pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) (08/28/85)
I apologize to the readers of the Usenet if my articles have induced a flood of religious doggerel in response to my articles, such as we have seen from Verbus M. Counts on the words of Bahaullah. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Bahaullah is the founder of Bahaiism, a movement which glorifies God by proclaiming that all religions actually whorship the same God under different names, encouraging spiritual unity among religions. Forgetting for the moment the evils of God that I have expounded upon at length, take a look at what has been reproduced in the two articles about Bahai in response to my articles. The articles contain laudatory praises to God, sheepish whorshipful whinings about how great He is and how lowly and miserable we are in comparison. ``God is indeed the maker of all things,'' says one article. As if a bold assertion would simply make it true. Can we believe such jibberish, even if it is spoken by God? Especially if it is spoken by God?! God has a vested interest in our believing such lies as these. But even a cursory examination of the content of the two articles on Bahai gives us a clue to the sum and total of the religious believer's way of answering the questions I raise about God. Their answer is ``Praise God the Almighty, You ARE the King of the Universe.'' As if a bold assertion would simply make the questions vanish into air. If I recall my history, Bahaullah was exiled for his heretical beliefs by devout religious believers in his native country, Persia, now Iran, home of the most fervent hotbed of dogmatic religious hatred in the world outside of the United States. It's ``almost'' as if God had instructed His followers to rid themselves of this ``evil'' man for making heretical statements about the oneness of mankind. Why, such thinking could only lead to an end to hatred and prejudice. Something God most certainly does not want. God would rather see such things spread violently to the ends of the Earth. Poor Bahaullah, he sought a universal good among people in their whorship of God. If he was looking for good in God, he was certainly looking in the wrong place. Conversely, look at how God supports people like Don Black and his Nazi friends. When they tell you ``God is on their side,'' they are most certainly correct. God enjoys infusing people's minds with hatred and bigotry, and loves to watch the bloodbath that follows. Throughout history, God has scoffed at good, and propped up evil, to augment his pleasure at making or watching us suffer. Once again, I apologize if my articles bring out a torrential flood of this type of response. Articles that sing God's praises instead of facing up what He is or explaining why the authors choose to whorship the pig monster in light of the facts about His evil. I was hoping to read some serious responses from the religious thinkers on the Usenet. But it appears that the only responses forthcoming are lavish praises for God that blithely ignore all I've said about His evil, insults and bad jokes from those who are too afraid to think about how evil God really is, and silence from those afraid to speak. Mike Hubeynz and cjc@psuvm.BITNET (sorry, your name wasn't included with your article) have both written excellent articles. One about how ignoring the Damager-God is nothing but unrealistic expectation coupled with blind optimism. The other about how the Bible offers many other examples of God's evil (such as the way He killed innocents solely to prove His power and assure His glory in future generations, as in the story of His ``hardening Pharaoh's heart'' and in the Book of Job). Faced with things like this, the religious either blindly continue to sing His praises, insult those who offer their learning to them, or ignore it all. In hopes that all the evidence confronting them about the evil of God will simply go away. (Which, somewhat ironically, is what they claim non-believers are doing in the face of their ``evidence'' about their beliefs in God! Evidence that consists solely of God's word, which we've learned not to accept as truthful at all.) I invite serious commentary and conversation on the issues raised by my articles, either by mail or on the Usenet. I appreciate your taking the time to read this in the midst of all the nonsense and counternonsense filling up the newsgroups. -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez