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God would be an atheist...
A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life |
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HOME / This Week About GWBAA WEEKLY COLUMNS Previous Print column Why subscribe? Schedule Terms & Rates Subscribe Online column Subscribe BASICS Definitions Atheism Faith God Religion etc Analysis The meaning of life Morality etc NEXT STEPS Buy Discuss Join Read REVIEWS CONTACT Link to this site All Rights Reserved World Copyright © Martin Foreman PREVIOUSLY... In a free society, the behavior of individual adults is of no concern to the state or their neighbors, as long as that behavior respects the freedom of others and as long as the vulnerable are protected. I have no more objection to Christians worshipping God than I do to marijuana smokers, model railroaders or students of Klingon. One person's moderation... Ok, Yahweh, we get the point. Having usurped your father El and siblings Baal and Asherah, you’re still not secure in your position as The One And Only God. You need to enforce loyalty in your worshippers. In modern terms, commandments one to four are the equivalent of martial law – military decrees after a coup d’état. One commandment will do It is not yet certain whether a new prayer will need to be uttered at the Donning of the Condom. Something along the lines of “Oh, Lord, protect us from infection, but allow one or two sperm to creep out so that there is at least an outside chance of bringing yet another bawling infant into this crowded world. Amen” Protect us from infection I didn’t like the emptiness, the disconnectedness, the lack of direction and the prospect of it all ending when I die. It wasn’t long before … I was glad to be back under the umbrella of my faith.” An honest statement, but nothing to do with God. Reich tells us that he is a believer not because he has proof of God’s existence, but because he does not like the alternative. Good, evil and self-preservation Let’s be honest. The Democrats didn’t win the election, the Republican-in-Chief lost it. George W at least has a vision, no matter how awkwardly he articulates it. Make the world more American, make rich Americans richer and ignore the bleating of those whose lives and livelihoods are destroyed in the process. Who won? |
Column 108 The mask of compassion The face of evil By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 793 words Publication date: May 20, 2007 Print publications wishing to syndicate the column should click here. Individual subscribers wishing to receive columns by e-mail should click here. To an objective eye, God’s wickedness is apparent from the earliest book in the Bible to the latest natural disaster. First he denies Adam and Eve the gift of knowledge, then he expels them from Eden when they are tricked into acquiring it for themselves. Later he commits genocide, happily watching most of the human race drown in agony. A few years on, he offers his chosen people an arid, unforgiving desert while allowing heathens to live in tropical paradises. To further restrict their development, he confines them with hundreds of petty senseless laws. A dedicated sadist, God frequently encourages his people to fight each other. He takes pleasure in striking down the guilty and innocent. He slaughters children and threatens the life of the unborn. In Act Two of the Christian version, he offers the world a savior, then shows his “love” not through kindness but torture and murder. This will continue to the end of the world, when eternal life is promised to the blessed few while God can look forward to the endless torments of those that he casts into hell. (Apologists for Yahweh say that men, not God, killed Christ. This is technically true, but the all-powerful God could have demonstrated his love by stopping the execution and making saints of bad men. The fact that he did not do so underscores his essentially evil nature.) In the Muslim version, God styles himself “the Compassionate”, which is no more believable than George W Bush’s compassionate conservatism. Allah’s true nature comes through in the violence he metes out to unbelievers, apostates, women and others who displease him. In the modern world, God continues his autocratic and capricious rule. Each year he allows natural disasters such as earthquakes and storms to devastate the human race – occasionally he rewards himself with a bumper crop, such as the 2004 tsunami. To cow his followers, God insures that most of those who represent him are narrow-minded bigots who preach intolerance to all who deviate from his narrow path. Sure, God and his representatives preach love, but as every autocrat from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein knows, one of the basic rules of dictatorship is to claim the moral high ground while practising the most hideous of crimes. Furthermore, the modern deity maintains his centuries-old tradition of encouraging ignorance not knowledge. Creationism and its mutant child, intelligent design, steal the mantle of science. Reason is denounced as God’s enemy, not humanity’s friend. Above all, those closest to God prove their devotion through murder and terror. How the deity must have rejoiced, first when Muslims destroyed the Twin Towers and then when everyone else was blamed for the act, from Jews to the American government, from homosexuals to women. Do you see the pattern? The all-powerful, all-knowing, God pretends to be good but since the dawn of time he has consistently either practised evil or allowed others to practise it in his name. This wide discrepancy between God’s claim to compassion and his acts of evil is so long-standing and extensive it cannot be ignored. Rational people have long since realised that this anomaly means the concept of God is impossible and irrelevant, but people of faith are not rational. They are convinced that an all-powerful deity both created this world and maintains an active and benevolent presence and involvement in its affairs. For the sake of argument, assume that they are right. Everything in the Bible and Koran is true and an all-powerful creator watches over us. But it only makes sense if we make one small adjustment. We have to assume that God is not compassionate. Only then does it all make sense. All the times in the Bible when people suffer as the results of God’s actions or inaction. The religious leaders who preach violence and hate. The promise of hell to the many and paradise to the few. Above all, God’s lies. The hypocrisy of claiming to be love and compassion while dealing out fear and cruelty. Believers have been hypnotized as effectively as Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge or Chinese youth under Mao’s excesses, as Americans were in the early days of this presidency. Christians and Muslims alike are persuaded that black is white, that neglect is care, that egosim is selflessness, that creationism is science and that God loves us. It is all untrue and we are all victims of lies and propaganda. If there is a God, that god is not Yahweh or Allah but Satan or Shaitan. Rationalists have long known that neither God nor Satan exists. People of faith can take that first step towards enlightenment by recognizing that the only possible deity is one who wears the mask of compassion over the face of utter evil.
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If God existed, he would... If God existed, he would be an atheist. After forty years a Vatican commission has recommended that Pope Pius XII, who led the Roman Catholic Church between 1939 and 1958, should be considered for sainthood. The delay is considered by some to have been caused by Pius' less than fulsome condemnation of the Nazi regime and crimes during and after the Second World War. In contrast, the last Pope, John Paul II, was placed on the fast-track to sainthood within two years of his death, at least partly because a French nun appears to be no longer afflicted by Parkinson's Disease. That the one Pope should be considered a candidate for sainthood despite his coddling of Hitler and his cronies and the other should be considered one because of a doubtful diagnosis of disease does little to increase respect for the Roman Church. 
Popular introduction to the writers behind the Bible from historical researcher and journalist Fred Glynn. Click the picture for more information. The 2007 General Assembly of the International Humanist and Ethical Union will held in Turin, Italy on June 17 and 18. To register, apply by May 16. More information and registration here The number of new Southern Baptists is falling. In 1950, SBers baptized one person for every 19 church members. That ratio dropped to one for every 43 church members in 2003. In October 2005 Southern Baptist Convention president, Bobby Welch, set a goal of 1 million baptisms in the following 12 months. Nine months later, 258 of the 43,465 churches reported they had held 3,494 baptisms. If all churches baptized at the same rate over the twelve month period, the church would have achieved 784,000 new members. Rational minds suspect that the actual number baptized was much lower. Source: here |
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