What if there IS a God? What if God is testing us? What if He is a cosmic prankster and has directed the creation of many differing religions to confuse us? What if God intentionally created the bible with its contradictions, inaccuracies, absurdities, mistakes, unbelievable occurrences and prejudices as a test? What if the test is to see if we fall for it? What if atheists are the ONLY ones going to heaven?
I was watching TV recently. At the climax of one of my favorite shows a man was murdered. He was stabbed twice in the chest. I watched as the blade entered his chest two times, piercing his lungs and heart. The man fell to the ground and was kicked into a nearby fire where he burst into flames as he was dying. This was shown on television, during prime time, with no outcry from the public or the censors. And why would there be an outcry? One can witness murders of this kind and worse on TV many times a week. Now imagine this scenario... Prime time TV. A loving husband and wife wish to have children. They take off their clothes and get into bed, as married couples do. We then clearly watch his erect penis enter her vagina two times as he tells her he loves her. Cut to nine months later and she gives birth to a healthy baby boy. The couple rejoices. The husband kisses his wife on the forehead and we...Fade to Black. Can you imagine the outrage? Can you imagine the FCC fines and the righteous letters of condemnation? In the first case we see the brutal, senseless ending of a life, and we get to see it in great detail. In the second scenario we are witnessing the loving, natural creation of life between two married adults. Which one is obscene?
Mexican Supreme Court judge scheduled to be executed. Criminals to be set free! Assimulated Press Mexico City, Mexico - The Mexican Supreme Court voted unanimously to allow the entire criminal population of Mexico to be set free in exchange for the execution of one of its judges. In a statement released to the press on Wednesday, the aptly named judge Jesus Santos declared that his death would be a fair exchange for all of the crimes committed by all of the criminals incarcerated. “My sacrifice will substitute for their sentences. They will all be set free forever.” The president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, addressed the country on national television. “This is a great day for certain chosen people of Mexico who have been oppressed for far too long. We have picked one of our own to suffer for you so that you can be free.” Execution by lethal injection is set for this Friday at 3:00. Judge’s death called a hoax! Assimulated Press Mexico City, Mexico - Just three days after being put to death by lethal injection, the body of Mexican Supreme Court judge Jesus Santos is missing. Judge Santos had been executed as payment for the sentences of all Mexican criminals and since Friday the jails have been emptied. However, early Sunday morning three cemetery caretakers found the door to his mausoleum pushed aside and the coffin empty.
I attended a wedding over the weekend. My family is Italian and I'm sure it's no surprise that we are overwhelmingly Catholic. However, because the ceremony wasn't being held in a church but rather in the reception hall I had thought that I would be spared having to sit through another Catholic mass. I was wrong. *sigh* As it turns out, it was a thankfully shortened version of the ceremony. I noticed that, even in abbreviated form, the priest managed to mention FIVE TIMES (we counted) that,"...God made us MALE and FEMALE so that we may join together in His love". It would have been just another day in a big Italian Catholic family except this time, seated right up front were two good friends of the bride and groom who also happened to be a lesbian couple. I've seen "the lesbian couple", as they are called in the family, a few times at family gatherings that were large enough to encompass all of us. They have been together for many years, at least as long as many of the other couples in the room. Longer than some. I couldn't help but cringe each time the phrase rolled around.
"Marriage was created by God for MALE and FEMALE...", "We join in holy matrimony this MAN and WOMAN...", etc.With each repetition of the phrase it seemed that the priest was emphasizing it more and more and from our vantage point several rows back it almost seemed like he was glaring at the lesbian couple when he said it. (Probably my imagination.)
Recently I wrote a fake news item that took the Genesis story of man’s ejection from the Garden of Eden and transplanted it to the present day. I thought that it would be a great way to get believers to view this story in a fresh way before they even realized that they were doing so. I wanted them to judge the actions of God without realizing that it was God that we were talking about. It worked well...a little too well. Many of the believers that I routinely tussle with about religion on various forums did not immediately see the satire for what it was. They became enraged at the fictional stand-in for God, Mr. Ian Oda, and demanded in their posts that justice be done. When I pointed out the many clues to the true nature of the news story, I was criticized. My analogy was "way off" and "all wrong", they said. I didn’t understand the bible at all, they said. God was exonerated once again. One particular forum member was quite interested in pursuing the discussion further. He made some good points. I made mine. Eventually I had him backed into a corner (at least I thought so) when I told him that it seemed clear to me that the God of the bible was a badly written fictional character created by men and reflecting all of men’s inadequacies and flaws. This was his reply. "I guess you can say ‘I believe he is fictional’. I felt the same, before having him work in my life. I’m not going to write a book about it, but I’ve been through the worst and have seen plenty of miracles in my life. I have seen the horrors of sin, and have seen God's work to correct that in my life. I am a better person, because of it. Something is working in my life, whether you believe it is God or just something that happens, I know the truth, because I have witnessed it. Why can’t you just accept God’s love in your life? Mike, you are a destroyer of hope." So there it was once again. The wall that is impossible to penetrate. The wall that I have hit many times in my discussions with believers, when they are honest enough to take me all the way up to it. It’s a wall made of the Pain and the Need that drives someone to discard rationality because the alternative is just too horrific to face. Is the only thing standing between me and a belief in God some catastrophic personal event? Do I have to become a drug addict or a cancer patient in order to understand? Do I not believe in God because I've been too lucky in my life? Could that be true?? My own brother, who is as staunch an atheist as I, admitted to me that when he was very sick last year he “...actually prayed”. He went on to say that it was, “...fear of death...pure and simple. When that moment is upon you (or you perceive it is) you will do and believe anything that lets you think there is a higher power that may be able to save you from this.” What do I hope to gain by exposing what I see as the absurdity of their beliefs? I have hit my wall, my crisis of non-faith. How can I, in good conscience, continue to be a “destroyer of hope”?