Category Archives: The impossibility of faith

How It Works: God

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Let’s see. If there’s a God – and how could there not be? – he’d have to be perfect. And powerful and really, really good. Not like all those pagan Gods who are just a bit too much like us. No, the most bestest God of all would have to be big and powerful, and good and perfect. I mean, why bother otherwise?

Oh, oh… first problem. If he’s good and perfect, how to explain us and the fact life can be pretty crap and not good or perfect at all? That can’t be his fault, can it? He’s perfect, so he couldn’t possibly make something that isn’t. Soooo… only logical conclusion – the crap must be our fault. Something we do, or maybe something we are. Yes, that’s what it must be (plus we get to bump up our part.)

And shit happens. Tsunamis, earthquakes, the crops fail, the rains don’t come. Life can be tough and seem pointless. It’s all depressing, then we die. It can feel like we’re being punished. Wait! Maybe we are being punished! For things we’ve done, or for what we are. That would fit wouldn’t it? A good and perfect God would surely want to punish us, with death and destruction and stuff. So that’s what these things must be!

Let’s get all this written down, that this is how things are. This good and perfect God finds us offensive and that’s why life is so shit. Except, except… surely God’s a reasonable bloke at heart and can be appeased? We could wheedle our way back into his good books and then life wouldn’t be quite so bad. Not sure how, though. Maybe sending him presents would do the trick, though how to get them to him when we can’t see him or anything…

I know! Let’s eviscerate some animals and then burn them and that way, he’ll be able to smell our efforts up where he lives, in the sky. That’s bound to work. And to be doubly sure, let’s mutilate our genitals and keep our women subjugated – because he can’t fail to like that.

Or maybe not. Maybe life will still be shit and we’ll still be shit. Maybe we need something more… imaginative. So let’s pretend that this God of ours puts together a rescue package. And what this means is he zaps us with some magic that obliterates the bits of us he can’t stand, which is pretty much all of it. And – here’s the good bit – we get to keep some of the eviscerating and sacrifice stuff.

Let’s get that written down too. And, and… maybe we can have it that this God is really going to rescue us and make everything not shit any more. He’s going to shake things up down here… no, no, wait – better than that, we’re going to go and live with him in the sky once we die, which gets rid of how shit death really is, and we’ll all live happily ever after, those of us he’s zapped anyway. Everyone else he can torture and burn forever! Yes that’s it! That’s how it’s got to be. God can still be good and perfect, even though he murders just about everyone, and some of us will get to be good and perfect too, and all the crap will just disappear, as if by magic.

That’s it. That’s how it really is. I can see it all now.

Oops. Gotta go. Time for my medication.

straitjacket

Prophets At A Loss

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God’s prophets; holy men who are God’s confidantes, his mouthpiece on Earth. They know how he thinks, what his plans are, what pleases him, what annoys him, what he intends doing in the future. They’re the first to know all of these things because they’re so much in touch with him, he speaks to them personally.

That’s how Jim Bakker knows God plans to punish those counties in the States that voted for Hillary Clinton. God simply can’t stand her, you see, and is going to vent his anger at those who thought she’d make a better president than his anointed one, the Donald.

It’s how Cindy Jacobs knew in 2015 that Civil War and Christian persecution were coming to America, how Michelle Bachmann knew Obama would start World War III, how William Tapley (‘the Third Eagle of the Apocalypse’, don’t you know) sees the signs of the End Times™ everywhere, and how John McTernan can tell us that natural disasters are the result of America’s lack of support for Israel.

These men and women (who evidently don’t know they’re supposed to keep quiet [1 Timothy 2:12] ), are also proficient, or so they’d have us believe, at interpreting the signs of the times. They know when events are actually God meting out punishment (usually) or trampling over someone’s much vaunted free-will to ensure his purposes are met. Hence, their conviction that natural disasters are divine tantrums, caused by a growing acceptance of LGBT people, or abortion, or some other damn thing they don’t care for much. And they know for sure that Trump’s election was because God wanted him to be the next president, because the Almighty told them so himself.

There are others, however, who think these fellow-Christians have got it all wrong. God has no need of prophets today (Luke 16.16). He used them only in more primitive times when people were more credulous and superstitious – Bible times, in fact. The only way of knowing what God is up to these days, these prophecy-denying Christians say, is to read and interpret his Holy Word.™

If only it wasn’t filled with the same sort ramblings as those of the current crop of fantasists, the only difference between today’s and yesterday’s prophets being that the earlier nutjobs were lucky enough to have their words preserved – by those with a need to believe and the self-interested – in the supposedly ‘ineffable’ Bible. Their prophecies are no more accurate and have no more bearing on reality than the messages of Bakker, Jacobs, Tapley, McTernan and the like claim to receive from God today. They’re of the same lunatic level, offering the same sort of vacuous bullshit.

How do we know? Because of the Bible’s prophecies written before the events they purport to predict, none has come to pass. This includes Jesus’ prophecy that the Son of Man would soon appear in the sky with the heavenly host to usher in God’s Kingdom on Earth (Matt 16.27-28; Matt 24:27-31. Including his and Paul’s predictions of an imminent judgement (Matthew 7.22 & 25:36-40; 1 Corinthians 4.5); Paul’s promise of a rapture (1 Corinthians 15.51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17); John’s prophecy of the armies of heaven defeating the Whore of Babylon (the Romans) and Jesus being put in charge instead (Revelation 17.8-14 & 20.11-15). These prophets were certain these events were going to happen soon, within, as the text spells out, the lifetimes of their listeners and readers. They didn’t and they’re not going to happen now either, two thousand years after their sell-by date. They’re not going to happen at all.

They are fantasies, every one of them. As are the messages supplied by the self-appointed prophets of our day. Fraudulent twaddle from charlatans with a pathological need to have their delusions taken seriously; these men and women of God can no more divine the future than you or I. True, once in a while events in the real world might bear some coincidental resemblance to one of their predictions, but that is all it is – coincidence. As the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump have reminded us, we can’t ever see the future with any degree of certainty. Soothsayers, fortune-tellers and Prophets of God who tell us we can – tell us they can – are liars and deceivers. And we know, don’t we, what the Bible says should be done about them (Deuteronomy 13.5).

Picture: Artist’s impression of JC, archetypal false prophet (as if there’s any other sort); Jim Bakker, crook and adulterer; Cindy Jacobs (loose screw not shown) and William Tapley, Looney Tune of the Apocalypse.

God sends New Savior!

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Well, Stateside Christians, you got your man. Donald Trump will be president come January and you’re largely responsible for that. 81% of you voted for him. By my reckoning that’s about 50% of his total vote; he couldn’t have done it without you. Now he’s going to be your nation’s savior. He’s going to make America great again. He’ll return the nation to Christian values and morals. He’ll honour God and bring him back into the public arena, just like you want him to.

Or will he? How do you get God-fearing Savior from a petulant, misogynistic individual who has repeatedly shown himself to be racist, sexist, xenophobic, divisive, adulterous, abusive, ignorant, vitriolic, dishonest and avaricious; a man who denies climate change, is full of his importance (and nothing else), who makes promises he can’t keep and probably had no intention of keeping even as he made them. A man who couldn’t name a single verse in his ‘favourite book’, the Bible; who admits he’s never asked God for forgiveness and who has shown no sign of any kind of Christian humility, compassion or morality; a man who is even now appointing the most reactionary, right-wing extremists to his transitional team (so much for draining the swamp!) How can this man be the one who is going to restore America to a glorious Christian past it never really had, and make it a truly God-fearing nation once again?

Someone with these ‘qualities’ cannot possibly turn America into the promised land, even though you’ve convinced yourselves he’s another King Cyrus, the heathen king in the Old Testament who helped God’s people in their time of need. Trump is no Cyrus, even if he is the 45th president and Cyrus’s story is told in Isaiah 45 (yes, some of you think this is significant). You have been duped, again, American believers. But it is not Trump who has deluded you; it is you yourselves. You have persuaded yourselves that despite all of the evidence, Trump is man who can be greatly used by God.

There was no divine guidance behind Trump’s campaign and God won’t be manipulating him into doing his bidding once he takes office. This is because, primarily, there is no God to do any these things, but even if there were, why would he? Why would he ensure a man whose values are the direct antithesis of all (you say) he stands for, became the leader of the free world? Why would he be interested in making a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is Donald Trump? Wouldn’t your God of Reason start with someone who is already one of his own? Someone who is genuinely a Christian; someone, say, who has tacky pictures of himself and Jesus hanging in his house? Or an evangelical – let’s call him Mike Pence – who comes pre-packaged with genuine, and genuinely vicious, Christian faith and a necessary anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda?

It’s you and you alone, Christians, who have turned Trump into a Savior. It is you who have created the silk purse. You’ve ignored what has been in front of you throughout the presidential campaign and have projected on to an individual who has done nothing but tell you what you wanted to hear, a spiritual significance he does not have. You have made of Trump an artificial Man of God, just like your predecessors did two thousand years ago with that other imposter, Yeshua Bar Joseph. Like them, you’re going to find out that the man you’ve elevated to savior status is anything but, because the Donald Trump you’ve elected is a construct of your collective imaginations. You’re about to discover that the real Donald Trump is not the man you’ve deluded yourselves into thinking he is.

I Know What It’s Like To Be Dead

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lazarus

And you do too.

We experienced what it was like last night and, you know, it really wasn’t too bad.

We entered, at some point, a deep, dreamless sleep (we dream for only a quarter of the time we’re asleep and even then often can’t remember what we’ve dreamt about) and the rest of the time we were, as far as subjective experience was concerned, dead to the world. During that deep sleep, our conscious mind was completely switched off; we did not experience anything while we were in this state and as far as awareness is concerned, we did not exist. And when we woke this morning we were none the worse for our period of non-existence. We booted up reasonably satisfactorily and the memories we had yesterday, before our deep sleep, were restored and the entity we call our self began to interact with the day.

This period of deep sleep, this unconscious oblivion, is precisely what it is like to be dead. Of course, in death we switch off permanently; there’s with no reboot afterwards, either in our beds, our graves or in heaven. The oblivion that is death is permanent. But, and this is my point, being dead is no more painful or unendurable, and no more to be feared, than the deep sleep you had last night and that you will enjoy tonight. We might not much like the idea that once we fall into the ultimate sleep there will be no waking up, but that is only a concern, if it’s a concern at all, of the living. I guarantee that it does not cross the minds of those who are already dead. They have no minds, the same as you didn’t last night, for it to cross.

Being dead, to paraphrase Mark Twain, does not trouble us at all. Its prospect, while we remain on this side of it, should encourage us to enjoy life and live it to the full. It shouldn’t cause us to worry about being dead, because there’s nothing we can do about it and, in any case, it’s no worse than being in deep sleep. Nor should we be concerned about whether we’ve subscribed to the right incantation, appeased the right God in the right way or lived a good enough life, in order to avoid death. There’s no avoiding death and the promises of religions that we can if only we believe the right magic, are utterly false. Understandable perhaps, but false.

Oh death, where is thy sting, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.55. Well, death still has its sting. It has it in its inevitability – every organic creature, of which we are one, must die – and it has it, depending on your perspective, in our individual obliteration. (Though, frankly, why anyone should think their own personal bundle of thoughts, impulses and prejudices merits everlasting existence is a mystery). Most significantly, however, it has it in the dying process, which for many of us can be debilitating and painful. This is the way of it for all of us, including those who believe religions’ false promises. They are not spared the suffering, even though modern medicine can help alleviate much of it. Christians, Muslims and Hindus, despite their belief that a deity smiles benevolently upon them, are not guaranteed a comfortable passage from this life to non-existence.

Death is the great leveller; we all experience dying in much the same way and we none of us experience anything after it. One of these – maybe both if we’re lucky – isn’t too bad. Just like deep sleep in fact.

Until then, we should make the most of life while we still have it.

Sleep well.

 

Rejecting Jesus the Christian way

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I’m sometimes taken to task for pointing out that Christians don’t make much effort to live as their saviour says they should. The title of my first book, Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead sums it up. Since the very beginning, believers have replaced the radical commands attributed to Jesus with mythology, mysticism and magic formulae, none of which he’d recognise and all of which are far less demanding than going the extra mile, turning the other cheek and loving enemies. So today, when confronted with what Jesus says is expected of his followers, believers are inclined to say, ‘what right have you to tell us how we should be living?’ to which the answer is, ‘it’s not I, nor any other commentator, who tells you how to live; it is your Lord and Saviour. All we do – all I do – is remind you of what that is.’

Christians don’t like this, primarily because they don’t like what Jesus commands – it’s too exacting, too radical, too impractical – and they want to go on disregarding it. It’s damned annoying being reminded of it and being challenged on how far they are from complying with it.

Have those of us who point out Christians’ failings any right to do so? Well, of course. Christians spend their time judging, castigating and condemning others and as Jesus himself points out, judging others leads to being judged in return (Matthew 7.1-5). He sees this as something of a natural consequence, a yin for a yang. But ‘judge not that ye be not judged’ is another of his commands his followers like to ignore. Even so, if Christians are going to insist on pointing out the speck in others’ eyes, they must expect others will have something to say about the plank in theirs. That’s the way it works – Jesus says so.

So, Christians, if you don’t like me and others challenging you on how far you fall short of your Lord’s expectations maybe you need to lay off atheists, LGBT people, those you consider to be sinners, those of other faiths and even fellow Christians you think haven’t got the right theology. Put your own house in order first and then maybe we’ll listen to you (or maybe not). But don’t say we’ve no right to look at how far you measure up to Jesus’ standards. We’ve every right to ask whether the so-called Salt of the Earth (Matthew 5.13) has any of its flavour left.

 

Call yourself a Christian?

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So you think you might be a Christian? Try this handy-dandy checklist to see if you’re a true follower of Jesus or just someone who’s paying lip-service. You’ll need to score big if you’re ever going to get into his exclusive club!

1) Have you relinquished all worldly goods as Jesus tells you to in Matt 19.21 & Luke 12.33?

If not, better get to it. It’s pretty important to him – he mentions it at least a dozen times in the gospels.

2) Have you forsaken your loved ones, taken to hating them even, the better to serve him and his Kingdom?

No? Than what are you thinking of? Not Luke 14. 26 & 33 that’s for sure.

3) Do you constantly go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, give to all who ask, love your enemies and forgive others repeatedly (Matthew 7.12; Luke 6.27 & 29; Matthew 6.14; Matthew 5.38 etc)? In short, are you perfect as he says you should be?

Some work to do here then, to come up to the expected standard?

4) Do you sacrificially serve others – the sick, the imprisoned, the homeless, the hungry, the naked (Matthew 25.34-46)?

Better get round to it as the only way to avoid Jesus’ blacklist.

5) Do you work tirelessly and exclusively to bring about God’s Kingdom on Earth (albeit in the first century) like Jesus commands in Matthew 6.33?

Why not? Get with the programme!

6) Have you stayed single, never marrying, and certainly never getting divorced?

You haven’t? Shame on you, because you can’t into the Kingdom with a spouse and definitely not with one you’ve discarded along the way (Luke 20.34-35).

7) Have you given up judging others?

If not, you can expect to be on the receiving end of a hell of a lot of judgement in return (Matthew 7.1-2).

8) When you throw a party do you invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind instead of your friends (Luke 14.12-14)?

I think we know the answer to this one.

9) Are you tireless in denigrating, campaigning against and ranting about same-sex relationships and marriage?

Well, good for you though this has nothing to do with being a follower of Jesus (see 7 above).

10) Do you believe in a magical incantation that is going to preserve the essential ‘you’ in Heaven forever?

Jesus didn’t.

So how did you do? Are you someone Jesus would say, ‘Well done you good and faithful servant’ to (Matthew 25.21), or would he insist he never knew you (Matthew 7.23)? –

0-2: Pathetic, especially if the two in question are 9 & 10.

3-7: You’re neither hot nor cold. Expect to be spewed out of his mouth (Revelation 3.16).

8-10: You’re getting there, but then, you didn’t really answer truthfully, did you? Your yes didn’t mean yes (Matthew 5.37).

Never mind, you can always get back to singing songs, waving your arms about and condemning others because they have a speck in their eye (Luke 6.42). Everybody knows that’s what being a Christian is really all about.

The stuff Christians say… God Gave Us Free-will

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freewill

Did he really? He doesn’t mention it in his ineffable, infallible, inerrant Word and you’d think he would when it’s so important. It’s a favourite cliché of Christians whenever they’re challenged about why God has let the world get in such a mess, why he allows children to die, why there are hurricanes and earthquakes, that kind of thing. These are all, they like to tell us, the result of humans using the ‘free-will’ God gave them to make the wrong choices – which are anything that’s not God himself. When that happens, he deserts us, abandoning any idea of a duty of care. But that’s not his fault – oh, no – it’s ours for using the free-will he gave us… freely.

So even though we have free-will, we’re in big trouble if we use it any other than the way God thinks we should. Of all the options available to us, only one is any good; there are so many penalties for choosing anything other than him. It’s as if he says to us, ‘obey me or I’ll abandon you, make everything shit and ultimately torture you’. And you’d be right to ask how this is in any way ‘free’ will. Imagine a human father saying, ‘Now, kids, choose to do as I say or else I’ll throw you on the fire.’ Would children presented with a choice of this kind really be ‘free’ to make their decision?

Still, apparently we are, and wouldn’t you know it, we choose the wrong things. This might have something to do with there being far more ‘wrong’ things than ‘right’ ones, but that’s how God has set things up and who are we to point out the inconsistency of his mysterious way?

More than this, God has handicapped us by making us ‘slaves of sin’ and ‘servants to corruption’ (John 8.34 & 2 Peter 2.19) which naturally disposes us to use our free-will in such a way that almost always leads to the wrong decisions. How about that? Not only does he say ‘obey me or I’ll abandon you, make everything shit and ultimately torture you’, God has given us up to our base desires and so impaired our ability to make the ‘right’ choices.

Ultimately, the idea of ‘free-will’ is a Gordian knot created by Christians, who, finding themselves unable to explain why a loving God would allow everything to be far from perfect, added it to their already shaky theology. But free-will isn’t scriptural; as we’ve seen, the Bible teaches that God does the choosing not us. Nor does it stand up to  scrutiny in the real world. Science tells us that free-will doesn’t exist, it’s an illusion. Our subconscious mind makes our decisions before informing our conscious mind of what these are. This means our decision-making is neither free – our subconscious mind is shaped and constrained by environment, genes and upbringing – nor the product of our conscious mind, our ‘will’.

Still, this is of little interest to Christians who cling tenaciously and blindly to the notion of ‘free-will’. They’ve made the right decision by opting for God and in so doing have surrendered the free-will they otherwise insist is crucial in explaining the state of the world. They’re not going to need it in heaven, I don’t suppose, sitting around praising God all day long. Given though that they’ve made the right decision, why is it the world continues to be such a muddle? Why is life for believers not noticeably better than for the rest of us? Why are they as subject to life’s tragedies and calamities – cancer, disease, death – just the same as the rest of us? Shouldn’t their free-will decision nullify the disasterous effects of rejecting God so that we can see some overall improvement in the state of the world, or at the very least in the lives of God’s Chosen themselves? Why doesn’t it? What good is ‘free-will’ which, even when exercised in the ‘right’ way, appears to make no difference at all?

God’s Election

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As we saw in the previous post, the Bible tells us that God chose his ‘Elect’* before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1.4-6). Which begs the questions –

1: On what basis did God select the favoured few untold aeons before they were born? Did he decide by looking at their dress sense, as Jesus’ parable in Matthew 22.1-14 suggests? I guess it must be, given the Bible is the ‘literal’ word of God.

Or did God assess ahead of time just how righteous his Chosen would turn out to be? In Matthew 25.31-46 Jesus says righteousness is the yard stick (though naturally Christians don’t believe him because Paul says something different).

Or did God decide in advance – Paul says he ‘foreknew’ – who would repent and turn to Jesus, free-will be damned? Maybe, but then Jesus suggests that not everyone who does even this will make it into God’s Kingdom (Matthew 22.1-14).

What a bummer! Looks like God’s decision is/was purely arbitrary. You make it, or not, on the whim of a capricious monster.

2: What’s the point of evangelism? If God chose who was going to have eternal life/enter the Kingdom/live in Heaven before the creation of the world, then there can be absolutely no need for anyone to tell anyone else about Jesus, sin and salvation. Why? Because it makes no difference; God’s Chosen will remain his Chosen, as they were long before they were born, and he’ll be sure to rescue them once they die. Those who haven’t been pre-selected will stay lost and will go to Hell whether or not they’ve heard or responded to the gospel.

‘But how will the unsaved Chosen hear the message if we don’t tell them?’ ask our zealous evangelical friends, still not getting the point. Jesus, lads! The Chosen don’t need to hear the gospel: God – has – already – chosen – them. They will go to Heaven, live in the Kingdom or whatever, regardless of your efforts. You and your evangelism are superfluous.

3: How can you be sure, if you’re a Christian, that you’re of the ‘Elect’ and so destined for Eternal Life? Yes, you’ve chosen Jesus – but has he chosen you? How can you know? Your own sense of righteousness, your faith, self-sacrifice and adherence to sound doctrine (whatever that is) are no guide to whether or not you’ve made the grade. Only God knows that, and he’s not telling.

Not yet, anyway, so you’d best make sure you’re buried in your very best clothes, just in case.

* Jesus is made to call the chosen few ‘the Elect’ in Matt 24.22, 24 & 31; Mark 13.20, 22 & 27 and Luke 18.7.

God’s Chosen Ones

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chosen The God of the Bible is not the God of Reason that Answers in Genesis, William Lane Craig, Tim Keller, Silence of Mind and others tell us he is. None of the evidence, some of which we’ve reviewed, supports the supposition. That’s because the God of Reason, like all gods, is a construct of the human mind. In much the same way as Yahweh was a reflection of irrationality, this God is a reflection of our rationality. He could not – and did not – exist before the Enlightenment, before Rationalism itself and the new understanding of mathematics, science and philosophy.

As appealing as his apologists try to make him, the God of Reason is demonstrably not the God of the Bible, who is defined by impulsive, destructive passions. No, he’s not the tempestuous Yahweh, nor is he the daddy-god Jesus imagined (who is just Yahweh with a few rough edges knocked off), nor the God of blood-sacrifice and atonement beloved of Paul. He is, like all those inventions, a fabrication of our own making. For Christians who are drawn to him, he is a false god. But then, aren’t they all?

Whichever version of the Christian God Christians choose to worship, however, they’ve got it wrong. They don’t choose to believe in him or to follow Jesus or whatever. Not at all; he chooses them (or not as the case may be.) Now known as Calvinism, the idea that God earmarked a select few to be his best mates right back at the dawn of time – while disregarding others who might want to be but aren’t on the guest list – is right there in the Bible. Paul first:

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified (Romans 8:29-30; see also 1 Thessalonians 1.4)

The idea is picked up by one of Paul’s imitators in the forged letter to the Ephesians:

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1.4-6)

The same sort of time-loop paradox also finds its way into the gospels. In Matthew 22.1-14, Jesus tells a parable involving a man who has been asked to a Royal Banquet (i.e. the Kingdom of God) only for the King (Jesus) to take offence at the way he’s dressed. For this heinous crime he is bound hand and foot and unceremoniously thrown out. Jesus concludes his cheery tale with the aphorism, ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’

So much for ‘free will’, a notion that’s alien to the Bible in any case. If I were a Christian, which thank God I’m not, I’d really want some answers to the questions this bizarre idea throws up. We’ll take a look at what these are next time.

Picture shows Tim Keller, John Sentamu (Archbishop of York), ‘Pastor’ Rick Warren and ‘Pastor’ Steve Furtick. Chosen by God, every one. And some kids he couldn’t care less about.

 

Smash! Kill! Destroy!

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handsofgod

So how has the great God of Reason done so far?

We’re still not out of Genesis and he’s –

Trashed his entire creation just because a couple who didn’t know how touchy he is managed to upset him;

Destroyed two towns and almost everyone in them because he found the locals offensive;

Drowned everyone in existence (except for an old piss-head and his family) because – you guessed it – they offended him;

Engineered a spot of child-abuse;

Decided the best way for people to show him they’re his bestest buddies is to have them disfigure their genitals.

Now, honestly, Christians, how can you say any of this is rational or logical, reasonable or considered? Your God’s response to everything is Smash! Kill! Mutilate! Destroy! – never as a last resort, always as his first reaction. He’s the Hulk, Godzilla and ISIS all rolled into one. Not once does he apply reason or logic. Smash! Kill! Mutilate! Destroy! And not only in Genesis but throughout the Old Testament:

His chums want the land occupied by other tribes? Smash! Kill! Destroy!

They don’t show him enough love? Smash! Kill! Destroy!

They break one or other of his mostly petty rules? Smash! Kill! Destroy!

They offend him in some remarkably trivial way (collecting sticks, teasing a bald bloke, doing sex wrong)? Smash! Kill! Destroy!

Over and over again.

Until, at last, he has another big idea! Another Master Plan! The Master Plan to end all Master Plans! (His fourth at least.) And guess what? It’s all Smash! Kill! Destroy! Especially Kill! This is a dude who really can’t think outside the box.

Here’s how it goes: the Lord gives up on his previous Master Plan, which he’d told some selected desert marauders was forever and ever, and decides its time to have another go at sorting out mankind that he helped screw-up in the first place. His idea this time is to come to Earth himself as a sort of clone, which he creates by raping a young woman, just like all the other gods of old. When he grows up this clone/avatar tells everyone how God wants them to behave so they don’t upset the version still in Heaven quite so much. The clone then gets himself murdered at the hands of the very people he’s come to visit – the same ones the Lord promised to take care of forever and ever in his previous Master Plan – which magically allows anyone who repeats a special incantation to join an exclusive club. Everyone else he plans to torture and murder for all eternity, because that’s what he likes doing best. Of course, the version of himself he sends to Earth won’t actually make any of this clear – that’ll be left to someone else to make up afterwards – but, in the best illusion yet, he’ll come back to life before beaming up to Heaven to cosy up to his other self, the one preoccupied with death, destruction and mutilation.

This time it’s foolproof: a well-thought through, logical, rational and reasonable plan.

Except… not really. It’s bullshit. There’s no reasoning here, just a lot of stuff made up as people went along. None of it makes sense. The copy seems to have no idea what’s going on and certainly no inkling that his death has cosmic significance. On top of that, no-one really knows how the magic works – everyone who mentions it has a different idea – and the record of it all is scrappily cobbled together donkeys’ years after it all was supposed to have happened. Still, the main thing is it all involves a lot of killing – the clone first; then the poor sap manipulated into ‘betraying’ him; a couple who don’t want to give away all their belongings; some of the dudes who believe the magic is for real then, after they’ve really pissed off the Romans, lots more of them and finally, once the nutjobs get the upper hand, loads and loads of other people – which must really have pleased the God of Death Reason.

If this is the best he can do, then we’re in trouble deep. If our ability to reason comes from him, as Christians claim, it’s no wonder we can be irrational, illogical, unreasonable and unreasoning. Which of course is why he is, because he’s a reflection of the beings  that created him – us. Human emotions and cognitive capabilities came first and were projected onto the gods we created, including, eventually, the monotheistic monster, Yahweh. It was he primitive tribesmen decided must be responsible for natural disasters and the brevity and brutality of life. Such things had to be punishments, hadn’t they? And if punishments, then there had to be One doing the punishing. One who must be appeased if he was ever to stop. Hence sacrifices, behaving in ways that might please him, killing those who don’t, worship. All futile, like pleading with one’s own reflection in a mirror.

The God created by this kind of thinking only reflected back at his makers the worst of themselves; jealousy, anger, intolerance, belligerence, petulance, vengefulness and violence. Hardly ever Reason. 

And so does he still.