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December 01, 2004

God Is Love

Indeed.

That's what we're told anyway; however, I find it somewhat difficult to believe when a Christian says something like this in my comments:

What the hell does any of this [mocking Westboro Baptist Church] have to do with a debate about God.

God could heal through science, you know.

Some of you are just as bad as the folks you complaint about.

First point: Given that Westboro Baptist Church claims that "God hates fags" - that AIDS is punishment to homosexuals - and that their belief is just a logical extension of the charming book of Leviticus from which other Christians love to pick and choose their morality*, I'd say it has everything to do with a debate about God.

Second point: Yes, God could heal through science**. He could also heal just by thinking about doing so for a nano-nano-nano-second, all while juggling an infinite number of bowling pins and standing on the heads of angels on the head of a pin.

Imagine, just like that (snap fingers), he could prevent suffering on a massive scale from both biological and environmental threats.

Instead, IB Bill asks us to accept that this all-loving, all-powerful God would rather sit on the sidelines while human knowledge of science trudges along, finding the odd cure here and there.

God would rather make pouty sad faces at centuries of senseless pain and misery than to actually do something about it.

God would rather watch my cousin waste away and die from this horrible disease rather than heal him and say "Hey, wasn't that neat? I'm probably worth following now, aren't I? Seeing as how I am loving and all-powerful and all."

God is love? Sure, in much the same way Susan Smith loved her little chirrens right to the bottom of a lake.***

Third and final point: Yes, some atheists are just as bad as religious zealots. This, of course, has absolutely no bearing on the irrationality of god-belief or the fact that the Problem of Evil continues to be a crown of thorns on theism's pretty little head.

Update: IB Bill responds. Go read it, then come back.

Now, my reply:

Claiming that I cannot know how an all-powerful, all-loving God could or should act unfortunately implies that IB Bill also cannot know. Thus, for him to even suggest that his god is all-powerful, all-loving, or all-anything-else, and to assign any sort of value judgment to any actions of said God, while admitting that to understand such a thing is impossible, reduces his assertions on the qualities of his god to, well, absolute gibberish.

Claiming that my experience as a human being on planet Earth bars me from evaluating the actions or nature of an infinite God unfortunately means that Bill, with the same experience, also is limited in exactly the same way. Thus, for him to even suggest that anything I say about an all-powerful, all-loving god is somehow incorrect is, well, essentially meaningless.

Such is the problem any theist encounters when they suddenly claim to know a lone attribute of their god, that attribute being that their god is, definitionally-speaking, unknowable.

As for whether the laws on incest contained within Leviticus are also void, claim all you wish that certain kinds of laws no longer apply, while some still do. This leaves the (thinking) Christian in the position that he must say that at one time killing homosexuals, adulterers, and back-talking children was a moral thing to do because God said so.

Personally, I find anyone who would say that to be rather... disturbed.

Update 2: Allow me to clarify that I don't think all Christians are disturbed, or that all Christians are generally unthinking. I do, however, think that when it comes to the logical implications of their claims, they don't travel very far down the path.

Of course, they could always argue that logic doesn't apply to their God, but (a) they're using the self-same "faulty" tools to argue the case and (b) it makes any meaningful discussion about God impossible.

* Homosexuality? Bad, bad, bad because God says so! It's right there in the Bible! Eating unclean animals and wearing mixed fibers? Surely he was just kidding around about that part.

** If he existed, which he does not. Get over it.

*** The obvious difference being that Susan Smith exists and can actually have an impact on the lives of others.