First, the funny:
Via One Year Skeptic.
New Atheists loooove the problem of evil, because, since many of them grew up in fundamentalist churches, they know that most evangelicals have been saddled with a very Modernistic view of God. For most evangelicals God is pretty much as the philosophers describe what they think he ought to be: omniscient, omnipresent, all-benevolent, etc. Which is a fairly strange starting point since, as this video shows, a cursory reading of the Old Testament makes that view seem totally insane. So the unsuspecting believer gets caught in a bind since she has some historically bizarre notions of what God must be like, and there’s just no way that YHWH is anything like those. At all.
At 2:07 on the video, Beleaguered Believer begins to whip out the “overall plan of God” defense as an explanation for why the OT is so chock full of crazy. Worldly Atheist Guy dispenses with this nonsense very quickly, invoking the word “omnipotent” before Beleaguered Believer can finish sputtering on the word “Jesus.”
Sigh.
How many irritating arguments we could avoid if we just stopped trying to make God into what human beings feel like God would be if they invented him. Yes, of course, if I, in my near-infinite wisdom were to invent a god, I would make him follow the Hippocratic oath or Asimov’s Robot Rules or whatever, but I didn’t. The Universe didn’t ask me what kind of God I wanted, or even how I thought Godhood ought to be. Instead, I was born into a universe in which God has 99 problems but omnipotence ain’t one. And please, before I am stamped 'Heretic!’ and kicked out of the church let me just say, “Fine, okay, God could be omnipotent if God wanted, but, for whatever reason, God didn’t, and God limited Godself in the way that God relates and interacts in creation.” Fair?
Next, the issue of the immoral god. Skeptics also love to quote Joshua or Judges or Leviticus and laugh at how God is so…gauche. As if life on planet Earth is generally characterized by aristocratic politesse and anyone hoping to be considered for the position of God need not apply unless he or she hails from a noble house. Good Lord. What, millions of years of blood, crust, violence and pain and God is supposed to just show up on the scene like Mr. Belvedere and tidy up the place? Are you serious?
Attention skeptics (and Christians, for that matter): The situation is so…barbaric around here that, in some A-Team style guerilla rescue campaign, God plans to, what, become a human being and get murdered by the religious and political elites of his own chosen people and their oppressive masters? Why the hell would you expect a deity who thinks that is a sound plan to act like Mary Poppins?
One thing that’s fun about taking the bible seriously is to see the look on a Skeptic’s face when she realizes for the first time that you really do think God is a tribal deity along the lines of Oden. Except decked out with way more…awesome. It’s like, “What? That’s crazy.” Oh is it? Put the KoolAid down, Sister, and look around. You know, at this blood and spittle-flecked world you live in? The one with Darfur and Nazis and Haitian Hurricanes? You think because I believe in God I suddenly think this place was invented by Strawberry Shortcake-pants and the Care Bear Band?
Jeez. If there’s a God who is trying to redeem a single damn thing in this galactic charnel house, he’s got blood on his hands, tears in his eyes, and thorns on his brow.
