god Loves the Raped Children

One of the Xian commenters here, Tracy, has her own blog (linked to her name) where she recently had a post with the following passage:

There's nothing I wouldn't do for my children; and to think that God calls me His child...

So, why do children starve to death? Why do children get beaten and raped, especially by those who claim to be this same god's emissaries here on Earth as catholic priests claim? Why are children mistreated in any way by others while god sits there and watches? In fact, if we are all god's children, why does he not help all of us?

god, being omniscient surely knows that children are being made to suffer on this world. god, being omnipotent surely has the ability to do something about it. Yet, it's demonstrable that children still suffer on this world. Since god is also supposedly omnipresent, doesn't that indicate that god is there, watching these children suffer and doing nothing to stop it? How cruel is that. How uncaring, indifferent, vile, and evil. Is there any defense for this? Most of us would do all we could to help children that are not even our own, yet god sits there and watches as his children are brutalized, beaten, raped, starve, etc. and has the power to stop it, yet he watches it go on and does nothing. This is not a god that loves us, and people should stop making excuses for such a god if he does exist.

Perfect Justice

Many Xians claim that god is the author of justice, and as such gives us perfect justice, both in this world and the next. For the purposes of this post, we can simplify the idea of justice to getting what one deserves. I've already dealt with the inherent contradiction between getting what one deserves and god handing out grace from the Xian perspective, but today I'd like to focus on something else. Does Xian philosophy really provide perfect justice (minus the grace part of course)? Let's look at a hypothetical example.

Let's suppose a tyrant. Let's let our tyrant be evil, vicious, cruel, and vindictive (no I'm not talking about Yahweh, but I could be I suppose). Let's further say that this tyrant is responsible for many deaths, much suffering, has tortured others, etc. This is a really bad, bad person. Is it just (perfect or otherwise) for this person to be tortured in hell for eternity? Of course not. No matter how bad this person was in life, that was finite and infinite torture for finite crimes doesn't make sense from a justice standpoint.

But, let's strengthen the argument. Let's say that the tyrant receives punishment that fits the extent of his crimes. For every murder he caused, he gets to feel what it felt like. He gets to feel all the pain and suffering that he caused, until he has felt it all when the punishment stops. Is this perfect justice? Well, it's vengeance for sure, but it's a bit more equitable than an eternity in hell. And, I'm sure that most Xians would thirst for this type of retributive vengeance, but it's still not perfect justice.

So, why is it not perfect? It's not perfect because the tyrant's actions allowed others to unjustly feel this pain and torment to begin with. Did the tyrant's victims get what they deserve in this life? When their lives were cut short, they lost the ability to fully live out their lives and attain their own balance sheets for their bout with finite vengeance after death. By god allowing this state of affairs, perfect justice can not be attained. In this sense, Xianity can not offer the hope for perfect justice at all, and that's even after using an argument that most Xians don't even subscribe to, which is the argument that after-death punishment would fit the severity and scope of the crimes done.

Shelter

Xians are constantly amazed that we don't believe in their gods, further they are similarly amazed that we don't worship their god. Color me amazed that anyone would worship such a god as theirs. This is a god that has killed almost all of humanity simply because he couldn't think of a better way to make them behave. This is a god that sends people to hell for eternal torment and torture simply because he can't think of a better way to punish people for finite crimes or a better way to handle their souls after they die. This is a god that visit vile plagues upon people with pestilence and death simply because he needs to show off.

And, what does the Xian apologist do by defending this god? The Xian apologist is basically defending genocide, rape, murder, torture, etc. How can people actually defend this type of behavior? How can people provide shelter to an entity that would engage in this type of behavior? How can people actually decide that we should look up to this type of behavior with reverence and worship it?

I think most Xians are better than that, and I think that most Xians should really look at the holy book they hold with such reverence. They should understand that defending this god is defending a monster that visits the worst crimes imaginable upon the people that he supposedly loves. Even if this god did create us all, it doesn't make it right, as might does not make right. So, this is an open call to all Xians. Stop. Stop defending torture. Stop defending genocide. Stop defending murder. Start defending humans and humanity.

The Passion

Most people, I think, are aware that this weekend represents Easter, the time when Jesus is said to have been crucified and then rose up 3 (really 2) days later. (Brains...brains...) The whole idea is that god sacrificed his son in order to allow us to be saved. So, let's look at this idea for a minute here. (I won't get into the patent absurdity that god demands a sacrifice of his own son in order to convince himself to allow himself to forgive us for sins that he placed upon us...at least not in this post.)

In the OT, when people needed atonement from god, they would sacrifice an animal. The idea was that one's sins could be transferred to the animal and then burned away through the act of offering a gift to the god. By the time of the early Xians, this practice apparently wasn't enough. The story of Jesus represents what is essentially a human/god sacrifice. Although Jesus is said to have risen again, the whole point of the story is that Jesus had to endure pain and suffering and death - all on our behalf. This is nothing more than the old idea of transferring one's sins to another vessel as atonement through sacrifice writ large.

Bottom line: Xianity is built on a human sacrifice. Now, why would we believe that such barbarism is worthy of our worship or that an all-loving god would require such barbaric acts?

Designed Sickness

Being sick this whole entire week, I haven't wanted to post anything, because I wasn't sure I could write something that was coherent. But, it got me to thinking about some of the claims of the intelligent design advocates that claim that we were designed by a master designer. Some of them argue, for instance, that the eye is exquisitely designed and perfectly so - which, incidentally ignores some pertinent facts about the eye, but whatever.

So, when we get sick, what does that mean about our design? As I am acutely aware of right now, having our core temperature rise above its normal value by as little as a few tenths of a degree can cause some serious issues - headaches, nausea, etc. Knowing that bacteria and viruses can invade our designed bodies and increase our temperature, a good designer might try to keep this from happening or design a system that would not allow it to cause so much distress. There's no doubt that god would know this and would have had the ability to design us to avoid these issues.

Now, asserting that we were designed does not necessarily mean the design was perfect, which some ID advocates do hold to. But, when applied to god, what does this mean? It means that god intentionally gave us a sub-optimal design. god intentionally created something that was imperfect. There's some theological issues with that for sure. This also starts to get into murky territory for the theist when we start to talk about the fact that god was ensuring suffering for humans which destroys god's claim to omni-benevolence.