For all the crap that I give Christianity, Christians that I know by and large are good, caring people. They want to see the good in people and things and I admire that. It's their illogical religious beliefs that get to me...really irk me. The Christian god is not a caring and loving one and they just don't see it. An old friend of mine recently made a post on their blog about god and a few things concerning it and I really had something to say. It has been requested (a request that I have honored) that I neither comment on nor link to their blog, so I will do neither.
This, however, is my blog and I can post what I please here.
They start out asking some hard questions about the idea of The Fall (that's part of Genesis - Adam and Eve - for those who are not familiar) and if god was omniscient and knew that Man would fail why would it then put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil out there? Why do something that would lead to the suffering of its creations?
The answer, the blogger feels, is out of love. The crux of the rest of the post is that god wanted to be loved by people who knew what love was and who loved it because they wanted to. How can one know love without hate? Light without dark? Burger King without McDs? They go on to note that they would not know how to deal with the idea that their spouse loved them because they were "brainwashed, or coerced, or tricked, or manipulated into loving" them. I'd have to agree and it wouldn't be love if someone was forced or intimidated or threatened to love me or else - that's not love at all.
The kicker is that the Christian god created a place of ultimate and eternal suffering where people go when they don't love it - a place where pain and separation are indescribable with mere human words. Given that there is no worse pain or punishment than hell, is this not the ultimate in brainwashing, coercion, and manipulation for humanity to love this god? Where would Christianity be today without its cherished hell?
I think George Carlin says it best (for the full text version of the Carlin rant go HERE)...
