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Who Cares What Jesus Would Do?
Why I am an Atheist
Why We are Atheists
Do You Want to Buy My Soul?
The Power of Faith
Blinding Faith
Chain of Faith
Faith, Hope and Belief
The Great Teleport Debate
How do Christians manage to get away with it? They claim snowflakes and kittens are too complicated to exist by themselves and so must have a designer, an argument that cannot be dismissed as unreasonable, it is a possibility that cannot simply be written off out of hand. When atheists do dismiss all possibilities and cut off discussions they can appear dogmatic and closed minded. I do not believe in a creator or intelligent designer, but it is a hypothesis that I do not discard as being utterly impossible, it deserves to be considered and passed down to future generations as an educational footnote along with the Loch Ness Monster, flying saucers and the Yeti as something unlikely to be true, awaiting some reasonable evidence. Giving it more than five minutes of classroom discussion in a student's entire educational career is utterly ridiculous, as absurd as having a school trip to find Atlantis.
But after the reasonable “maybe this is here for a reason” hypothesis they then make an invisible leap to the idea that therefore the reason is a god, the God of the Hebrews, God, his son's name was Jesus and everything the Third Baptist Conference says is meant to be taken seriously in the Bible is true. Where did that come from?
Maybe there is a designer of the universe, I don't believe it but I am not arrogant enough to say it cannot be true why should anybody expect such a force to make itself imperfectly known to particular people all in historical connection with each other? Why should the gift of the ability to hear God only develop in people who have already been taught who God is? How come Buddhist monks, Hindu fakirs or whirling dervishes never tune in to Jesus but alcoholic deadbeat sons of Republican politicians do?
How come the face of Mary appears in tortillas but not chapattis?
If there is a god, just the one, why would it have to be one of the one and only gods that mankind has invented? To claim that God has made himself known to people and passed on his message raises a huge number of questions which are difficult to give convincing and coherent answers to.
Why would a god want people to act in a particular way? Why would a god make unclean animals out of tasty meat? A god would be in every sense above anything he created or allowed to be created. Being personally involved in our lives seems rather sick, being personally involved with the lives of a single tribe seems to be entirely inappropriate behaviour for the creator of the universe, especially the creator of a universe so big we can't understand it without playing tricks on our brains that is an equally mind-buggeringly vast 13.8 billion years old.
What explanation is there for God's racism or pro-Semitism? The only special thing about the Jews is the fact that people (especially themselves) think they are special. There is little or no evidence that the Jews have had an especially glorious history. The story of Moses seems to be entirely fictitious, with no evidence of slavery in Egypt (or indeed much historical precedent for any race or tribe to be taken into slavery en masse anywhere, at any time, ever) The whole story stinks so we need not get overly concerned with explaining things such as the parting of the Red Sea any more than we need to explain why the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus or how the person who held up Excalibur out of the lake managed to breathe because it is far more rational to assume that it is just mythical bullshit. Trying to explain such stories is pointless, if you give a poor explanation some people think that in so doing you have strengthened the classic version. Trying to explain “the truth behind the myth” suggests that the people who told the stories were incapable of using their imagination and inventing the whole story.
Tribal people all over the world the world have myths which everybody knows are fictional, what possible and plausible reason is there to think that the Jews were incapable of such invention or such chutzpah? To make such an assumption is absurd. What possible reason is there to assume that Jews are psychologically incapable of inventing myths, made up stories, like Santa Claus, that people know are fictional but tell anyway? None at all. And yet believing this absurdity is central to so much of Judaism and the dangerous and absurd fundamental and literal Christianity that is so common in America. They require people to believe that the ancient Hebrews were incapable of making up stories or writing anything unless directly inspired by God. This attitude really needs to be examined in detail and challenged whenever people come across it. Actually it deserves to hoots of derision.
Where is Hebrew literature and epic poetry? They were a rather unimaginative lot it seems. High literacy rates but nothing to write. No stories. No poems. No plays. No works of imagination of any kind (assuming for the moment that the Bible is dictation rather than fiction). Just a religion that outsiders are not welcome to join. A racist religion? What else could you call it? At the very least it is profoundly xenophobic in nature. How can such a fundamentally tribal religion be respectable in the modern world? How can the world stand by and not be concerned about a people who worship a god that told them that they had a duty to commit genocide?
How can the world be comfortable with a billion people believing they have a duty to spread their religion with the sword?
How can the world be comfortable that a man with the power to launch a nuclear apocalypse actually believes that The End of The World would be A Good Thing?
Why do so many people assume that if the world they see could be considered the work of an Intelligent Designer that automatically there is only one candidate for that job? Why this leap of faith? Surely if there was a designer of the universe who wanted everybody to believe something he could ensure that it was believable without the use of a mind control trick, faith, the ultimate Get Out of your Logical Jail Free card, which is capable of allowing a person to believe in any absurdity they choose to apply it to.