(sorry, couldn’t resist using the title of the first book from Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters :))
Ebon Musings’ Atheist Pages has been a place where I’ve spent a lot of time recently - it’s a collection of atheistic texts and essays, extremely well written and argued.
A brilliant and slightly humoristic one is An Almighty Screwup. I couldn’t recommend it more. For instance,
Simply put, the Christian fundamentalist god is a colossal screwup. Anyone who reads the Bible can see for themselves that he just can’t do anything right. He designs an originally beautiful and immaculate creation which almost immediately becomes polluted with sin, suffering and death. Both times he tries his hand at creating free will, his created beings immediately turn around and reject him. He chooses a people and continually attempts to redeem them from their fallen state, attempts which continually prove to be complete failures. He dispenses punishments for the evildoers and the wicked that utterly fail to stem the spread of evil and wickedness. He deals with crimes and transgressions by lashing out in childish rage, killing not just the evildoer but, often, all the innocent people around him. His final, crowning attempt to save the world from its sin was almost unanimously rejected by his chosen people. And his repeated promises to return to the Earth to set everything right have now been thoroughly broken. I find it impossible to believe that an omniscient and omnipotent deity, if there was such a being, could so consistently and thoroughly screw up; the contradiction between what this god is claimed to be able to do and what I am told he did do is so stark that it defies all reason that such a being could actually exist. But even if he did, such a sorry excuse for a deity would be deserving of no one’s worship - which makes the audacity of his followers all the more incredible, to insist in the face of his long string of failures that he is a wise and loving ruler worthy of our adoration!
Really, give it a try. The entire essay is much longer, but it’s an absolute joy to read.
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Wow! So that explains it. Being a screwup I mean. God said he created us in his own image…That explains why man every sinse has been such a screwup…
Following that logic, God botched even that: some people aren’t screwups, so they’re not made in his image!
Makes some good points. And entertaining.
ps Pedro, where are these non-screwups? Surely you jest?
As you say, very well argued. Thanks for providing a link to this site, I have also found it to be a very interesting place to visit.
Thanks for the tip, it sounds like a great site. I’m not an atheist, but I do believe the fundamentalists should all be hog tied and beaten with a very large stick.
But there’s always the argument that he made it that way on purpose and it’s all part of some greater plan… Not my argument, but it works.
How does it work? By stopping people questioning God’s design? It seems to me that the direction of any theodicy like this is simply to forestall argument, by placing your hand on your heart and saying, “I have faith”. Although anyone may convince themselves of the existence of a greater plan, this type of argument really just provides a ready response to any objection, rather than providing any positive reasoning.
That essay was one of the best peices of literature I have ever read. I’ve read it three times in the past three days since I found it. Thank you to whoever posted this, and a much greater thank you to the auther.
Like the time I tripped over my shoe-laces…I meant to do that.
Jheurf has just summarized an eternity of christian reasoning with that one, philosphically perfect line.
Hail Satan