Thursday, July 12, 2012

Let's see now ...

Let me try to get this stuff straight:

1.  God is all-powerful enough to create the universe but he needs my money for some reason.
2.  God is all-powerful enough to create the universe but he requires the very beings he created to worship and adore him.  In fact, that need is so strong that he'll cause any non-worshippers (his creations, too!) to spend an eternity in pain and torment.
3.  God gave us a brain with which we can pursue knowledge though the use of logic and evidence, but requires us to accept his word about things without thinking, to the extent that seeking insight from the tree of knowledge is considered evil enough to condemn every generation of humans for all time with that sin committed by the very first humans.
4.  God loves all his creations but is evidently willing to send them to eternal torment for various reasons, especially not believing in him and following his rules.
5.  God is a jealous god (even though jealousy in humans at least is known to spring from a lack of self-confidence and trust), despite his infinite power, knowledge, wisdom, and benevolence.
6.  God can become angry easily - so angry, in fact, he once wiped out nearly all life on the planet - just because his creations did what he himself created and empowered them to do.
7.  God evidently creates all homosexuals (since they can't reproduce on their own) but then says that homosexuals are evil and should be killed.  And the point of creating them in the first place was ... ?
8.  God is in an eternal battle with one of his own angels, but is apparently waiting for the right time to put an end to a conflict that's causing untold numbers of human casualties in the meantime, even though he's infinitely powerful.
9.  God sent his own son to die for the sins of all humans (even newborns), but it wasn't actually his son - instead it was himself in human form and he often had conversations with himself until he caused the son-form to be killed by humans - but not really - before rising from the dead so he could sit side-by-side with himself (which also includes a ghostly form) in paradise.
10.  God created everything out of nothing.
11.  God made women just to be companions to men and to do anything their man told them to do.
12.  God is o.k. with slavery - just follow certain rules and it's no problem enslaving others.
13.  God is o.k. with genocide - again, follow certain rules and you'll be fine.
14.  God apparently gave us pretty limited brainpower compared to him, so we can't possibly understand why he allows pain and anguish to be visited upon us for no apparent reason.
15.  God is all-powerful and knows everything (past, present, and future) - so he must know what we mere humans are going to do and in fact must have created us to do whatever we are destined to do - but somehow in there, we're supposed to have free will.
16.   God designed a perfect universe just for human beings - but put a sun in the sky that can cause us to develop cancer, produces all sorts of natural disasters, and pits one tribe of humans against another to the point they go to war and slaughter each other.
17.  God knows everything about us, including all our deepest thoughts and subconscious desires, but demands we go to his place of worship and swear oaths of loyalty to him over and over at least weekly for our entire lives.
18.  God grants mercy and forgiveness - so much so that no matter how violent and malevolent one's deeds, if you become a believer at the very end of your life, every misdeed is instantly forgiven and he's fine with you living forever in joy and happiness (alongside the victims of your violence, but they'll be there only if they're smart enough to believe in him, too).
19.  God created a universe so large, its size is beyond human comprehension and there's very little chance we'll ever be able to visit more than a tiny part of that vastness, just for us on one tiny planet.  Apparently, we have a lot of lebensraum, although almost all of it is utterly hostile to human life.
20.  God created humans in his own image, but humans encompass a vast diversity of physical traits, leaving it pretty ambiguous which of us is truly in his image.

I may add more as thoughts occur to me ...