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Why the Christian God does not Exist

Jesus the Man, Jesus the Myth

Why Believe in Jesus?

Atheist Christmas: Jesus and the baa-lambs, bah humbug!

Saul: What a Silly Cult!

The Logic of Christ

A major rule of good management and general discipline is to praise in public and chastise in private.

Another is to make rules clear and punishments certain.

Another is to make punishments follow judgment and the original offence swiftly, as justice delayed is justice denied and no good ever comes from brooding over an impending but inevitable punishment.

The Christian god seems to break all these common-sense rules of good man-management, these basic elements of parent craft.

What kind of a disciplinarian is this god? How would you judge a parent who made rules for their family and told them to only one apparently favourite child, never made any show of backing up that child, never showed up at all for all practical purposes but communicated entirely by private telephone conversations behind closed doors to the one child but promised to give all his children a sound beating at some unspecified future date if the children didn't proclaim their love for him?

Such behaviour, or rather lack of behaviour, would have the appropriate authorities leaping in to save those neglected and abused children. We are both the children and the authorities. It is time we took responsibility for ourselves, made our own rules, had our own system of justice and stopped listening to the tales of the absent tyrant who is said to love us and yet would see us face infinite torture for simply not believing he exists.

How can anybody take this story seriously? How can anybody believe that a god can communicate with some special people directly, prophets, and all of these prophets would know the stories of the previous prophets and nobody who didn't know the stories would be able to receive the messages. Come on, think about that one for moment without “knowing” that there must be a perfectly good explanation even if you can't actually think what it might be. It stinks. Doesn't it?

It stinks in just the same way as stories about children's invisible friends stink. It is an extraordinary claim which must surely only be believed if there was extraordinary proof. Why does Mr Snuggles only speak to the only child who can see him? Why doesn't Mr Snuggles ever talk to people who don't think he's real? Why does Mr Snuggles not know about the invisible friends other children have? Have you ever known one child's invisible friend talk to another child's invisible friend? It is strange that being invisible and only talking to children who believe in them is something invisible friends (and one-and-only-gods) have in common and yet they never seem to talk to each other.

Have you ever asked a Christian why their invisible friend doesn't talk to Abdul's invisible friend? The answer seems to be that they deny the existence (or identity) of each other's invisible friend and dismiss each other's “experiences”, “answered prayers” and “miracles”. Just like children.

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited