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil and receive the
rewards of sin.
Well, I don't see anything about such a choice in Genesis.
According to Gen. 2:16-17, "Then Yahweh God gave the man this
admonition, 'You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden.
Nevertheless of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you are not to
eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.'" No
choice there, just a taboo. The tree of life is not mentioned until
Gen. 3:22, "Then Yahweh God said, 'See, the man has become like one of
us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to
stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat
some and live for ever.'" This flatly contradicts your version -- no
choice was proffered. In addition, note that eating of the tree of
KoGaE made us like Yahweh, and he was most upset -- yet more
contradiction of your model.
(The tree of the knowledge of good and evil does not
represent the knowing of what real good and evil are,
God taught them that; it represents taking upon
themselves the deciding of what is good and evil,
which is a prerogative of God. God tells us what is
good and what is evil, our only choice is whether or
not to obey.) You know what happened. As soon as God
was out of sight, Satan stepped in and Adam and Eve
rejected what God told them and followed Satan.
This is also flatly contradicted by Genesis. It says "the
serpent". It does not say "The serpent acting under Satanic
influence". The fact that this really means a serpent and not Satan
is proven in Gen. 3:14-15, in which the race of serpents is held
accountable for the action. Hardly reasonable if the serpent is
possessed by Satan. Also, see Gen. 3:1, in which it says that "The
serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had
made. It asked the woman..." Either you or Genesis is wrong.
Read on to find out why God allowed Satan to step in.
God had made Satan ruler of the Earth before iniquity
was found in him. Even though Satan disqualified
himself as ruler of the Earth by attempting to
overthrow God, God did not remove him from his throne
because no one was yet qualified to rule in his place
(Satan was the greatest being God had ever created).
Well, I read on and didn't see even a single statement supporting
your assertion here. Nothing about Satan, nothing about rulers of the
world, nothing of the sort at all. Either you made it up or your
Bible is very different from mine.
Adam (with his wife Eve as his partner) was given
the opportunity to replace Satan as ruler of the
Earth. They blew it. Therefore, another had to be
found to replace Satan. That was Christ, the one who
was the Word, the Spokesman, before he emptied Himself
to become a man. Christ has still not taken Satan's
throne, but He will soon. All those who are called to
do God's work must (with God's help of course)
overcome Satan. For this they will be made rulers
with Christ for all eternity. (With God, the greater
the ruler the greater the service, the Father is the
greatest Servant in the universe.)
We will become rulers? Rulers of whom, if only rulers remain?
Animals? We already rule them. What ARE you talking about here? In
addition, if I had a servant who smote me with plagues for failing to
worship him, there'd be one more ad in the "Help Wanted" column the
next day...
All those down through history who were never called
and so had no chance to know God's plan will be
resurrected in the great general resurrection. They
will be taught God's truth without Satan to influence
them. They will have 100 years to build character and
accept or reject membership in God's family. Those
who reject it will be burned up in the lake of fire;
they will NOT exist in suffering and misery for all
eternity.
A nice story. I find it interesting that Jesus never bothered to
tell us any of it. In fact, he flatly contradicts your statement that
there is no eternal damnation, but I'll get to that later.
Please think carefully about the implications of
creating beings that are to develop Godly character.
They must have free moral agency; be able to do
anything, right or wrong. If they did not have free
moral agency, they would be robots; not able to do
what they want. There are only two ways God can make
a world with no suffering, pain, sorrow, etc. 1)
Force everyone to conform to the right way, whether
they like it or not, and 2) Develop character in
people so that they will always want to choose the
right and then get rid of those who WILL NOT develop
that character. God doesn't want robots in His family
[ seems rather prejudiced -- tim ], so He has chosen
the second way. We cannot always DO right because of
weekness and foolishness, but we can develop the
character to always WANT to choose the right.
Whoa there. Your "because" does not seem at all explanatory.
That's like saying that something is red because it stimulates the red
receptors in our eyes. Weakness and foolishness are the turning away,
not the cause.
When God changes us from mortal physical beings to
immortal spirit beings, we will then have the POWER to
do the good we could only will to do before.
Which is what? Do you mean create our own race of flawed beings
to torture? Whee!
Why, then, has God hidden Himself from the vast
majority of mankind down through the ages? Why has He
not been zealously teaching man the way he should go
so that mans troubles will be minimized?
If you will look carefully through the Bible, you
will find that man has always hidden from God, not the
other way around. The first thing Adam and Eve did
after they ate of the wrong tree was hide from God.
One of the major themes of the Bible is man's
rejection of God and His way. Man says, in effect,
"Bless me from afar God, but stay out of my life!".
Funny, I've never said that. However, you are not answering the
question. Why does God hide? Don't say he doesn't -- if I have to
swear my soul to a being before I can see him, that being is hiding.
Because of this attitude, God has kept hands off.
He is allowing man 6000 years to try every form of
government possible. This to prove that man CANNOT
rule himself. Then God will rule the Earth for 1000
years to prove that following Gods way will lead to
everything man has always wanted. Man's free moral
agency will not be taken away. Satan will be taken
away and men will not be allowed to do things that
will harm others. They will still be able to harm
themselves by disobedience.
Your figures are fascinating, and I think it's really great that
God told them to you, because they are not anywhere in the Bible.
Where are you getting all this stuff?
The whole message of the Gospel can be summed up
by saying GOD'S GOVERNMENT IS RETURNING TO THE EARTH!
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.
Do you thing Bob has a monopoly on the knowledge
of God's reasons? But WHAT is God's glory? It is to
create billions of sons, each with all the power and
glory of the Father and Christ. (But forever ruled by
the Father and Christ.)
Actually, Bob got it from Paul -- you know, the guy who wrote all
those letters? You are contradicting Paul, and thus putting yourself
above him. Why should I take your word over Paul's?
For his own glory he condemns
billions to eternal torment,
Do you think, because the benighted clerics of the
middle ages created a myth that is still believed by
millions today, that God is bound to it? If your
statement above were true, I would revile such a god
too. It's NOT true! Only a handfull will ultimately
reject God's way. They will be destroyed in mercy.
They will NOT burn forever in "hell-fire". The vast
majority will become God's Sons; God as God is God!
Well, get ready to start reviling then. The myth of Hell was NOT
created in the Middle Ages. It is explicitly stated in a set of books
called the Synoptic Gospels, you know, the ones by Matthew, Mark, and
Luke. Since you don't seem to be very familiar with these books,
usually considered the cornerstone of Christianity, I'll fill you in.
Matthew 18:8-9 has Jesus saying, "If your hand or your foot should
cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away: it is better for you
to enter into life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two
feet and be thrown into eternal fire." A little while later, in
18:34-35 to be exact, Jesus finishes up a parable about an unforgiving
debtor with: "And in his anger the master handed him over to the
torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my
heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your
brother from your heart." Not clean killing -- you will be handed over
to the torturers. In the parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-
14, Jesus concludes with "Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind
him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be
weeping and grinding of teeth.'" The king didn't say, "Execute him",
but bind him and throw him into a painful place. This is echoed in
Mat. 24:51, in almost the same words, and again in Mat. 25:30, again
with similar words. Finally (for Matthew), we have Mat. 25:41-46, on
the Last Judgment. "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go
away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared
for the devil and his angels... And they will go away to eternal
punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life.'"
My point is proven, so I won't bore you with the quotes from Mark
and Luke; however, check out Mark 9:43, Mark 9:48-49, Luke 13:27-28,
and Luke 16:23-26. The only gospel which does not mention eternal
punishment is John. Do you accept that one, and reject the synoptic
gospels? On what grounds?
Why will God destroy even those few? Revenge?
Glory? No, He will destroy them to be mercifull to
them. Because they will reject God's way, they would
be miserable and unhappy for all eternity if they were
given eternal life. They would make all those around
them miserable and unhappy. Therefore, it is a mercy
to them and everyone else to destroy them. Breaking
God's laws brings automatic misery, sorrow, pain,
starvation, war, etc. just as jumping off a tall
building automatically brings injury and death. God
hasn't made a bunch of difficult arbitrary laws so He
can gleefully zap us when we break them. All His laws
are for our good. They are in perfect harmony, just
as the physical laws which God also created are. What
would happen if you went around continually attempting
to break the physical laws?
drowns millions of innocent beasts
and thousands of children,
The world had become so corrupt in Noah's time
(even the animals) that it was a great mercy to
cleanse the earth. All the people (including the
children) will rise in the resurrection to a clean,
peaceful, prosperous Earth and be given a full happy
life. That will be their next conscious moment.
orders the slaughter of entire
cities down to the last man, woman,
and child,
Those cities also had become so corrupt that it
was a great mercy to destroy even the children. Don't
forget, their next waking moment will be in a fabulous
world without corruption, disease, war, crime, and all
the other evils!
They shoot horses, don't they? However, people are not animals to
be destroyed against their will in the name of mercy. If I don't
claim to be suffering, and don't ask to die, neither you nor any god
has the right to decide that you know better. If you tried to do this
to me, I would shoot you; if god tried, well, the only weapon I have
is withholding my worship.
What is particularly disturbing about this passage, though, is
that you make murder less than a crime. After all, you're just
sending the victim to a better place. The rationale applies no less
to humans than to god. Does any being have the right to send us there
against our will? The answer is obviously no. That is why murder is
considered wrong, whether the weapon was wielded by man or god. I do
not worship murderers, no matter how good their intentions.
creates a race that he knows is
flawed and will hurt itself (so that
in their pain they can worship him
better),
Adam and Eve were created perfect. They were,
however, incomplete; they did not have righteous
character - that had to be developed.
Now you're just contradicting yourself. They could be either
perfect or incomplete, not both. How can you not see this
contradiction?
God gave them free moral agency. They were neutral.
They were perfectly free to choose between God and
Satan. They chose wrong. They were equally likely to
have chosen right. Would you have had God do it any
other way? Should He have restricted their ability to
choose? Should He have biased them toward choosing
right?
No, but on the other hand there was no call to leave dangerous
toys lying around either.
(Man doesn't worship God better through pain, that's a
pagan idea, you won't find it in the Bible.)
This is contradicted by the gospels, but I'm sick of digging
through them right now. Since you contradict this yourself a little
later, I don't see the need. I'll point this out when it happens.
refuses to deal with any other god
on a friendly basis,
There is no other god that God can be on a
friendly basis with. Satan is the god of this world,
but he is a being God created. Satan rebelled against
God, was thrown down, and has been trying to ruin
God's plan ever since. The only other "gods" are
non-living idols.
This idea is a fairly modern invention, that not only is he the
best god, but the only one. Yahweh is repeatedly referred to as "our
God" in the Pentateuch, and there is no implication that he is the
only real one. Also, try Deut. 5:7-9. It is psychotic to be jealous
of nonexistent beings. The statement "You shall have no gods except
me" clearly implies that the contrary is possible.
restricts the normal expression of
the sexual function,
Not at all! God made sex, and proclaimed it "very
good". God does restrict sex to marriage, but that is
for man's good, not to chain him for no reason. For
example, one of God's laws is: If a man marries, he is
not to be conscripted fo military service or civil
labor for one year; he is to spend that year to "cheer
up" his wife. How do you think he is supposed to
cheer her up; by telling her jokes from net.jokes?
Again you beg the question; I am getting sick of this. You say
that God has his reasons and then fail to tell us any. Am I really
supposed to buy that? Changing the subject does not help you; it just
shows how weak your position is here. Let's hear it! What are the
reasons of which you speak so knowingly?
rains doom on those who dare to
try to be as knowledgable as he is,
and so on.
No one can even conceive of how knowledgable God
is, but He does NOT restrict us - He encourages us to
learn all we can.
Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory
fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people
with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their
undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do.
[ Horrors! -- tim ] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on
the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Yahweh
deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding.
Again, either you or the Bible is wrong.
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
embarrass 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.
I'm not embarrassed to proclaim that there is no
everburning hell as many "christians" picture. No
such thing is mentioned in the New Testament either.
The "gehenna" fire doesn't cause eternal torment, it
burns up. Those burned in it will be dead! (Again,
Christ IS the God of the Old Testament!)
Again you make these claims, and again you show that you have not
read the synoptic gospels. See the many quotes above that directly
contradict you.
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.
I hope I would be wise enough to do the same thing
God is doing. The temptation would be great to
relieve the suffering. However, what if, in relieving
the temporary physical suffering, a million more
potential Sons of God had to be burned up in the lake
of fire and not exist for all eternity? God's purpose
is to maximize the size of His future family while
minimizing the number who have to be destroyed, even
if it requires some temporary physical suffering, even
for innocent children.
First of all, if relieving someone's suffering is a "temptation"
to you, your moral values are EXTREMELY skewed, and you have clearly
not read Matthew 26:35, in which it is stated that the blessed feed
the hungry, and that the damned do not. Second, you contradict your
earlier statement that "Man doesn't worship God better through pain".
You say that the pain may in some unspecified fashion lead to
salvation. How many of these contradictions can you contain, anyway?
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.
There are NO other gods the equivalent of God, so
the rest of the statements are irrelevant.
Suppose that you are the absolute best at something, and that no
one else is equivalent to you at it. Does that give you license to
persecute the friends of the other beings who do the same thing? I
think not.
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.
A continuous sequence of miracles would become commonplace
and make scientific discovery almost impossible. If you think
God does not want us to make scientific progress, you're wrong.
Again, it is marvelous that you know this thing, since it is not anywhere
stated or implied in the Bible. Never does God encourage scientific progress.
At the Tower of Babel, he deliberately thwarts it. Nor do I see any reason he
should encourage it in your model.
In any case, I utterly fail to see how a continual sequence of verifiable
miracles would make scientific discovery impossible, unless God deliberately
messed up scientific observations. You can't just say things without
supporting them and expect me to agree with you.
Finally, the worshippers of other gods are damning themselves, according
to your model. Is this not a greater evil than any amount of hypothetical
scientific setback?
One thing in particular would 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.
Do you know what worship is? It's NOT a bunch of ritual
mumbo-jumbo. It's simply love and respect. It does nothing
for God in itself beyond what someone elses love and respect
does for you. It is good for the worshipper.
In that case, it gives pleasure to the god, just as I said. I have
already detailed why I don't like this god, and I refuse to give him pleasure.
By the way, if you think that Yahweh doesn't encourage ritual mumbo-jumbo, you
obviously haven't read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Why
is it that I, neither Jew nor Christian, have read these books, and you, a
Christian, has not?
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?
I would never say that. God doesn't require of us
anything He was not willing to come down to Earth as a man and
do or endure Himself!
This is scarcely a response to what I said.
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.
Starvation and disease and all the other evils of the
world come from breaking God's laws.
Now if you would only acquire a bit of that scientific knowledge you spoke
of! Starvation comes from not having enough food. Disease comes from
exposure to various nasty micro-organisms. If you can show me how these two
things come from breaking god's laws, I will be greatly surprised. Perhaps at
the root they are caused by Adam and Eve falling from grace, but you can't
hold some starving infant in Namibia responsible for the actions of two long-
dead people, any more than you can hold me responsible for the acts of Jack
the Ripper. There just isn't sufficient connection to establish guilt.
The charge about infecting us with disease is particularly strong. God
made these micro-organisms, and made us subject to them. If I made a bunch of
plague germs and set them loose, you would hold me accountable. Since
(according to Genesis) all disease comes from Yahweh, I hold him similarly
responsible. I do not recognize any moral double standard as being valid.
"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.
I think bringing most of mankind into His family is an
awful lot of good.
When I see delivery on your promise, I will agree with you. Until that
time, I think you are making it all up.
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.
Children are dying by the truckload precisely BECAUSE of
sin! Not their own, of course, but someones. Can you
imangine what this world would be like if God had provided
unlimited food for everyone throughout history?
Probably something an awful lot closer to paradise than it is now. What
are you afraid of? Mass obesity? You yourself said that we don't worship him
better through pain. And what right have you to hold someone responsible for
the sin of another?
I can't express in words how the plight of these children
makes me feel; God must feel it to an infinitely greater
degree. But I can thank God that when these poor children do
die, their next waking moment will be in the resurrection in a
world of peace, prosperity, and happiness, where they will be
healed of all mental and physical disease and live a full life
with no threat of war, hunger, brutality, disease or any other
evil!
In that case, we should kill them now, right? If not, why not? You said
it was a good thing when Yahweh did it... Try thinking through your
implications some time; you may find it a valuable experience.
God's mercy will be apparent in the very near future, when
Christ returns. (Before 2000 AD, I think - probably before
1990.)
Christians have been saying this for about two thousand years now. It is
clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly
after his death. Before the Christians, the Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet
the world still turns, and there is still no reason to think of these claims
as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses.
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.
This is exactly the attitude that has caused God to choose
to keep hands off for 6000 years. As soon as man took to
himself the choosing of what is good and what is evil, and
ignored God's definition of good and evil, he told God "keep
out of my life." Soon Christ will return and FORCE man to
live in peace, prosperity, happiness, abundance. This will
probably make some people furious, but the vast majority will
be very happy.
He will "FORCE man to live in peace"?!?! That is a prima facie
contradiction. However, let's see how your god stands up to his own
standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those
on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal
fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never
gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a
stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick
and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal
punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life."
In the light of this, your god himself is the worst of sinners; if there
is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal
punishment.
At last we reach the end of this, my longest article to date. One
chilling note before we go. John says that there are only three possibilities
at this point:
1) Man will destroy the face of the Earth and himself with it. (no
God)
2) The traditional "christian" teachings are right and things will go
on as they have been, manufacturing souls to be sent to Heaven or
Hell. (no god worthy of worship)
3) My statements above are true and Christ will return soon and
restore His government. (a God worthy of worship)
I know #3 is true; we will see soon.
I always find these pronouncements scary, whether from John Rutis or Jerry
Falwell. People say that there is no hope for mankind without god. Suppose
that they are wrong, as I believe them to be. Then these people are standing
by, gleefully watching a preventable fall, refusing to raise a finger to help.
Wonderful. Predicting the fall of man is rather self-fulfilling, and if there
is no divine safety net you will wind up with a lot worse than egg on your
faces.
In closing, I would like to repaet my statement that it is bizarre that
I have read more of the Bible than John Rutis, who is ostensibly a Christian.
How many Christians is this true of?
___________
Tim Maroney
duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillrcj1@ihuxi.UUCP (08/12/83)
A response to Tim's response to John.
Disclaimer - I am using Johns and Tim's text unmodified; consequently,
any misspellings and such in their stuff are their's.
*******************************************************************************
Are we reading the same book?!! I find in my
Bible that Yahweh IS Jesus; read the first chapter of
John. Christ revealed the Father, who was unknown
until then.
Apparently not. The book I'm reading is called the Bible -- I
don't know which one you are using. For instance, check out Matthew
2:15 -- "... This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the
prophet: 'I called my son out of Egypt'." (This is of course in
reference to the flight of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph into Egypt.) Yahweh
said that to Hosea in Hosea 11:1. If Yahweh and Jesus are the same,
then the prophecy was not fulfilled and Matthew is in error. If Jesus
is the son of Yahweh, then Matthew is correct. Your Bible does
include Matthew, doesn't it?
*****************************************************************************
I tend to agree with John on this, that is John 12:44,45 And Jesus cried out
and said, "He who believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me.
And he who sees me sees him who sent me. Also John 8:19 They said to him
therefore, "Where is your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither me nor
my Father; if you know me you would know my Father also. John 10:30 I and the
Father are *ONE* (emphasis mine). Especially read I Tim 3:16 and then you tell
me your interpretation.
(Hosea 13:4 I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God
but me, and besides me there is no saviour.
Ex 4.22 ..thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son...
Mt 1:21 ...and you shall call his name Jesus, for he wil save his people
from their sins...)
**************************************************************************
All those down through history who were never called
and so had no chance to know God's plan will be
resurrected in the great general resurrection. They
will be taught God's truth without Satan to influence
them. They will have 100 years to build character and
accept or reject membership in God's family. Those
who reject it will be burned up in the lake of fire;
they will NOT exist in suffering and misery for all
eternity.
A nice story. I find it interesting that Jesus never bothered to
tell us any of it. In fact, he flatly contradicts your statement that
there is no eternal damnation, but I'll get to that later.
**************************************************************************
Here I agree with Tim. Scripture says it all, Mt 18:8,9, Rev. 20.
****************************************************************************
When God changes us from mortal physical beings to
immortal spirit beings, we will then have the POWER to
do the good we could only will to do before.
Which is what? Do you mean create our own race of flawed beings
to torture? Whee!
****************************************************************************
I believe what John is getting at here is what took place in the upper room
at the Feast of Pentecost. See the book of Acts, chapters 1-3. The apostles
at times were unsure of themselves, made mistakes, had doubts etc, etc.
However, Jesus assured them that after he leaves, the comforter will come,
in the form of the Holy Ghost. Along with the Holy Ghost came the gifts
of the Holy Ghost to some of them.
Also see Ezek 36:26 for his prophesy of this phenomena.
***************************************************************************
Because of this attitude, God has kept hands off.
He is allowing man 6000 years to try every form of
government possible. This to prove that man CANNOT
rule himself. Then God will rule the Earth for 1000
years to prove that following Gods way will lead to
everything man has always wanted. Man's free moral
agency will not be taken away. Satan will be taken
away and men will not be allowed to do things that
will harm others. They will still be able to harm
themselves by disobedience.
Your figures are fascinating, and I think it's really great that
God told them to you, because they are not anywhere in the Bible.
Where are you getting all this stuff?
***************************************************************************
Here I agree with John. Tim, its called the millenium period. See Rev 20:5,6
(This is a good subject and I may comment on it in the future.)
******************************************************************************
rains doom on those who dare to
try to be as knowledgable as he is,
and so on.
No one can even conceive of how knowledgable God
is, but He does NOT restrict us - He encourages us to
learn all we can.
Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory
fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people
with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their
undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do.
[ Horrors! -- tim ] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on
the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Yahweh
deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding.
Again, either you or the Bible is wrong.
****************************************************************************
As a child I was taught that the Tower of Babel was someones attempt
to enter heaven the easy way. Could this have been Nimrods idea? Or was
it that he being ....the first on earth to be a mighty man Gen 10:x
saw compitition in God and wanted to raise himself to His (Gods) level?
Or that Nimrod did not believe that God would not flood the earth again
as He did earlier, so he wanted to build something high enough to
escape the flood waters....
What ever Nimrods reason for the Tower, it was against the will of God.
(So Nimrod went on to Assyria, and we all know about Nin'eveh.)
*******************************************************************************
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
embarrass 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.
I'm not embarrassed to proclaim that there is no
everburning hell as many "christians" picture. No
such thing is mentioned in the New Testament either.
The "gehenna" fire doesn't cause eternal torment, it
burns up. Those burned in it will be dead! (Again,
Christ IS the God of the Old Testament!)
Again you make these claims, and again you show that you have not
read the synoptic gospels. See the many quotes above that directly
contradict you.
**************************************************************************
Sure Hell is not mentioned in the O.T. but something that represents
a place of damnation sure is! Deut 32:22 For a fire is kindled by my anger,
and it burns to the depths of Sheol,...
Isaiah 14:15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit..
Ezekial also prophesies about Sheol, and the Pit!!!!
Could this be the same "pit" mentioned in Revelations???
*****************************************************************************
Again, it is marvelous that you know this thing, since it is not anywhere
stated or implied in the Bible. Never does God encourage scientific progress.
At the Tower of Babel, he deliberately thwarts it. Nor do I see any reason he
should encourage it in your model.
*****************************************************************************
Why do you consider the Tower of Babel scientific progress? They already
had the building materials. So it was not as if they were inventing
as they went along. If they constructed a mile-high tower it still
would have only been a mile-high tower...
Now the Pyramids, and Cheops, now thats scientific progress. Or didn't
God realize it?
***************************************************************************
In that case, it gives pleasure to the god, just as I said. I have
already detailed why I don't like this god, and I refuse to give him pleasure.
By the way, if you think that Yahweh doesn't encourage ritual mumbo-jumbo, you
obviously haven't read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Why
is it that I, neither Jew nor Christian, have read these books, and you, a
Christian, has not?
****************************************************************************
This mumbo-jumbo ritual stuff that took place inn the O.T. is no longer
necessary because of Christ. I won't go into it but please see Pauls letter
to the Galatians especially chapter 3.
*****************************************************************************
Christians have been saying this for about two thousand years now. It is
clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly
after his death. Before the Christians, the Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet
the world still turns, and there is still no reason to think of these claims
as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses.
*****************************************************************************
The only thing I can say here is 2 Peter 3:8 But do not ignore this one
fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a
thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some
count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should
perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Also: Ps90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is past or as a watch in the night.
*************************************************************************
He will "FORCE man to live in peace"?!?! That is a prima facie
contradiction. However, let's see how your god stands up to his own
standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those
on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal
fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never
gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a
stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick
and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal
punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life."
In the light of this, your god himself is the worst of sinners; if there
is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal
punishment.
******************************************************************************
Tim, you left out the best part: Mt25:45 ....then he will answer them, "Truly,
I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not
to me."
Seems to me the overall picture Jesus is trying to get across is: Hey, help
those who need it, don't be selfish, be kind to people. If things get rough
don't expect me to come to your aid if you aren't complying...
I believe Jesus' main objective here on earth was to teach, not that
He didn't take time out for such things as feeding the multitude,
healing the blind, raising the dead etc,etc. Quite often he remarked
to his disciples, "Oh Ye of little faith" when they felt troubled
or threatened.(they always ran crying to Jesus when they probably
could have straightened out the problem for themselves.)
As for the hope of mankind? I hope to comment on this in the future
when I find time.
Ray,
ihuxi!rcj1tim@unc.UUCP (12/31/83)
I am not a Christian. In my discussions of this fact with Christians, I have repeatedly run into one major misunderstanding. The Christians assume that if I believed the Bible were true, I would become a Christian; that is, they believe that my reason for not being a Christian is that I don't believe in their god. This is not the case. One disclaimer: The thesis of this essay is that even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship due to his low moral standards. Consequently, I speak sometimes as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not. 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 the reality of divine power, 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. That God does what he wants, when he wants, without even an attempt at self-justification, and all for what reason? According to Paul, 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 the time of Jesus that he created Hell. This cruellest of all concentration camps (certainly far worse than the ones created by the Nazis) was at no time mentioned in the Old Testament, and the wrathful and threatening god of the Old Testament would hardly have omitted any chance to terrify his worshippers. I have heard some Christians who believe that there is no everburning Hell in their religion, that the "lake of fire" is purely destructive, that sinners will be annihilated rather than tortured after the Last Judgment. Sometimes, they claim that medieval Catholics created that "myth", and that they would revile any god who made this concentration camp. Well, get ready to start reviling then. The myth of Hell was not created in the Middle Ages. It is explicitly stated in a set of books called the Synoptic Gospels, you know, the ones by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Since some people don't seem to be very familiar with these books, usually considered the cornerstone of Christianity, I'll fill them in. Matthew 18:8-9 has Jesus saying, "If your hand or your foot should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away: it is better for you to enter into life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire." A little while later, in 18:34-35 to be exact, Jesus finishes up a parable about an unforgiving debtor with: "And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart." Not clean killing -- you will be handed over to the torturers. In the parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus concludes with "Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.'" The king didn't say, "Execute him", but bind him and throw him into a painful place. This is echoed in Mat. 24:51, in almost the same words, and again in Mat. 25:30, again with similar words. Finally (for Matthew), we have Mat. 25:41-46, on the Last Judgment. "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life.'" My point is proven, so I won't bore you with the quotes from Mark and Luke; however, check out Mark 9:43, Mark 9:48-49, Luke 13:27-28, and Luke 16:23-26 if you still doubt. You hear a lot from Christians about Yahweh's "infinite compassion and mercy". Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of Yahweh. A sample of this delightful tale: "They waged the campaign against Midian, as Yahweh had ordered Moses, and they put every male to death.... The sons of Israel took the Midianite women captive with their young children, and plundered all their cattle, all their flocks and all their goods. They set fire to the towns where they lived and all their encampments.... Moses was enraged with the commanders of the army ... who had come back from this military expedition. He said, 'Why have you spared the life of all the women? ... So kill all the male children. Kill also all the women who have slept with a man. Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves.'" Yes, friends, this is infinite mercy and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the young girls to be kept for later raping. If only humans could keep to such lofty standards without the necessity of divine revelation. I could go on for quite a while in this vein. I don't think the firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with the verdict of compassion and mercy (Ex. 11:5,12:29), particularly since it was due to Yahweh's hardening of Pharoah's heart in the first place that made this neccessary. Also, with omnipotence, Yahweh could have teleported the Jews out of captivity without bloodshed, or put the Egyptians to sleep while they left, but no. That wouldn't be gory and exciting enough for him. Then there are the charming instructions about women taken in war, from Deut. 21:10-14. And there is Deuteronomy 28:20-46, a long stream of invectives and curses straight from the prophet's mouth, all about the nasty things Yahweh will do if you upset him a tad. The entire book of Joshua is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes for space reasons -- I urge you to look them up for yourself. If you are not shocked, then your moral standards must be low indeed. Of course, you will sometimes hear rationalizations of this slaughter. There are two major forms: the corruption argument and the mercy argument. The former says that those slaughtered were evil and deserving of their fate; the latter says that since they were religiously incorrect, it was a mercy to terminate their existence. The corruption argument simply does not hold up. The people slaughtered in the Old Testament were almost uniformly blameless (with a few exceptions, of course -- for instance, the Sodomites violated the conventions of hospitality.) Usually, no justification is offered beyond the fact that since they were of another tribe, it was OK to kill them. As to the mercy argument: They shoot horses, don't they? However, people are not animals to be destroyed against their will in the name of mercy. If I don't claim to be suffering, and don't ask to die, neither you nor any god has the right to decide that you know better. If you tried to do this to me, I would shoot you; if a god tried, well, the only weapon I would have would be withholding my worship. Most of us, given omnipotence, would be able to do a far better job than Yahweh. What would you do if given omnipotence? If your answer is anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's something more than 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 and a bit of common sense. God's supposedly infinite mercy is apparently the same thing as no mercy at all. What makes this particularly unforgivable is that even Jesus's own standards demand feeding of the poor. See Matthew 26:35, in which it is stated that the blessed feed the hungry, and that the damned do not. Does the old saw about "practicing what you preach" not apply to Yahweh? Is his hypocrisy not a sin? One popular rationalization of this is that for Yahweh to feed all the hungry would somehow (and it is never explained how) make it more difficult for people to get into Heaven. Sure, and another reason is that it would make the quality of newspapers worse, right? You can't just say that two things are connected when there is no apparent or explained link between them! The charge against Yahweh of infecting us with disease is particularly strong. God made these micro-organisms, and made us subject to them. If I made a bunch of plague germs and set them loose, you would rightly hold me accountable. Since (according to Genesis) all disease comes from Yahweh, I hold him similarly accountable. 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 jealous Judeo-Christian god does the opposite. Some people feel that Yahweh is the only god, and therefore cannot be faulted for not having friendly relations with other gods. This idea is a fairly modern invention: that not only is he the best god, but the only one. Yahweh is repeatedly referred to as "our God" in the Pentateuch, and there is no implication that he is the only real one. Also, try Deut. 5:7-9. It is psychotic to be jealous of nonexistent beings. The statement "You shall have no gods except me" clearly implies that the contrary is possible. Suppose you were an omnipotent god and there were no other gods. What would you do? Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles; after all, this doesn't require any effort, and keeps people from delusion. No such luck in the case of Jehovah. He demands absolute fidelity without any demonstration of his existence, beyond some visionary manifestations of the sort that you can get from any religion. Christians commonly rationalize this in one of two ways. First, they claim that there is a virtue in believing something without proof; that is, faith in itself is held to be a virtue, and Yahweh doesn't want to remove our opportunity to indulge in it. All I can say to this is that I do not consider faith to be a virtue -- I consider it to be a sign of intellectual weakness, and a significant barrier to scientific and other intellectual progress. (I consider scientific progress desirable because it is so efficacious in improving the quality of people's lives.) I see no virtue in accepting a thing on faith, since it may well be false, and it is clearly not a virtue to believe the false. Given the willingness to have faith, how does one decide whether to put it in Christianity instead of Hinduism? There is no way; you just have to cross your fingers and take the plunge. Whichever choice you take, you will hear voices in your head, see divine manifestations, and so on, so even once the plunge is taken there is no way to know you are correct. Second, there is the rationalization that scientific discovery would become impossible if a continual stream of verifiable miracles were performed. This argument denies the omnipotence of Yahweh. If he can do anything, he can perform a sequence of miracles in such a way as to convince everyone of his existence and not interfere with scientific discovery at all. The only things he can't do are logical absurdities such as making 2+2=5. The point to remember here is that if we don't believe in him, we go to Hell, and this is a greater evil than a lack of the "virtue" of faith or a stunting of science, or anything else conceivable. If Yahweh is concerned about the good, he will do what he can to keep us from Hell, and keeping vital information from us is the exact opposite of this. I have heard the claim that Yahweh does not restrict us from learning, that he encourages us to learn all we can. Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do. [ Horrors! -- tim ] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Yahweh deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding. One thing in particular would 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. Some of the responses I have heard to this sort of argument in the past are shown below, with my answers. "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. One particularly curious rationalization here is that "starvation and disease and all the other evils of the world come from breaking God's laws." Starvation comes from not having enough food. Disease comes from exposure to various nasty micro-organisms, and from genetic infirmities. If you can show me how these two things come from breaking god's laws, I will be greatly surprised. Perhaps at the root they are caused by Adam and Eve falling from grace, but you can't hold some starving infant in Namibia responsible for the actions of two long-dead people, any more than you can hold me responsible for the acts of Jack the Ripper. There just isn't sufficient connection to establish guilt. "Everything God does is really good, even though we can't always see that it is." There is no possible amount of good that can counterbalance the deliberate, 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 omniscient 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 damn thing, despite the fact that he has an unlimited supply of food to give. Another example of his mercy. Christians have been claiming that there will be wonderful events, that will more than make up for the abominable pain and suffering on Earth, for about two thousand years now. It is clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly after his death. Before the Christians, the Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet the world still turns as it has, and there is still no reason to think of these claims as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses. "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 once they had decided to worship him; their basic assumption is that they are correct, so they are untouchable by any rationality. In closing, let's see how Yahweh/Jesus stands up to his own standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life." In the light of this, your god himself is the worst of sinners; if there is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal punishment. He is guilty of every crime of which he accuses the damned. 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.
tim@unc.UUCP (12/31/83)
I am not a Christian. In my discussions of this fact with Christians, I have repeatedly run into one major misunderstanding. The Christians assume that if I believed the Bible were true, I would become a Christian; that is, they believe that my reason for not being a Christian is that I don't believe in their god. This is not the case. One disclaimer: The thesis of this essay is that even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship due to his low moral standards. Consequently, I speak sometimes as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not. 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 the reality of divine power, 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. That God does what he wants, when he wants, without even an attempt at self-justification, and all for what reason? According to Paul, 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 the time of Jesus that he created Hell. This cruellest of all concentration camps (certainly far worse than the ones created by the Nazis) was at no time mentioned in the Old Testament, and the wrathful and threatening god of the Old Testament would hardly have omitted any chance to terrify his worshippers. I have heard some Christians who believe that there is no everburning Hell in their religion, that the "lake of fire" is purely destructive, that sinners will be annihilated rather than tortured after the Last Judgment. Sometimes, they claim that medieval Catholics created that "myth", and that they would revile any god who made this concentration camp. Well, get ready to start reviling then. The myth of Hell was not created in the Middle Ages. It is explicitly stated in a set of books called the Synoptic Gospels, you know, the ones by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Since some people don't seem to be very familiar with these books, usually considered the cornerstone of Christianity, I'll fill them in. Matthew 18:8-9 has Jesus saying, "If your hand or your foot should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away: it is better for you to enter into life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire." A little while later, in 18:34-35 to be exact, Jesus finishes up a parable about an unforgiving debtor with: "And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart." Not clean killing -- you will be handed over to the torturers. In the parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus concludes with "Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.'" The king didn't say, "Execute him", but bind him and throw him into a painful place. This is echoed in Mat. 24:51, in almost the same words, and again in Mat. 25:30, again with similar words. Finally (for Matthew), we have Mat. 25:41-46, on the Last Judgment. "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life.'" My point is proven, so I won't bore you with the quotes from Mark and Luke; however, check out Mark 9:43, Mark 9:48-49, Luke 13:27-28, and Luke 16:23-26 if you still doubt. You hear a lot from Christians about Yahweh's "infinite compassion and mercy". Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of Yahweh. A sample of this delightful tale: "They waged the campaign against Midian, as Yahweh had ordered Moses, and they put every male to death.... The sons of Israel took the Midianite women captive with their young children, and plundered all their cattle, all their flocks and all their goods. They set fire to the towns where they lived and all their encampments.... Moses was enraged with the commanders of the army ... who had come back from this military expedition. He said, 'Why have you spared the life of all the women? ... So kill all the male children. Kill also all the women who have slept with a man. Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves.'" Yes, friends, this is infinite mercy and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the young girls to be kept for later raping. If only humans could keep to such lofty standards without the necessity of divine revelation. I could go on for quite a while in this vein. I don't think the firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with the verdict of compassion and mercy (Ex. 11:5,12:29), particularly since it was due to Yahweh's hardening of Pharoah's heart in the first place that made this neccessary. Also, with omnipotence, Yahweh could have teleported the Jews out of captivity without bloodshed, or put the Egyptians to sleep while they left, but no. That wouldn't be gory and exciting enough for him. Then there are the charming instructions about women taken in war, from Deut. 21:10-14. And there is Deuteronomy 28:20-46, a long stream of invectives and curses straight from the prophet's mouth, all about the nasty things Yahweh will do if you upset him a tad. The entire book of Joshua is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes for space reasons -- I urge you to look them up for yourself. If you are not shocked, then your moral standards must be low indeed. Of course, you will sometimes hear rationalizations of this slaughter. There are two major forms: the corruption argument and the mercy argument. The former says that those slaughtered were evil and deserving of their fate; the latter says that since they were religiously incorrect, it was a mercy to terminate their existence. The corruption argument simply does not hold up. The people slaughtered in the Old Testament were almost uniformly blameless (with a few exceptions, of course -- for instance, the Sodomites violated the conventions of hospitality.) Usually, no justification is offered beyond the fact that since they were of another tribe, it was OK to kill them. As to the mercy argument: They shoot horses, don't they? However, people are not animals to be destroyed against their will in the name of mercy. If I don't claim to be suffering, and don't ask to die, neither you nor any god has the right to decide that you know better. If you tried to do this to me, I would shoot you; if a god tried, well, the only weapon I would have would be withholding my worship. Most of us, given omnipotence, would be able to do a far better job than Yahweh. What would you do if given omnipotence? If your answer is anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's something more than 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 and a bit of common sense. God's supposedly infinite mercy is apparently the same thing as no mercy at all. What makes this particularly unforgivable is that even Jesus's own standards demand feeding of the poor. See Matthew 26:35, in which it is stated that the blessed feed the hungry, and that the damned do not. Does the old saw about "practicing what you preach" not apply to Yahweh? Is his hypocrisy not a sin? One popular rationalization of this is that for Yahweh to feed all the hungry would somehow (and it is never explained how) make it more difficult for people to get into Heaven. Sure, and another reason is that it would make the quality of newspapers worse, right? You can't just say that two things are connected when there is no apparent or explained link between them! The charge against Yahweh of infecting us with disease is particularly strong. God made these micro-organisms, and made us subject to them. If I made a bunch of plague germs and set them loose, you would rightly hold me accountable. Since (according to Genesis) all disease comes from Yahweh, I hold him similarly accountable. 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 jealous Judeo-Christian god does the opposite. Some people feel that Yahweh is the only god, and therefore cannot be faulted for not having friendly relations with other gods. This idea is a fairly modern invention: that not only is he the best god, but the only one. Yahweh is repeatedly referred to as "our God" in the Pentateuch, and there is no implication that he is the only real one. Also, try Deut. 5:7-9. It is psychotic to be jealous of nonexistent beings. The statement "You shall have no gods except me" clearly implies that the contrary is possible. Suppose you were an omnipotent god and there were no other gods. What would you do? Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles; after all, this doesn't require any effort, and keeps people from delusion. No such luck in the case of Jehovah. He demands absolute fidelity without any demonstration of his existence, beyond some visionary manifestations of the sort that you can get from any religion. Christians commonly rationalize this in one of two ways. First, they claim that there is a virtue in believing something without proof; that is, faith in itself is held to be a virtue, and Yahweh doesn't want to remove our opportunity to indulge in it. All I can say to this is that I do not consider faith to be a virtue -- I consider it to be a sign of intellectual weakness, and a significant barrier to scientific and other intellectual progress. (I consider scientific progress desirable because it is so efficacious in improving the quality of people's lives.) I see no virtue in accepting a thing on faith, since it may well be false, and it is clearly not a virtue to believe the false. Given the willingness to have faith, how does one decide whether to put it in Christianity instead of Hinduism? There is no way; you just have to cross your fingers and take the plunge. Whichever choice you take, you will hear voices in your head, see divine manifestations, and so on, so even once the plunge is taken there is no way to know you are correct. Second, there is the rationalization that scientific discovery would become impossible if a continual stream of verifiable miracles were performed. This argument denies the omnipotence of Yahweh. If he can do anything, he can perform a sequence of miracles in such a way as to convince everyone of his existence and not interfere with scientific discovery at all. The only things he can't do are logical absurdities such as making 2+2=5. The point to remember here is that if we don't believe in him, we go to Hell, and this is a greater evil than a lack of the "virtue" of faith or a stunting of science, or anything else conceivable. If Yahweh is concerned about the good, he will do what he can to keep us from Hell, and keeping vital information from us is the exact opposite of this. I have heard the claim that Yahweh does not restrict us from learning, that he encourages us to learn all we can. Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do. [ Horrors! -- tim ] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Yahweh deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding. One thing in particular would 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. Some of the responses I have heard to this sort of argument in the past are shown below, with my answers. "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. One particularly curious rationalization here is that "starvation and disease and all the other evils of the world come from breaking God's laws." Starvation comes from not having enough food. Disease comes from exposure to various nasty micro-organisms, and from genetic infirmities. If you can show me how these two things come from breaking god's laws, I will be greatly surprised. Perhaps at the root they are caused by Adam and Eve falling from grace, but you can't hold some starving infant in Namibia responsible for the actions of two long-dead people, any more than you can hold me responsible for the acts of Jack the Ripper. There just isn't sufficient connection to establish guilt. "Everything God does is really good, even though we can't always see that it is." There is no possible amount of good that can counterbalance the deliberate, 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 omniscient 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 damn thing, despite the fact that he has an unlimited supply of food to give. Another example of his mercy. Christians have been claiming that there will be wonderful events, that will more than make up for the abominable pain and suffering on Earth, for about two thousand years now. It is clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly after his death. Before the Christians, the Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet the world still turns as it has, and there is still no reason to think of these claims as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses. "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 once they had decided to worship him; their basic assumption is that they are correct, so they are untouchable by any rationality. In closing, let's see how Yahweh/Jesus stands up to his own standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life." In the light of this, your god himself is the worst of sinners; if there is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal punishment. He is guilty of every crime of which he accuses the damned. 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. -- Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)
rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (01/04/84)
Tim puts forth some very important points about the nature of god as
described in the bible. Clearly if one is to accept the bible as a
*literal* document of universal historical truths, the evidence speaks
for itself as to the true nature of the beast.
Tim says right upfront "EVEN if I did believe", meaning (I assume) that
he does not actually believe that the god described in the bible does
indeed exist, but that if Dave Norris' proof was suddenly "uncovered",
this would fail to make a difference in Tim's belief system (and mine as
well) when it comes to god.
Given the way the bible portrays god, what does this imply about the
nature of Judaeo-Christian thought? Either 1) there IS a vengeful,
spiteful (but of course loving) god who will burn us all slowly if
we disobey his will, or 2) an effort was made (and is still being made)
to convince people that such a god exists and that they should obey
a set of (some good, some not so good) laws or else suffer eternal
damnation. Thus the real reason for obeying a set of laws (because
they benefit society as a whole: e.g., do unto others...) is masked
by the notion of "if you don't obey, you'll be turned into molten
jello for eternity!!!" By doing this, whimsical laws ("Thou shalt not
have sexual relations with frozen food") can be harnessed under the same
umbrella as the other societally beneficial laws.
This sounds to me more like the way one treats children than the way
one treats adults. Can you imagine telling an adult: Don't go into the
room that says "DANGER", because a monster will eat you. Can you
imagine telling an adult: Don't break the law, because a policeman will
catch you and take you to jail. Unfortunately, I think we CAN imagine
that second scenario, even though it is hardly any different from the first.
That seems to be the way people (children and adults, both) are indoctrinated
as to why they should obey the laws of society at large. What happens, in this
case, when a person knows that there is no chance of being caught, and breaks
the law anyway. My view: if you can't teach a person a rational reason for
obeying the law, either the law isn't worth upholding, or society can't do its
job of educating its members to be good citizens.
Come to think of it, that sort of hogwash I described above is no way to treat
children, either. The same rules apply. Still we go on instilling fear
instead of instilling reason. This is MY argument with this sort of
religious thinking and the reason I am extremely fearful of its revival in
modern society.
--
Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlrajs@hpfcla.UUCP (01/04/84)
#R:unc:-648300:hpfcla:21300002:000:2376
hpfcla!ajs Jan 2 19:36:00 1984
Thank you, Tim, for stating your case so concisely. You made a lot of
good points and I'm looking forward to hearing the Christian response.
I'd just like to add some food for thought. I've had the same problems
accepting the Biblical version of God: How can he be merciful, yet
allow suffering? How can he offer so little evidence, yet condemn non-
believers to Hell? Why should a jump of faith be required, when human
nature is to reduce internal conflict, even if this results in false
beliefs?
I've heard some possible answers. I'm not saying I believe them myself,
but I sure HOPE they are true (it would be nice). Anyway, here goes.
* Suppose that God really is infinite beyond all comprehension. No
point trying to capture the concept; he is anything you can imagine
yet more than that.
* Suppose that our perception of reality, compared to that infinity, is
as a dream (or nightmare) is to waking life.
* Suppose that the purpose of life in this reality is to learn, perhaps
over many lifetimes, basic truths, and to eventually gain infinite
conciousness (union with God).
* Suppose that the worst of physical pain and deprivation is as nothing,
by hindsight. Experiences which reduce our "addiction" to the purely
physical world might in fact turn out to be good for our spiritual
growth (as a bad dream might help resolve waking tensions).
* Suppose that the Bible is in fact the work of people, full of myths
and misconceptions.
* Suppose that it really doesn't matter because, while God loves every
soul as if it were a part of himself, those parts are as small
children playing games in a big playground, taking their roles
seriously and never wondering what happens after recess is over.
As I say, I don't know myself that the philosophy I've stuffed in a
nutshell here is how things really are. But it would make more sense
than any other I've heard. For me that philosophy holds more hope than
any other, for giving meaning to our existence. It says that things
don't have to make sense on any scale we can comprehend, because that
scale is microscopic, and all things balance in infinite time.
Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado
{ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"rf@wu1.UUCP (01/05/84)
Tim Maroney writes:
What would you do if given omnipotence? If your answer is
anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's
something more than a little skewed in your perception of
mankind.
Yes, only HOW?
My first thought was that one could simply create food for the
hungry. At first, this works. But people keep having children.
What then? Make the world bigger? When do you stop? Do you
keep going until the universe is full of human flesh and then
make the universe bigger? Is there room for trees and stars?
I've another name for this solution: cancer!
So now one must control human population as well. Ok, simply
ensure that no-one wants to have too many children. This is
worldwide brainwashing, but . . . it's in a good cause. Just
determine the optimal number of humans, persuade humans never to
have more children than will maintain the optimum. This
requires a steady stream of small miracles, which seems
inelegant, but . . . it's in a good cause. What's this?
They're working on methods of in vitro fertilization? They want
more kids? Quick! Kill those scientists!
Maybe some really nasty plagues will solve the problem.
Oh, to Hell with all this! They can feed all of their people;
they can see the need. Why don't they?
Seriously: it is within the power of humankind to cure world
hunger; we lack only the will. How can we accuse god for not
doing what we clearly don't want? How can we accuse god because
we freely do evil when we have the power to do good? The
ability to do good is the greatest gift a god could give his
children; how dare we curse god because we misuse his gift?
Randolph Fritz
"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"United Parcel. Got a package here."
"Who's it from?"
"Asbestos Mailbox, Inc."
"Ah. Put it down by the computer."dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (01/08/84)
I'm staying out of the "Even if I did believe" discussion (for now,
anyway), but I must respond to Randolph Fritz's suggestion that
an omnipotent Deity couldn't stop people from producing enough children
to use up the additional food.
Randolph, if you think about the definition of omnipotence, you'll
realize that doesn't make any sense. Obviously, omnipotence implies
the ability to (1) create *enough* food for everyone in the world, no
matter how much that "everyone" grows (just as there is enough air
for everyone, for example), and (2) limit human reproduction, if that
is an appropriate way to stop us from using up what food is available.
I'm sure there are lots of other creative ways in which omnipotence
can be used to stop world hunger. You're working with a very narrow
view of omnipotence.
Dave Sherman
Toronto
--
{allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!davelaura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/09/84)
it is perfectly reasonable to accuse a god of doing evil though we have the power to do good and don't. I don't think that I am omniscient and omnipotent, but that is the claim that is made for God. First of all, we can do evil because we have free will. This is a pretty universal belief of Christianity, though the old-time Calvinists won't agree. But what good is free will? If it is what keeps me from doing the good all the time, then I sure don't want it? I would rather do the good all the time. this world has bugs. If god built it, he built it with bugs. Free will may be the greatest of the bugs, but there are littler ones like world hunger and earthquakes and mosquitos to consider. If you hand me a piece of code that has bugs in it, I will be perfectly willing to point the ones I notice out to you. This does not mean that I am saying that had I written the code there would be no bugs, just that i know bugs when i see them. if god is omnipotent, then he could have created a world where the human beings couldn't sin, and the foxes didn't eat the rabbits and we all got all of our food needs from photosynthesis like the plants. it is arguable that human beings who couldn't sin are not human beings, by definition. (this gets back to -- could Jesus sin? If he couldn't, was he true man?). I make no claims to omniscience either, so no doubt making us all plants would have its own moral problems, which I cannot see, but if god can do anything then he can create a world where there are none of these evils by definition. If you are known as a great expert in DZ drivers and you send me a smelly piece of code that crashes my machine, I will get pissed off as well. I *KNOW* that you can do better. In conclusion, I don't believe that an omniscient and omnipotent god created the world. I do not believe that the world was created. So I don't stay up nights railing at the injustice of a God that could do anything and stuck me with this. but if i DID believe.... Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
andree@uokvax.UUCP (01/21/84)
#R:wu1:-23100:uokvax:8300033:000:969 uokvax!andree Jan 19 22:19:00 1984 Problem: Given god-like powers, after feeding the world, how do you keep the population down? Solution: Stolen straight from a story in Analog, references available on request. Easy. You PHYSICALLY fix women (Gee, aren't god-like powers fun?) so that they are normally sterile. Getting pregnant requires taking "the pill, mark II", which has several VERY DESIRABLE side affects. Rash, flaking skin, etc. Choose your favorite allergic affect. Thus, you CAN NOT have an "oops" pregnancy. Pregnancy requires an act of will, and some strength of character (otherwise, women never make it through the side affects). Result: The only people who have childer are people who WANT children. Badly, at that. In the story mentioned, the fix was applied as disease of some flavor or another - a gene-splicing virus, so that your kids got it to. Unlikely, but so is walking on water. "What good is someone who can walk on water if you can't follow in his footsteps?" <mike
russ@uokvax.UUCP (01/21/84)
#R:utcsrgv:-306500:uokvax:8300032:000:1474
uokvax!russ Jan 19 17:16:00 1984
An excellent reply to this whole issue has been posted by ihuxn!ewp under
the title 'The morals of God'. I would just like to mention that we have
the means to end world hunger right now, but that we don't. This is our
choice. We have CHOSEN not to feed starving people. There is plenty of
food available on this planet. If we put as much effort into feeding
people as we do in putting people in space or building cars, tv's, and record
albums, I am certain that everyone on this planet would be well fed. To do
so, people who have a surplus of goods (like us) would have to give something
up. Are you willing to give up the luxuries you have worked so hard for to
feed a stranger? It appears that most people aren't. To expect or wish that
some omnipotent god would come down and do it for you is a cop-out. What did
God put us on earth for? If he gave us free-will, shouldn't he give us sit-
uations (like feeding the poor) to test it? Perhaps it would be better if
the poor could somehow become able to feed themselves. To discover why they
cannot and to figure out how to rectify the condition is a much more funda-
mental problem. I don't think that this problem lends itself to easy sol-
utions. If you find yourself morally committed to abolishing hunger, then
maybe you should study this issue instead of wasting your time with
"what if's".
Russell Spence
..ctvax!uokvax!russwombat@uicsl.UUCP (01/22/84)
#R:wu1:-23100:uicsl:16500005:000:357 uicsl!wombat Jan 21 14:10:00 1984 Physically fix women, eh? Why not fix men too? Make it a deliberate act for both partners. The men wouldn't need to keep taking the drug during pregnancy, so just make sure the one they need to fertilize has nine-month side effects. This smacks of the sexist surgery issue recently discussed in net.women.only. Wombat ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!wombat
andree@uokvax.UUCP (01/24/84)
#R:wu1:-23100:uokvax:8300036:000:890 uokvax!andree Jan 22 05:31:00 1984 /***** uokvax:net.religion / uicsl!wombat / 2:10 pm Jan 21, 1984 */ Physically fix women, eh? Why not fix men too? Make it a deliberate act for both partners. The men wouldn't need to keep taking the drug during pregnancy, so just make sure the one they need to fertilize has nine-month side effects. This smacks of the sexist surgery issue recently discussed in net.women.only. Wombat ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!wombat /* ---------- */ Fine by me. The point is to make having childern a deliberate, concsious choice, as opposed to an undesired effect of another kind of choice. The place I swiped the solution from put the fix in women, and I didn't see any reason to change it. Seems to me that women are the logical place to fix this particular bug, but I'm not a god (yet), so I can't say for sure. I don't read net.women.only, not being a woman. What sex is a wombat? <mike
saj@iuvax.UUCP (02/15/84)
#R:unc:-648300:iuvax:1700003:000:1816
iuvax!dsaker Feb 2 17:55:00 1984
Alan,
There are a few problems with your HOPED FOR truths:
If the experiences of this life are as nothing in the long run, then
how can the lessons learnt in this life themselves be other than as nothing.
Can you really embrace the idea that all of your thoughts, hopes, dreams,
loves, longings and aspirations should eventually come to be as nothing
- even to you? Remember your mother fussing around you some time when
you were young and ill (it was years later that you realised how tired she
must have been that night)? Remember your first heavy infatuation and how
your heart was broken? Remember your child and the pang of love and pain you
felt at its vulnerability? Can you really embrace the idea that these things
(and countless other tendernesses) will come to seem as nothing?
To my mind, the loss of these things into the blackness of time is one
of the (if not THE) hardest things to bear in life. The failure of my memory
in regard to such things is an additional horror.
What I feel the need for is something to give "meaning" (oh vague word)
to human passions and values - not the promise of their "meaninglessness".
As for spiritual growth as the reward for suffering, does your spiritual
growth warrant the tears of even one small child? (This is Dmitri
Karamazov's argument.) And it is hard to see just what lesson a 3 months old
child screaming with meningitis is learning.
The problem is that we cannot imagine any adequate compensation for the
pain of this world, we cannot envisage a SOLUTION to the PROBLEM -
other than to be hit on the head until our sense of distress dissolves.
We are stuck longing for something which we cannot ever imagine having.
(By the way, Mahler's "Resurrection" is a magnificent evocation of
that longing.)
Daryel Akerlind
iuvax!dsakertim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (11/06/84)
"Even If I Did Believe ..." by Tim Maroney November 5, 1984 Copyright 1984 by the author Introduction ============ I am not a Christian. In my discussions of this fact with Christians, I have repeatedly run into a major misunderstanding. The Christians assume that if I believed the Bible were true, I would become a Christian; that is, they believe that my reason for not being a Christian is that I don't believe in their god. This is not the case. In this essay, I will explain more clearly why I am not a Christian. The essay is not meant as an attack on Christianity, just as a statement of personal belief. One disclaimer: The thesis of this essay is that even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship. Consequently, I speak sometimes as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not. 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 monster. If an angel appeared to me and removed my appendectomy scar so I could never deny the reality of divine power, I still would not be a Christian. My primary reason for not being a Christian 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 the average high school student. That God does what he wants, when he wants, without even an attempt at self-justification, and all for what reason? According to Paul, all for his own greater glory. 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, refuses to deal with any other god on a friendly basis, rains doom on those who dare to try to be as knowledgable as he is, and so on. Hell ==== Jesus preaching love in no way atones for Yahweh's many hideous crimes; lest we forget, it was at the time of Jesus that he created Hell. This cruellest of all concentration camps (certainly far worse than the ones created by the Nazis) was at no time mentioned in the Old Testament, and the wrathful and threatening god of the Old Testament would hardly have omitted any chance to terrify his worshippers. (Incidentally, the "Sheol" of the Old Testament is simply a generic term for the afterlife; neither modern scholarship nor Judaic tradition equates it with Hell.) I have heard some Christians who believe that there is no everburning Hell in their religion, that the "lake of fire" is purely destructive, that sinners will be annihilated rather than tortured after the Last Judgment. Sometimes, they claim that medieval Catholics created that "myth", and that they would revile any god who made this concentration camp. Well, get ready to start reviling then. The myth of Hell was not created in the Middle Ages. It is explicitly stated in a set of books called the Synoptic Gospels, you know, the ones by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Since some people don't seem to be very familiar with these books, usually considered the cornerstone of Christianity, I'll fill them in. In Matt. 18:34-35, Jesus finishes up a parable about an unforgiving debtor with: "And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart." Not clean killing -- you will be handed over to the torturers. In the parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus concludes with "Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.'" The king didn't say, "Execute him", but bind him and throw him into a painful place. This is echoed in Mat. 24:51, in almost the same words, and again in Mat. 25:30, again with similar words. Finally (for Matthew), we have Mat. 25:41-46, on the Last Judgment. "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life.'" My point is proven, so I won't bore you with the quotes from Mark and Luke; however, check out Mark 9:43, Mark 9:48-49, Luke 13:27- 28, and Luke 16:23-26 if you still doubt. Why would Jesus have so frequently mentioned the existence of an afterlife of torment if that was misleading his followers? And why did he never imply the existence of a forthcoming destruction of the unfaithful? Among the Christians who accept the reality of Hell, another rationalization is quite popular. This holds that Hell is in some sense voluntary, and chosen by its inmates. It's an interesting idea, and certainly one of the more interesting aspects of Dante's "Inferno" is the way the conditions of the damned reflect conditions created in life by their sins. I agree completely that the man who commits murder must live ever in fear of attack, that the thief will never feel secure in his property, that the liar can trust no one, and so on. By their offenses they create an unpleasant life for themselves. However, you don't have to hurt anyone to get into Hell. All it takes, according to Scripture, is knowing about Jesus and not accepting him as Savior. It doesn't matter how virtuous you are, how much good you do, how happy an environment you create for yourself and others. Given this, the voluntary entry argument doesn't make sense. The same argument could be used to justify the sending of Aryan opponents of Nazism to concentration camps: they voluntarily chose not to give homage to Hitler, so they chose to be interred. Why should we blame the Nazis for the inmates' choice? Why should we blame Yahweh for the choice of the damned? Genocide ======== You hear a lot from Christians about Yahweh's "infinite compassion and mercy". Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of Yahweh. A sample of this tale: "They waged the campaign against Midian, as Yahweh had ordered Moses, and they put every male to death.... The sons of Israel took the Midianite women captive with their young children, and plundered all their cattle, all their flocks and all their goods. They set fire to the towns where they lived and all their encampments.... Moses was enraged with the commanders of the army ... who had come back from this military expedition. He said, 'Why have you spared the life of all the women? ... So kill all the male children. Kill also all the women who have slept with a man. Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves.'" Yes, friends, this is infinite mercy and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the young girls to be kept for later raping. If only humans could keep to such lofty standards without the necessity of divine revelation. This wasn't the first time the Hebrews harassed the Midianites (although it was obviously the last...) Earlier, in Chapter 25 to be precise, Israel settled in Midian. Rather than toss the Hebrews out on their ear from this land of limited resources, the Midianites -- well, I'll let the author of Numbers tell it: "The [Hebrews] gave themselves over to debauchery with the daughters of Moab. These invited them to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down before their gods. With Israel thus committed to the Baal of Peor, the anger of Yahweh blazed out against them. Yahweh said to Moses: 'Take all the leaders of the people. Impale them for Yahweh, here in the sun; then the burning anger of Yahweh will turn away from Israel.' Moses said to the judges in Israel, 'Every one of you must put to death those of his people who have committed themselves to the Baal of Peor.'" Now that is written in a rather negatively-connoted fashion. Look at what actually happened: Israel arrived in Midian. The Midianites welcomed them like kinfolk. They let them date their daughters; they invited them to come to Church. Right neighborly reception, if you ask me. Some of the Hebrews, no doubt impressed by the friendly ways of these people, took up the local customs of their own free will. So what does Moses do? He puts spears through them and lets them rot in the sun. Who's the bad guy here? I'd say it's pretty obvious. Neither apostacy nor fornication deserve the death penalty -- or do you think we should start frying unwed mothers and those who leave their religion, by Federal law? Right on the heels of this comes a plague. This is blamed by the Hebrews on one Zimri, who had the incredible gall to actually marry a Midianite woman! Fortunately, a zealous son of Israel speared them both right through the genitals, and the plague went away. Now we moderns know that disease just doesn't work that way, but a more important objection concerns a point of Biblical trivia. Of what nationality was Zipporah, the wife of Moses? You have five seconds ... That's right, she was a Midianite! But for some reason Moses' genitals were allowed to remain intact. This makes marriage to a Midianite seem like less than a capital offense. I don't think the firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with the verdict of compassion and mercy (Ex. 11:5,12:29). Yahweh could have teleported the Jews out of captivity without bloodshed, or put the Egyptians to sleep while they left, but no. That wouldn't be gory and exciting enough for him. Now rivers of blood, killing innocent children: there's something you can really sink your teeth into. It was due to Yahweh's hardening of Pharoah's heart in the first place that made the later cruelties necessary. And why? Yahweh explains to Moses in Ex. 11:9, "Pharoah will not listen to you; so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt." Wonderful. All those children and adults tortured and killed, for the same reason that would lead one of us today to set off fireworks. This is immorality, pure and simple. The entire book of Joshua is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes for space reasons -- I urge you to look them up for yourself. If you are not shocked, then your moral standards must be low indeed. Of course, you will sometimes hear rationalizations of this slaughter. There are three major forms: the corruption argument, the universal criminalization argument, and the mercy argument. The first and second say that those slaughtered were evil and deserving of their fate; the third says that since they were religiously incorrect, it was a mercy to terminate their existence. The corruption argument simply does not hold up. The people slaughtered in the Old Testament were almost uniformly blameless (with a few exceptions, of course -- for instance, the Sodomites violated the conventions of hospitality.) Usually, no justification is offered beyond the fact that since they were of another tribe, it was OK to kill them. And it goes without saying that the hordes of slaughtered children were innocent. Does the fact that you think God has told you that some country is corrupt give you the right to slaughter every inhabitant of the country? If so, then let's start sending arms to Iran for use against Iraq right away! The universal criminalization argument is very silly. It goes like this. All men are disgusting sinners who deserve to be killed. When Yahweh kills some of them, he has every right to, because they are vile sinners. Hmm. In that case, if I decide that someone is a vile sinner and deserves to die, then that is a correct perception. Therefore, if I cash in their chips myself, it's OK, they got what they deserved, no more and no less. How many of us would object if someone had knocked off Hitler? He deserved it, so why should we object? Now what about knocking off Mother Theresa? She deserves it; she's a human after all. By making all men deserving of death, universal criminalization makes murder less than a sin. (The people who put it forth should be glad I don't buy it, or they would probably be first on my list!) What's that you say? Only Yahweh has the right to kill those who deserve it? I see. We should have stayed home during World War II. In any case, this is yet another moral double standard, and those are clearly unacceptable. Stay tuned if you can't see why. As to the mercy argument: They shoot horses, don't they? However, people are not animals to be destroyed against their will in the name of mercy. If I don't claim to be suffering, and don't ask to die, neither you nor any god has the right to decide that you know better. Neglect ======= Most of us, given omnipotence, would be able to do a far better job than Yahweh. What would you do if given omnipotence? If your answer is anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's something more than 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 and a bit of common sense. God's supposedly infinite mercy is apparently the same thing as no mercy at all. What makes this particularly unforgivable is that even Jesus's own standards demand feeding of the poor. See Matthew 25:35, in which it is stated that the blessed feed the hungry, and that the damned do not. Yahweh is held blameless, though, for not feeding them. Does the old saw about "practicing what you preach" not apply to Yahweh? Is his hypocrisy not a sin? Usually, when I bring this up in a discussion, someone says, "No; it is the evil of men that is to blame; they have lots of money and keep it to themselves rather than feeding the poor." This argument uses a double standard. Men are held guilty for not feeding the poor, while Yahweh is held innocent for doing exactly the same. In fact, it would be far easier for Yahweh to feed all the poor than for any man to feed even one! Men are certainly not blameless here, but it is Yahweh who is the true villain. One popular rationalization of this is that for Yahweh to feed all the hungry would somehow (and it is never explained how) make it more difficult for people to get into Heaven. Sure, and another reason is that it would make the quality of newspapers worse, right? You can't just say that two things are connected when there is no apparent or explained link between them! (Well, you can, but you're making a fool of yourself.) Another popular rationalization is that life without "challenges" would be boring and dehumanizing, so Yahweh does not remove them. The fallacy here is grouping all challenges together. I personally lead a very challenging and satisfying life, but I have not lately had to flee any volcanos or earthquakes, go without food for a week, or suffer the ravages of some disease. I would be quite happy, in fact, if I never did have to face such challenges as those. There is plenty of room for amelioration of the human condition without making it dull. Another objection here is that the same people who like this rationalization usually believe that they will enter a world that is perfect and without challenge after death, but they don't seem particularly put off by the "dullness" of Heaven .... Other Gods ========== 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 jealous Judeo-Christian god does the opposite. (Some people feel that Yahweh is the only god, and therefore cannot be faulted for not having friendly relations with other gods. This idea is a fairly modern invention: that not only is he the best god, but the only one. Yahweh is repeatedly referred to as "our God" in the Pentateuch, and there is no implication until Isaiah that he is the only real one. Also, try Deut. 5:7-9. It is psychotic to be jealous of nonexistent beings. The statement "You shall have no gods except me" clearly implies that the contrary is possible. However, I am willing to grant that there are no other gods for the sake of argument.) Suppose you were an omnipotent god and there were no other gods. What would you do? Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles; after all, this doesn't require any effort, and keeps people from delusion. No such luck in the case of Jehovah. He demands absolute fidelity without any demonstration of his existence, beyond some visionary manifestations of the sort that you can get from any religion. Christians commonly rationalize this in one of two ways. First, they claim that there is a virtue in believing something without proof; that is, faith in itself is held to be a virtue, and Yahweh doesn't want to remove our opportunity to indulge in it. All I can say to this is that I do not consider faith to be a virtue -- I consider it to be a sign of intellectual weakness, and a significant barrier to scientific and other progress. There is no virtue in accepting a thing on faith, since it may well be false, and it is clearly not virtuous to believe the false. Given that one has faith, how does one decide whether to put it in Christianity instead of Hinduism? There is no way; you just have to cross your fingers and take the plunge. Whichever choice you take, you will hear voices in your head, see divine manifestations, and so on, so even once the plunge is taken there is no way to know you are correct. Further on this topic, according to the Bible Yahweh repeatedly deprived people of their opportunity for faith by manifesting himself in undeniable ways. It is hard to place much stock in a virtue for which Yahweh removes the opportunity among his most favored, such as Moses and other prophets. It has also not escaped my attention that many of the same people who prattle about the virtues of faith like to talk about "proofs" of various things in their religion, such as the resurrection of Jesus. Which is it? Do you have faith, or do you have proof? Second, there is the rationalization that scientific discovery would become impossible if a continual stream of verifiable miracles were performed. This argument denies the omnipotence of Yahweh. If he can do anything, he can perform a sequence of miracles in such a way as to convince everyone of his existence and not interfere with scientific discovery at all. The only things he can't do are logical absurdities such as making 2+2=5. The point to remember here is that if we don't believe in him, we go to Hell, and this is a greater evil than a lack of the "virtue" of faith or a stunting of science, or anything else conceivable. If Yahweh is concerned about the good, he will do what he can to keep us from Hell, and withholding vital information from us is the exact opposite of this. Other Charges ============= The charge against Yahweh of infecting us with disease is particularly strong. God made these micro-organisms, and made us subject to them. If I made a bunch of plague germs and set them loose, you would rightly hold me accountable. Since (according to Genesis) all life and thus all disease comes from Yahweh, I hold him similarly accountable. A similar consideration arises with respect to the common Christian conception of Satan. This being was created and unleashed by God, who knew exactly what he would do: that is, spend his entire existence wreaking havoc and leading people into criminal activities. Suppose I were to build an evil robot that I knew would go around killing people. Whose fault would it be if I let it loose, mine or the robot's? Whose fault is deviltry in the world, the puppet Satan or the being that deliberately created Satan's evil? Yahweh deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding. I have heard the claim that Yahweh does not restrict us from learning, that he encourages us to learn all we can. Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do. [Horrors! -- tim] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Incidentally, don't confuse what you were taught in Sunday school with Scripture; the reason the tower was being built had nothing to do with men wanting to be like God; Gen. 11:4 contains the real reason: "Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not be scattered about the whole earth." We Americans do things like that all the time. Human Judgment ============== One of the criticisms most frequently levelled at me when presenting these arguments has been that I have no right to judge God. In the universe model of many Christians, God is the definition of good. All morality proceeds downwards from him, so it makes no sense to apply moral standards to him. From the perspective of man, trying to determine which of the various conflicting belief systems he should abide by, this argument makes no sense. Assume that there is some religion of an evil god; we'll call this god Satan for convenience. It is clear that adherents of the religion of Satan would see him not as evil, but as good. Someone who is not a member of the religion of Satan might say, "But your god has ordered the slaughter of innocents! How, then, can you say that he is good?" The reply of one of the Satanists is likely to be, "Satan is the source of good; he is good by definition; he is far above us humans; it is thus nonsensical for us to judge him." That's the only way to wriggle off the hook. Slaughtering innocents is obviously evil, so to save Satan he has to be taken outside the normal standards of good and evil. Now suppose that the questioner of the previous paragraph is trying to decide which religion to join. He must try to evaluate the various religions available to him; in particular, he will try to avoid falling into the clutches of some religion that worships an evil god or evil spirit. However, no religion says "We are evil; shun us like the plague." All religions claim to be good. So he will have to use some standard to compare the various religions, and this standard has to be independent of any one religion. Otherwise, he couldn't even get started. All religions are best by their own standard. What standard is available for this necessary comparison? None is really ideal. The best we can do is say that religion is best which causes evil acts in its worshippers least and in which apparently evil acts are not performed by the worshipped being(s). Here he uses the common standard for "evil": theft, murder, rape, terrorism, and so on are held to be evil. He uses this standard because there is none better, and because it is necessary to use some such standard to avoid becoming ensnared by a cult of evil. If we allow exemptions to any religion, there is no reason not to allow the same exemption to all the others. If we let Yahweh get away with murder, we must let Quetzlcoatl kill as well. This leaves us right back where we started, so we can't make exemptions in any case. The fact of the matter is that Yahweh and Jesus do not pass this test. There are murder, theft, rape, and terrorism all through their books. Sometimes Yahweh does it; sometimes people do it on Yahweh's orders; sometimes Jesus just sits around gloating on the fate of sinners in the afterlife. It's simply not an acceptable religion when you hold it to a moral standard. Furthermore, this unacceptability is manifest in the history of the religion, which is one of holy wars, intolerance, purges, vicious infighting, and general immorality. Feedback ======== Some of the responses I have heard to this essay in the past are shown below, with my answers. (Actually, most of the responses I've gotten have been personal attacks and sheer, unadorned sophistry; these are the cream.) --- "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". One particularly curious rationalization here is that "starvation and disease and all the other evils of the world come from breaking God's laws." Starvation comes from not having enough food. Disease comes from exposure to various nasty micro- organisms, and from genetic infirmities. If you can show me how these two things come from breaking God's laws, I will be greatly surprised. Perhaps at the root they are caused by Adam and Eve falling from grace, but you can't hold some starving infant in Namibia responsible for the actions of two long-dead people, any more than you can hold me responsible for the acts of Jack the Ripper. There just isn't sufficient connection to establish guilt. --- "Everything God does is really good, even though we can't always see that it is." There is no possible amount of good that can counterbalance the deliberate, 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 undernourished. 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 omniscient 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 damn thing, despite the fact that he has an unlimited supply of food to give. Another example of his mercy. Christians have been claiming that there will be wonderful events, that will more than make up for the abominable pain and suffering on Earth, for about two thousand years now. It is clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly after his death. Before the Christians, the Jews and Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet the world still turns as it has, and there is still no reason to think of these claims as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses. --- "You are fixating on evil and ignoring the good done by Yahweh." A few years ago, there was a man named John Wayne Gacy. He was a good neighbor, a friendly man; he liked to dress up as a clown and bring delight to children's faces. He also abducted, raped, and killed more than a dozen boys, and buried them in his basement. When the jury convicted him, were they failing to take his good side into account? The fact is that murder and rape outweigh any other good that can be done by a being, and proof of these acts is sufficient for conviction of the being, for deciding it is evil. Charles Manson was good to his girls; but that made no difference at his trial for the murder of Sharon Tate, nor should it have. --- "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 once they had decided to worship him; their basic assumption is that they are correct, so they are untouchable by any rationality. Conclusion ========== In closing, let's see how Yahweh/Jesus stands up to his own standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life." Yahweh does not feed the hungry, he does not give drink to those who thirst, he dispenses no clothes, and he lets the faithful sicken and die. In the light of this, Yahweh himself is the worst of sinners; if there is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal punishment. He is guilty of almost every crime of which he accuses the damned. 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 if there were no other choice but worshipping it, I would walk in with the pride of the free man who chooses prison rather than serve an evil leader. Appendix: Non-literal Interpretations ===================================== I have gone on at some length about why I consider fundamentalist Christianity to be a morally unacceptable stance for me. However, there are also non-literal approaches to the Bible, such as those of the Jews and most Catholics. The Bible is held to be primarily a symbolic book, in which any particular passage may not refer to historical fact. This is a position I accept with reservations. For instance, it is evident that Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon are inspired books rich in symbolic meaning. However, I see no value in trying to wring symbolism from books such as Numbers and Joshua, since it is plain that their original intent was to serve as historical accounts. This separates me from the Jews, whose opinions have been (for many centuries) that these books have profound symbolic meaning. You can find symbolism in a random selection from a dictionary if you try hard enough, but I don't consider it productive. I will come to my differences with non-literalist Christians shortly. I am an eclectic. This means that I recognize that the basis of all religions is mystical experience, which happens in all cultures. Humans hang interpretations on these experiences dependent on their individual and cultural prejudices and perspectives. Often the experience inspires the mystic to write stories, typically of a kind compatible with, or expanding on, other stories in the culture. I do not treat any such story literally. For example, in Homer we hear of various gods and goddesses who walk, speak, and act in the same sense that our mailman does. I consider Aphrodite a goddess, but to me this means only that she is a symbol of the abstract principle of sex. It does not mean that there is some ectoplasmic nymph who performed the acts ascribed to Aphrodite in Greek myth. Similarly with the "gods" of the Hindus and Celts, of Shinto and of the Bible. To me, they are symbols of cosmic principles, not real beings at all. Along with these stories we usually get laws we are supposed to follow lest something awful happen. A yogi, for example, is not supposed to accept any gifts. This is because in Indian culture, gift-giving is a very big deal indeed, and very counterproductive as far as mental equilibrium is concerned. A middle-class Westerner such as myself has received so many gifts by adulthood that it causes barely a ripple, and so I see no need to follow that commandment. However, the rulebook never tells us that these rules are culturally specific; it just says, don't do it. Similarly, most of the Mosaic law is meaningful only within its original cultural context. We are not supposed to be polytheistic, for example, because the laws were written by refugees from a culture which had an extremely debased form of polytheism in which the "gods" were mechanical statues with speaking tubes through which the priests would ask for money. All commandments concerning worship, diet, sex, and so on must be considered within their cultural context. It must be recognized as well that a good deal of them are simple superstition and "old wives' tales". There are also in every religion miracle stories. Walls are supposed to have fallen at the blast of a trumpet, worlds to have been formed by a council of gods churning the primordial sea with a mountain, men and gods to have arisen from the dead, flowers to have rained about someone as he walked, illnesses to have been miraculously cured, armies to have been vanquished by single heroes, virgins to have given birth, and so on. Few of us would believe our neighbor if he said that these things had happened last week, but many people are far more accepting when it comes to the distant past. I think these accounts of impossibilities, when they appear in historical accounts, are caused by exaggeration, fabrication, and lacunae; when they appear in symbolic stories, they represent cosmic principles and processes. Many cultures have stories of gods who were slain and then returned to life; I doubt this has ever happened, but it does conveniently symbolize the yearly cycle of plant life. It also provides a convenient summary of the formula of improvement through self-restriction. Similarly, most religions have some description of continued existence after death. These involve various other worlds which are claimed to be as real as this one. In these worlds, various pleasures and torments are more common than in the world we tie our shoes in. Largely, these serve to bribe or threaten us into following the "laws" of the religion. They also symbolize various conditions which humans create for themselves in life, and therein is the virtue of such tales. A person who allows himself to be driven, will he nil he, by his or her crass desires (gluttony, sexual conquest, money, etc.) will find himself, while still alive, in the Buddhist world of "hungry ghosts", with a stomach like a mountain and a mouth like an insect's. Dante told of a Hell in which the conditions of the damned were straightforward metaphors of the conditions they created for themselves in life. As for the "existence" of these worlds in the sense of the existence of Peoria, I have my doubts, but don't they make great symbols? I view the Bible in the same way I view the scriptures of most other religions, as a mixture of inspired symbolism, garbled history, and cultural prejudices. I treat its tales of miracles (i.e., impossibilities) as symbolic representations or as falsehoods, its strictures as culturally-bound laws of limited applicability, and its God as a metaphor representing the underlying unity of the cosmos. I don't believe a virgin gave birth, I don't believe a man returned from death, and I don't believe that the physical world was created by a sentient being. I don't believe in the reality of Heaven or Hell, and I doubt very much that anyone has ever held tablets inscribed in human tongues by a non-human hand. Most of these are fine symbols, though no better or worse than those in many other religions. Since these are my beliefs, and they diverge so widely from both Christian and Jewish thought, I do not call myself a Jew or Christian. Nor do I call myself a Hindu, Buddhist, Greek, Zoroastrian, Satanist, or Shintoist. I do call myself a Thelemite and a Taoist, because these religions have kept themselves free of doctrines needing to be discarded or deliteralized. You may call me a humanist, a polytheist, an atheist, a monotheist, an agnostic: I am all these and more, and glad to be this way. -- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: Try sending through a gateway such as DECWRL, UCB-VAX, SEISMO, or HARVARD -- mailer conventions differ on syntax
jho@ihuxn.UUCP (Yosi Hoshen) (11/10/84)
At one time, I thought that Tim Maroney's presentations are too harsh, and his views on religion are too extreme. After rereading Tim's articles and reading articles by our fundamentalist friends, I am of the opinion that Tim's presentation and views are neither harsh nor extreme. The views expressed by Ken Nichols have convinced me that Tim was precisely on the target. I find the fundamentalists' cry: 'If you don't accept Jesus as your savior you will burn in hell for eternity', very offensive and possibly dangerous. Compared to these religious views, the tone of Tim's article is very mild. I have not seen any convincing arguments that we shall be burning in hell if we don't accept Jesus. There has been a tremendous amount of rambling and quoting the NT, but no evidence. The warning of punishment in hell reminds me of the story of a person yelling "fire" in a packed theater, when the fire is only a figure of that person's imagination. -- Yosi Hoshen Bell Laboratories Naperville, Illinois (312)-979-7321 Mail: ihnp4!ihuxn!jho
tim@k.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (09/14/85)
"Even If I Did Believe ..." by Tim Maroney November 5,1984 Copyright 1984 by the author Introduction ============ I am not a Christian. In my discussions of this fact with Christians, I have repeatedly run into a major misunderstanding. The Christians assume that if I believed the Bible were true, I would become a Christian; that is, they believe that my reason for not being a Christian is that I don't believe in their god. This is not the case. In this essay, I will explain more clearly why I am not a Christian. The essay is not meant as an attack on Christianity, just as a statement of personal belief. One disclaimer: The thesis of this essay is that even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship. Consequently, I speak sometimes as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not. 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 monster. If an angel appeared to me and removed my appendectomy scar so I could never deny the reality of divine power, I still would not be a Christian. My primary reason for not being a Christian 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 the average high school student. That God does what he wants, when he wants, without even an attempt at self-justification, and all for what reason? According to Paul, all for his own greater glory. 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, refuses to deal with any other god on a friendly basis, rains doom on those who dare to try to be as knowledgable as he is, and so on. Hell ==== Jesus preaching love in no way atones for Yahweh's many hideous crimes; lest we forget, it was at the time of Jesus that he created Hell. This cruellest of all concentration camps (certainly far worse than the ones created by the Nazis) was at no time mentioned in the Old Testament, and the wrathful and threatening god of the Old Testament would hardly have omitted any chance to terrify his worshippers. (Incidentally, the "Sheol" of the Old Testament is simply a generic term for the afterlife; neither modern scholarship nor Judaic tradition equates it with Hell.) I have heard some Christians who believe that there is no everburning Hell in their religion, that the "lake of fire" is purely destructive, that sinners will be annihilated rather than tortured after the Last Judgment. Sometimes, they claim that medieval Catholics created that "myth", and that they would revile any god who made this concentration camp. Well, get ready to start reviling then. The myth of Hell was not created in the Middle Ages. It is explicitly stated in a set of books called the Synoptic Gospels, you know, the ones by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Since some people don't seem to be very familiar with these books, usually considered the cornerstone of Christianity, I'll fill them in. In Matt. 18:34-35, Jesus finishes up a parable about an unforgiving debtor with: "And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart." Not clean killing -- you will be handed over to the torturers. In the parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus concludes with "Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.'" The king didn't say, "Execute him", but bind him and throw him into a painful place. This is echoed in Mat. 24:51, in almost the same words, and again in Mat. 25:30, again with similar words. Finally (for Matthew), we have Mat. 25:41-46, on the Last Judgment. "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life.'" My point is proven, so I won't bore you with the quotes from Mark and Luke; however, check out Mark 9:43, Mark 9:48-49, Luke 13:27- 28, and Luke 16:23-26 if you still doubt. Why would Jesus have so frequently mentioned the existence of an afterlife of torment if that was misleading his followers? And why did he never imply the existence of a forthcoming destruction of the unfaithful? Among the Christians who accept the reality of Hell, another rationalization is quite popular. This holds that Hell is in some sense voluntary, and chosen by its inmates. It's an interesting idea, and certainly one of the more interesting aspects of Dante's "Inferno" is the way the conditions of the damned reflect conditions created in life by their sins. I agree completely that the man who commits murder must live ever in fear of attack, that the thief will never feel secure in his property, that the liar can trust no one, and so on. By their offenses they create an unpleasant life for themselves. However, you don't have to hurt anyone to get into Hell. All it takes, according to Scripture, is knowing about Jesus and not accepting him as Savior. It doesn't matter how virtuous you are, how much good you do, how happy an environment you create for yourself and others. Given this, the voluntary entry argument doesn't make sense. The same argument could be used to justify the sending of Aryan opponents of Nazism to concentration camps: they voluntarily chose not to give homage to Hitler, so they chose to be interred. Why should we blame the Nazis for the inmates' choice? Why should we blame Yahweh for the choice of the damned? Genocide ======== You hear a lot from Christians about Yahweh's "infinite compassion and mercy". Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of Yahweh. A sample of this tale: "They waged the campaign against Midian, as Yahweh had ordered Moses, and they put every male to death.... The sons of Israel took the Midianite women captive with their young children, and plundered all their cattle, all their flocks and all their goods. They set fire to the towns where they lived and all their encampments.... Moses was enraged with the commanders of the army ... who had come back from this military expedition. He said, 'Why have you spared the life of all the women? ... So kill all the male children. Kill also all the women who have slept with a man. Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves.'" Yes, friends, this is infinite mercy and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the young girls to be kept for later raping. If only humans could keep to such lofty standards without the necessity of divine revelation. This wasn't the first time the Hebrews harassed the Midianites (although it was obviously the last...) Earlier, in Chapter 25 to be precise, Israel settled in Midian. Rather than toss the Hebrews out on their ear from this land of limited resources, the Midianites -- well, I'll let the author of Numbers tell it: "The [Hebrews] gave themselves over to debauchery with the daughters of Moab. These invited them to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down before their gods. With Israel thus committed to the Baal of Peor, the anger of Yahweh blazed out against them. Yahweh said to Moses: 'Take all the leaders of the people. Impale them for Yahweh, here in the sun; then the burning anger of Yahweh will turn away from Israel.' Moses said to the judges in Israel, 'Every one of you must put to death those of his people who have committed themselves to the Baal of Peor.'" Now that is written in a rather negatively-connoted fashion. Look at what actually happened: Israel arrived in Midian. The Midianites welcomed them like kinfolk. They let them date their daughters; they invited them to come to Church. Right neighborly reception, if you ask me. Some of the Hebrews, no doubt impressed by the friendly ways of these people, took up the local customs of their own free will. So what does Moses do? He puts spears through them and lets them rot in the sun. Who's the bad guy here? I'd say it's pretty obvious. Neither apostacy nor fornication deserve the death penalty -- or do you think we should start frying unwed mothers and those who leave their religion, by Federal law? Right on the heels of this comes a plague. This is blamed by the Hebrews on one Zimri, who had the incredible gall to actually marry a Midianite woman! Fortunately, a zealous son of Israel speared them both right through the genitals, and the plague went away. Now we moderns know that disease just doesn't work that way, but a more important objection concerns a point of Biblical trivia. Of what nationality was Zipporah, the wife of Moses? You have five seconds ... That's right, she was a Midianite! But for some reason Moses' genitals were allowed to remain intact. This makes marriage to a Midianite seem like less than a capital offense. I don't think the firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with the verdict of compassion and mercy (Ex. 11:5,12:29). Yahweh could have teleported the Jews out of captivity without bloodshed, or put the Egyptians to sleep while they left, but no. That wouldn't be gory and exciting enough for him. Now rivers of blood, killing innocent children: there's something you can really sink your teeth into. It was due to Yahweh's hardening of Pharoah's heart in the first place that made the later cruelties necessary. And why? Yahweh explains to Moses in Ex. 11:9, "Pharoah will not listen to you; so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt." Wonderful. All those children and adults tortured and killed, for the same reason that would lead one of us today to set off fireworks. This is immorality, pure and simple. The entire book of Joshua is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes for space reasons -- I urge you to look them up for yourself. If you are not shocked, then your moral standards must be low indeed. Of course, you will sometimes hear rationalizations of this slaughter. There are three major forms: the corruption argument, the universal criminalization argument, and the mercy argument. The first and second say that those slaughtered were evil and deserving of their fate; the third says that since they were religiously incorrect, it was a mercy to terminate their existence. The corruption argument simply does not hold up. The people slaughtered in the Old Testament were almost uniformly blameless (with a few exceptions, of course -- for instance, the Sodomites violated the conventions of hospitality.) Usually, no justification is offered beyond the fact that since they were of another tribe, it was OK to kill them. And it goes without saying that the hordes of slaughtered children were innocent. Does the fact that you think God has told you that some country is corrupt give you the right to slaughter every inhabitant of the country? If so, then let's start sending arms to Iran for use against Iraq right away! The universal criminalization argument is very silly. It goes like this. All men are disgusting sinners who deserve to be killed. When Yahweh kills some of them, he has every right to, because they are vile sinners. Hmm. In that case, if I decide that someone is a vile sinner and deserves to die, then that is a correct perception. Therefore, if I cash in their chips myself, it's OK, they got what they deserved, no more and no less. How many of us would object if someone had knocked off Hitler? He deserved it, so why should we object? Now what about knocking off Mother Theresa? She deserves it; she's a human after all. By making all men deserving of death, universal criminalization makes murder less than a sin. (The people who put it forth should be glad I don't buy it, or they would probably be first on my list!) What's that you say? Only Yahweh has the right to kill those who deserve it? I see. We should have stayed home during World War II. In any case, this is yet another moral double standard, and those are clearly unacceptable. Stay tuned if you can't see why. As to the mercy argument: They shoot horses, don't they? However, people are not animals to be destroyed against their will in the name of mercy. If I don't claim to be suffering, and don't ask to die, neither you nor any god has the right to decide that you know better. Neglect ======= Most of us, given omnipotence, would be able to do a far better job than Yahweh. What would you do if given omnipotence? If your answer is anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's something more than 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 and a bit of common sense. God's supposedly infinite mercy is apparently the same thing as no mercy at all. What makes this particularly unforgivable is that even Jesus's own standards demand feeding of the poor. See Matthew 25:35, in which it is stated that the blessed feed the hungry, and that the damned do not. Yahweh is held blameless, though, for not feeding them. Does the old saw about "practicing what you preach" not apply to Yahweh? Is his hypocrisy not a sin? Usually, when I bring this up in a discussion, someone says, "No; it is the evil of men that is to blame; they have lots of money and keep it to themselves rather than feeding the poor." This argument uses a double standard. Men are held guilty for not feeding the poor, while Yahweh is held innocent for doing exactly the same. In fact, it would be far easier for Yahweh to feed all the poor than for any man to feed even one! Men are certainly not blameless here, but it is Yahweh who is the true villain. One popular rationalization of this is that for Yahweh to feed all the hungry would somehow (and it is never explained how) make it more difficult for people to get into Heaven. Sure, and another reason is that it would make the quality of newspapers worse, right? You can't just say that two things are connected when there is no apparent or explained link between them! (Well, you can, but you're making a fool of yourself.) Another popular rationalization is that life without "challenges" would be boring and dehumanizing, so Yahweh does not remove them. The fallacy here is grouping all challenges together. I personally lead a very challenging and satisfying life, but I have not lately had to flee any volcanos or earthquakes, go without food for a week, or suffer the ravages of some disease. I would be quite happy, in fact, if I never did have to face such challenges as those. There is plenty of room for amelioration of the human condition without making it dull. Another objection here is that the same people who like this rationalization usually believe that they will enter a world that is perfect and without challenge after death, but they don't seem particularly put off by the "dullness" of Heaven .... Other Gods ========== 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 jealous Judeo-Christian god does the opposite. (Some people feel that Yahweh is the only god, and therefore cannot be faulted for not having friendly relations with other gods. This idea is a fairly modern invention: that not only is he the best god, but the only one. Yahweh is repeatedly referred to as "our God" in the Pentateuch, and there is no implication until Isaiah that he is the only real one. Also, try Deut. 5:7-9. It is psychotic to be jealous of nonexistent beings. The statement "You shall have no gods except me" clearly implies that the contrary is possible. However, I am willing to grant that there are no other gods for the sake of argument.) Suppose you were an omnipotent god and there were no other gods. What would you do? Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles; after all, this doesn't require any effort, and keeps people from delusion. No such luck in the case of Jehovah. He demands absolute fidelity without any demonstration of his existence, beyond some visionary manifestations of the sort that you can get from any religion. Christians commonly rationalize this in one of two ways. First, they claim that there is a virtue in believing something without proof; that is, faith in itself is held to be a virtue, and Yahweh doesn't want to remove our opportunity to indulge in it. All I can say to this is that I do not consider faith to be a virtue -- I consider it to be a sign of intellectual weakness, and a significant barrier to scientific and other progress. There is no virtue in accepting a thing on faith, since it may well be false, and it is clearly not virtuous to believe the false. Given that one has faith, how does one decide whether to put it in Christianity instead of Hinduism? There is no way; you just have to cross your fingers and take the plunge. Whichever choice you take, you will hear voices in your head, see divine manifestations, and so on, so even once the plunge is taken there is no way to know you are correct. Further on this topic, according to the Bible Yahweh repeatedly deprived people of their opportunity for faith by manifesting himself in undeniable ways. It is hard to place much stock in a virtue for which Yahweh removes the opportunity among his most favored, such as Moses and other prophets. It has also not escaped my attention that many of the same people who prattle about the virtues of faith like to talk about "proofs" of various things in their religion, such as the resurrection of Jesus. Which is it? Do you have faith, or do you have proof? Second, there is the rationalization that scientific discovery would become impossible if a continual stream of verifiable miracles were performed. This argument denies the omnipotence of Yahweh. If he can do anything, he can perform a sequence of miracles in such a way as to convince everyone of his existence and not interfere with scientific discovery at all. The only things he can't do are logical absurdities such as making 2+2=5. The point to remember here is that if we don't believe in him, we go to Hell, and this is a greater evil than a lack of the "virtue" of faith or a stunting of science, or anything else conceivable. If Yahweh is concerned about the good, he will do what he can to keep us from Hell, and withholding vital information from us is the exact opposite of this. Other Charges ============= The charge against Yahweh of infecting us with disease is particularly strong. God made these micro-organisms, and made us subject to them. If I made a bunch of plague germs and set them loose, you would rightly hold me accountable. Since (according to Genesis) all life and thus all disease comes from Yahweh, I hold him similarly accountable. A similar consideration arises with respect to the common Christian conception of Satan. This being was created and unleashed by God, who knew exactly what he would do: that is, spend his entire existence wreaking havoc and leading people into criminal activities. Suppose I were to build an evil robot that I knew would go around killing people. Whose fault would it be if I let it loose, mine or the robot's? Whose fault is deviltry in the world, the puppet Satan or the being that deliberately created Satan's evil? Yahweh deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding. I have heard the claim that Yahweh does not restrict us from learning, that he encourages us to learn all we can. Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do. [Horrors! -- tim] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Incidentally, don't confuse what you were taught in Sunday school with Scripture; the reason the tower was being built had nothing to do with men wanting to be like God; Gen. 11:4 contains the real reason: "Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not be scattered about the whole earth." We Americans do things like that all the time. Human Judgment ============== One of the criticisms most frequently levelled at me when presenting these arguments has been that I have no right to judge God. In the universe model of many Christians, God is the definition of good. All morality proceeds downwards from him, so it makes no sense to apply moral standards to him. From the perspective of man, trying to determine which of the various conflicting belief systems he should abide by, this argument makes no sense. Assume that there is some religion of an evil god; we'll call this god Satan for convenience. It is clear that adherents of the religion of Satan would see him not as evil, but as good. Someone who is not a member of the religion of Satan might say, "But your god has ordered the slaughter of innocents! How, then, can you say that he is good?" The reply of one of the Satanists is likely to be, "Satan is the source of good; he is good by definition; he is far above us humans; it is thus nonsensical for us to judge him." That's the only way to wriggle off the hook. Slaughtering innocents is obviously evil, so to save Satan he has to be taken outside the normal standards of good and evil. Now suppose that the questioner of the previous paragraph is trying to decide which religion to join. He must try to evaluate the various religions available to him; in particular, he will try to avoid falling into the clutches of some religion that worships an evil god or evil spirit. However, no religion says "We are evil; shun us like the plague." All religions claim to be good. So he will have to use some standard to compare the various religions, and this standard has to be independent of any one religion. Otherwise, he couldn't even get started. All religions are best by their own standard. What standard is available for this necessary comparison? None is really ideal. The best we can do is say that religion is best which causes evil acts in its worshippers least and in which apparently evil acts are not performed by the worshipped being(s). Here he uses the common standard for "evil": theft, murder, rape, terrorism, and so on are held to be evil. He uses this standard because there is none better, and because it is necessary to use some such standard to avoid becoming ensnared by a cult of evil. If we allow exemptions to any religion, there is no reason not to allow the same exemption to all the others. If we let Yahweh get away with murder, we must let Quetzlcoatl kill as well. This leaves us right back where we started, so we can't make exemptions in any case. The fact of the matter is that Yahweh and Jesus do not pass this test. There are murder, theft, rape, and terrorism all through their books. Sometimes Yahweh does it; sometimes people do it on Yahweh's orders; sometimes Jesus just sits around gloating on the fate of sinners in the afterlife. It's simply not an acceptable religion when you hold it to a moral standard. Furthermore, this unacceptability is manifest in the history of the religion, which is one of holy wars, intolerance, purges, vicious infighting, and general immorality. Feedback ======== Some of the responses I have heard to this essay in the past are shown below, with my answers. (Actually, most of the responses I've gotten have been personal attacks and sheer, unadorned sophistry; these are the cream.) --- "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". One particularly curious rationalization here is that "starvation and disease and all the other evils of the world come from breaking God's laws." Starvation comes from not having enough food. Disease comes from exposure to various nasty micro- organisms, and from genetic infirmities. If you can show me how these two things come from breaking God's laws, I will be greatly surprised. Perhaps at the root they are caused by Adam and Eve falling from grace, but you can't hold some starving infant in Namibia responsible for the actions of two long-dead people, any more than you can hold me responsible for the acts of Jack the Ripper. There just isn't sufficient connection to establish guilt. --- "Everything God does is really good, even though we can't always see that it is." There is no possible amount of good that can counterbalance the deliberate, 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 undernourished. 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 omniscient 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 damn thing, despite the fact that he has an unlimited supply of food to give. Another example of his mercy. Christians have been claiming that there will be wonderful events, that will more than make up for the abominable pain and suffering on Earth, for about two thousand years now. It is clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly after his death. Before the Christians, the Jews and Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet the world still turns as it has, and there is still no reason to think of these claims as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses. --- "You are fixating on evil and ignoring the good done by Yahweh." A few years ago, there was a man named John Wayne Gacy. He was a good neighbor, a friendly man; he liked to dress up as a clown and bring delight to children's faces. He also abducted, raped, and killed more than a dozen boys, and buried them in his basement. When the jury convicted him, were they failing to take his good side into account? The fact is that murder and rape outweigh any other good that can be done by a being, and proof of these acts is sufficient for conviction of the being, for deciding it is evil. Charles Manson was good to his girls; but that made no difference at his trial for the murder of Sharon Tate, nor should it have. --- "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 once they had decided to worship him; their basic assumption is that they are correct, so they are untouchable by any rationality. Conclusion ========== In closing, let's see how Yahweh/Jesus stands up to his own standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life." Yahweh does not feed the hungry, he does not give drink to those who thirst, he dispenses no clothes, and he lets the faithful sicken and die. In the light of this, Yahweh himself is the worst of sinners; if there is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal punishment. He is guilty of almost every crime of which he accuses the damned. 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 if there were no other choice but worshipping it, I would walk in with the pride of the free man who chooses prison rather than serve an evil leader. Appendix: Non-literal Interpretations ===================================== I have gone on at some length about why I consider fundamentalist Christianity to be a morally unacceptable stance for me. However, there are also non-literal approaches to the Bible, such as those of the Jews and most Catholics. The Bible is held to be primarily a symbolic book, in which any particular passage may not refer to historical fact. This is a position I accept with reservations. For instance, it is evident that Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon are inspired books rich in symbolic meaning. However, I see no value in trying to wring symbolism from books such as Numbers and Joshua, since it is plain that their original intent was to serve as historical accounts. This separates me from the Jews, whose opinions have been (for many centuries) that these books have profound symbolic meaning. You can find symbolism in a random selection from a dictionary if you try hard enough, but I don't consider it productive. I will come to my differences with non-literalist Christians shortly. I am an eclectic. This means that I recognize that the basis of all religions is mystical experience, which happens in all cultures. Humans hang interpretations on these experiences dependent on their individual and cultural prejudices and perspectives. Often the experience inspires the mystic to write stories, typically of a kind compatible with, or expanding on, other stories in the culture. I do not treat any such story literally. For example, in Homer we hear of various gods and goddesses who walk, speak, and act in the same sense that our mailman does. I consider Aphrodite a goddess, but to me this means only that she is a symbol of the abstract principle of sex. It does not mean that there is some ectoplasmic nymph who performed the acts ascribed to Aphrodite in Greek myth. Similarly with the "gods" of the Hindus and Celts, of Shinto and of the Bible. To me, they are symbols of cosmic principles, not real beings at all. Along with these stories we usually get laws we are supposed to follow lest something awful happen. A yogi, for example, is not supposed to accept any gifts. This is because in Indian culture, gift-giving is a very big deal indeed, and very counterproductive as far as mental equilibrium is concerned. A middle-class Westerner such as myself has received so many gifts by adulthood that it causes barely a ripple, and so I see no need to follow that commandment. However, the rulebook never tells us that these rules are culturally specific; it just says, don't do it. Similarly, most of the Mosaic law is meaningful only within its original cultural context. We are not supposed to be polytheistic, for example, because the laws were written by refugees from a culture which had an extremely debased form of polytheism in which the "gods" were mechanical statues with speaking tubes through which the priests would ask for money. All commandments concerning worship, diet, sex, and so on must be considered within their cultural context. It must be recognized as well that a good deal of them are simple superstition and "old wives' tales". There are also in every religion miracle stories. Walls are supposed to have fallen at the blast of a trumpet, worlds to have been formed by a council of gods churning the primordial sea with a mountain, men and gods to have arisen from the dead, flowers to have rained about someone as he walked, illnesses to have been miraculously cured, armies to have been vanquished by single heroes, virgins to have given birth, and so on. Few of us would believe our neighbor if he said that these things had happened last week, but many people are far more accepting when it comes to the distant past. I think these accounts of impossibilities, when they appear in historical accounts, are caused by exaggeration, fabrication, and lacunae; when they appear in symbolic stories, they represent cosmic principles and processes. Many cultures have stories of gods who were slain and then returned to life; I doubt this has ever happened, but it does conveniently symbolize the yearly cycle of plant life. It also provides a convenient summary of the formula of improvement through self-restriction. Similarly, most religions have some description of continued existence after death. These involve various other worlds which are claimed to be as real as this one. In these worlds, various pleasures and torments are more common than in the world we tie our shoes in. Largely, these serve to bribe or threaten us into following the "laws" of the religion. They also symbolize various conditions which humans create for themselves in life, and therein is the virtue of such tales. A person who allows himself to be driven, will he nil he, by his or her crass desires (gluttony, sexual conquest, money, etc.) will find himself, while still alive, in the Buddhist world of "hungry ghosts", with a stomach like a mountain and a mouth like an insect's. Dante told of a Hell in which the conditions of the damned were straightforward metaphors of the conditions they created for themselves in life. As for the "existence" of these worlds in the sense of the existence of Peoria, I have my doubts, but don't they make great symbols? I view the Bible in the same way I view the scriptures of most other religions, as a mixture of inspired symbolism, garbled history, and cultural prejudices. I treat its tales of miracles (i.e., impossibilities) as symbolic representations or as falsehoods, its strictures as culturally-bound laws of limited applicability, and its God as a metaphor representing the underlying unity of the cosmos. I don't believe a virgin gave birth, I don't believe a man returned from death, and I don't believe that the physical world was created by a sentient being. I don't believe in the reality of Heaven or Hell, and I doubt very much that anyone has ever held tablets inscribed in human tongues by a non-human hand. Most of these are fine symbols, though no better or worse than those in many other religions. Since these are my beliefs, and they diverge so widely from both Christian and Jewish thought, I do not call myself a Jew or Christian. Nor do I call myself a Hindu, Buddhist, Greek, Zoroastrian, Satanist, or Shintoist. I do call myself a Thelemite and a Taoist, because these religions have kept themselves free of doctrines needing to be discarded or deliteralized. You may call me a humanist, a polytheist, an atheist, a monotheist, an agnostic: I am all these and more, and glad to be this way. -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!"