RagingRev

I’ve said it before and now I’ll say it again, “The Bible is it’s own worst enemy”. I think this rings true for any former Christian that decided to read it as if it were not a perfect book, thats one of the steps I took  before I got to where I am today.

In my recent plea for someone to ask questions of me for better inspiration one OscarGecko asked me the following:

In your post, “Ex-Timony,” you said, “…alot of the stories, the book of Job in particular, really make g-d look like a huge asshole if you think about it more critically…” can you explain this further? ~OscarGecko

First let me just say thanks to Oscar for being my muse for this round of Ask the Atheist…I appreciate your cooperation very much sir!

Next, I want to clarify my position a little bit and then we will go through the specific example of Job, as the picture it paints of God to the unfaithful. My position is that the Bible and Job in particular are testaments to the character of YHVH, that they exemplify who he is at his very core rather than who he is  when you look at the prettier picture painted by the story of Christian “salvation”. This, not the sacrificial god found in Jesus, is who YHWH truly is, everything else is just what he needs to be to be more acceptable to the masses. I say that the intent of the new testament is like a huge Public Relations campaign to make YWHW more palatable to those that may not be “God’s Chosen People”. Of course this is a rather rudimentary simplification of my view, but it should serve my purpose here.

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Frigga responded to my last call for a muse with a question….I thought it was broad enough to make a short post about, thanks Frigga for the inspiration!

Frigga says:

I’m curious what your thoughts are on Afterlife.  What do you think happens?  What do most atheists think happens?  What do your others readers think happens?  Do you believe in near death experiences?  How about ghosts?

The afterlife is one of those things where I can definitively say I don’t have an answer…I can even definitively say that NO ONE has an answer…I just don’t think it is possible, but I have thought about it before…of course. When I was a Christian I would often ponder about heaven and just how close I could be to God if he would allow me, I was convinced that heaven was a reality and that my seeking God on earth would help me be closer to him one day. Now that I have rejected that view of life it feels kind of silly to think about heaven and hell…so I generally don’t.

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Robert posed a few questions on the Morality and God post that I thought deserved a little attention (actually, all of them from everyone were good, but this is a good easy place to start I think, the conversation that ensued after the post delighted me though, so thanks to those of you that participated, feel free to continue!)

Robert says:

Matt you say God created man and woman imperfect. Is the freedom and ability to do wrong an imperfection or part of perfection?

I don’t really think freedom nor ability to do wrong would be the act of creating imperfection…but creating us in the LIKLIHOOD that we will screw it all up and then planting the device by which we will fail Him in the middle of the garden, then providing the Serpent to tempt man. It’s that the Bible teaches that God essentially SET MAN UP FOR FAILURE that makes HIM the bad guy, that is imperfection.

Regarding God creating evil? I think God IS good (He defines it by his being God). Evil exists when we do that which is not of God. Its not created surely?

Lets take a literalistic view here.

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7, KJV)

The Bible says God created evil. Creating choice is one thing, but creating evil is entirely another. IF god created something (out of nothing or void) that we can definitively say we don’t need (bad things aren’t needed surely?) then isn’t that just setting us up to fail? Why create the unnecessary? And the Sovereign God argument, that God did it so it must be part of his perfect will etc, is bunk because he must know that it is far beyond reasonable comprehension for us feeble minded humans and that our lack of understanding will CAUSE many of us (myself) to go astray. Once again HE is creating the chaos, just like the Bible says.

I know this is brief, tomorrow I intend to bring up the different views that exist regarding God and Satan—one being that Lucifer is the good guy—what do you think?

Adding more information here for Russ:

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So I guess I knew it would happen sooner or later, with public openness in such a vast forum as the interweb, one is bound to have his views spread about to his locality. I think I messed up when I added a few of the wrong people to my facebook account, where I often publish links to my posts. Well someone has informed my Wife’s mother that we are Atheists.

Now, my wife, she isn’t an Atheist  (yet hehe). She says she doesn’t know, which is understandable, but that she definitely doesn’t believe in Jesus or Christianity. Now, let me just say, I didn’t have anything to do with this, somehow, some way, we ended up moving away from the faith at nearly the same exact time…one day we were sitting together talking and she brought it up…I NEVER DID, this was during the time where i couldn’t even express all my conflicting thoughts about my faith, so this was a HUGE relief for me. So anyway, her brother called her Saturday and asked her if she was an Atheist.

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My last post has garnered alot of attention, relatively anyway…and i am finding that the method by which replies are sorted doesnt quite suit my normal methods of interaction..so i am going to post all of the replies i have recieved here and answer them…because the responses i have recieved have been good responses and i am very thankful to have them.

I am going to go in order of receipt of first comment and keep any replies in the same loop—if anyone knows a better way to do this, i am very much open to suggestions. So, lets start with my friend Ron:

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A friend of mine responded to my Extimony via Myspace mail…First will be his post, then mine follows

From: David
Date: Aug 22, 2008 12:27 PM

Thanks. You really put a lot of thought into that and I enjoyed the insight. Moreover, I applaud your objectivity, but I’m a little thrown by the way one of the biggest beefs with God you mentioned is allowing humans to doubt. IMHO, Doubt is purely an emotional state of mind influenced by logic.

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