Sinners in the hands of an evil god.

Christianity is wrong. Whether it be the dogma of fundamentalists, or the cafeteria plan of more liberal Christians, it’s all crap. Why? Because either way you look at it, the Christian god is an evil bastard.

“Evil? But God is good!”

If the Christian god is good, and he loves every person unconditionally, then he would want to create a universe in which he maximizes the number of souls in heaven, and minimizes the number of souls in hell. In fact, the Bible says just this in 2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance

But no, the Christian god is evil because among all the possible universes he could have made, he made one in which sin, pain, and suffering are not minimized and the ratio of the number of people in heaven to the number of people in hell is not optimized.

“But God didn’t create sin or pain or suffering! Sin was the fault of Adam and Eve! Pain and suffering are a result of sin!”

Bull shit. First, the Christian god is omniscient. This would require that he knew that Adam and Eve would sin before he created them. Further, by actually creating them while knowing this, it requires that he wanted them to sin or else he would not have created them. Being omniscient, he by definition knew that he was creating a universe in which sin would arise and, in fact, would be the pivot of his “plan” for salvation. Being omnipotent, he could have created any universe for which it is not logically impossible for it to exist.

“But you’re not God! How do you know that he didn’t create the best universe? That some pain and suffering is not required for the most good to be done? And anyway, we have free will so it was our (Adam and Eve’s) choice to disobey God’s law.”

Well the Bible itself hands us a better, more perfect scenario that is possible and that would have presented no problem for a good, omnipotent, omniscient god to create.

Consider this: there will be no sin in heaven. People in heaven will have free will, or they won’t be people. Some people go to heaven without having lived a significant life on earth, and more importantly, without having made a conscious decision about the Christian god (eg. babies). Since in Christian theology, the scenario exists in which heaven can be populated with people with free will and without requiring that these people do whatever it is that Christians believe must be done to get to heaven, then the Christian god could have created a universe with only these requirements / people / scenarios. All he would have needed to do is create Adam and Eve like any of the millions of babies and young children that have ever died, or just create in heaven from scratch anyone he wants to be in heaven, and not give them a sin nature. Take your pick as there’s a number of ways for it to work.

But no, the Christian god did not do this, instead choosing to make a universe in which sin, pain and suffering are a major facet of life.

Therefore the Christian god is, for lack of a more accurate description, a sadistic fuck for having not chosen a possible and plausible option which was better than the one we find ourselves in.

Finally, we are led to one of two conclusions. The Christian god does not exist because he would not have created this universe, or the god the Christians worship does not have the properties (all good, all knowing, all powerful, etc) that they claim he does.

Either way, fuck him, we’re better off without him.

A Big Rant

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Recently, I heard a scenario that completely changed the way I look at life. I would like to share that scenario with you now and explain how deeply it has affected me.

If you could study 200 infants who were separated into 2 groups: those growing up in (reasonable) Fundamentalist, Evangelical Christian homes (group A), and the other half in Muslim homes (group B), you would find a very consistent result when they are 21. If you were to ask the children what religion they held to at 21, about half would be Christians, half would be Muslims, and the majority of their answers would be consistent with the beliefs of their parents.

Does the outcome of this scenario surprise you? It did not surprise me. Do you see anything disturbing about this scenario? I did. What I realized was that when children are young, they do not possess the reasoning capacity to make informed decisions regarding any complex topic, including religion. Would you expect parents to teach their 4-year-old's about the best economic policy? Why not? Well because they would not understand it, right? Why then is it acceptable and normal for parents to teach their young children about a topic as complicated and multivarious as religion? Shoot, even Christianity has dozens of different viewpoints on the Bible alone, and many of them are mutually exclusive!

Out of this, a reasonable conclusion can also be drawn. When children are young, they are very impressionable. So much so that they believe that there are monsters in the closet and under the bed, that Santa is real, and that if they put a baby tooth under their pillow, a magical fairy will give them money for it. Is it then unreasonable to say that a child, any child will be greatly impacted by the religion of their parents (given that the parents are not gibbering idiots, of course...)? I do not think that this is an unreasonable claim. If this were not true, we would find that the religion of the parents would not have a significant impact on the religion of the offspring. When parents teach their children about religion at a young age, the effects are essentially the same as those of brainwashing. No matter the religion (within reason), the children are very likely to follow it to some extent for their whole lives.

From this, I think that it is also reasonable to say that the reason that the vast majority of Americans claim to be Christians, yet so few of them show up for church services on Sunday mornings is that they were raised Christians, believed it for a while, then "fell away" when they matured and their subconscious realized that they didn't really believe it. Consciously though, they still felt connected to Christianity, but they were too worried/busy with other things in their life to sit down and really think about it.

From this reasoning, I had a revelation. For quite some time, I have felt like a hypocrite. I lived the life of a Christian, but I never felt drawn by God, or really known what He wanted me to do (specifically). Yeah, I know what every Christian is supposed to do, but there is also supposed to be the voice of God in your life (ironic though that Christians hear a voice in their head and it makes them close to god, but schizophrenics hear voices and it makes them crazy...) and I have never had that. Ever.

Don't get me wrong. I believed (and still do) that the bible is true, that Jesus was God, and that He died for my sins, etc. etc. etc. I also know that had my parents raised me as a Muslim, I would be a Muslim right now. If they had raised me an atheist, I would be an atheist right now. That should make you think. I am an adult with fundamentalist, evangelical Christian views, and these are what I was taught since I was very young... Should it be surprising that this is the condition that I find myself in? How much were my religious view affected (adversely or otherwise) by what I was taught when I was young?

I.  Do.  Not.  Know.

Can I know? I mean can I really ever know how much my religious views are skewed by the indoctrination I recieved as an impressionable child? Can anyone ever know? I'm not sure, but it sure made me think.

So, given all of this, I have decided to take a "religious vacation" and really examine Christianity (and other faiths) and decide whether or not it/they really is/are worth my unwavering faith. I have always thought that blind faith (or faith without reason) is fundamentally flawed and essentially worthless. I'll leave you with that and close with this quote from Thomas Jefferson:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blind-folded fear...
Do not be frightened from this inquiry
from any fear of its consequences.
If it ends in the belief that there is no God,
you will find incitements to virtue
in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise..."

Stay away from this church

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