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Especially yours Yark.

Huh? Who me? What'd I do? I always get caught.

I just watched a youtube video where a christian defended the many death penalty laws of the Old Testament with the logic that these laws were made to ensure purity in Israel so a Messiah would be born to save the world. Therefore, if anyone was being disobedient they were jeopardizing this mission and it was right to put them to death so the Messianic bloodline wouldn't be compromised. In the christian's words thank goodness God made it so these people would be killed so the world could be saved.

You want to hear from me? Good, cuz I want to respond. (uh oh, here comes the yark spew, put on your hazmat gear)

Short version: Excuses, excuses.

Long version:

That's a really cute theory. You know, I have never understood these people who look at history and at the present and conclude that somehow everything that has happened and that is happening is all part of some great plan to make the chosen become the chosen. That seems like such a pipe dream to me. I have never seen any reason to come to this conclusion, but people have been doing it forever. There seems to be this thing in some people that makes them think that the universe cares about them even though babies are allowed to be killed, people are allowed to be raped, all sorts of horrid, terrible things go on, things which are supposed to be civilization-ending, but are all part of some divine plan. "DO NOT ABORT YOUR BABIES BECAUSE LIFE IS PRECIOUS" the believers scream, not recognizing that the spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) of the Christian couple who are dying to have offspring to raise them to be believers means that god himself causes abortions, which further implies that life apparently can't be all that precious. If life truly were precious, god would make sure that every conception resulted in a long life. Otherwise, what is life for? If it is ok for a fetus to be murdered by god, why do any of us have to life this muchly dreadful life? What happens to those babies? Do they go to heaven? Hell? Why or why not? Is there any real sense to any of these beliefs? But, the believers just keep on pressing on believing egocentrically that it's all part of some hidden plan to get them an eternity of bliss. I can't think of a more obvious pipe dream than this. Bartender, get me some of whatever the believers are drinking.

Off the very top, the first problem I have with this theory is that the stories in the bible are mostly fabrications and exaggerations, especially the parts that seem amazing. I don't believe that the numbers of people died that are reported in the bible. I believe that many of the reports of massacre by either god, the Israelites on the order of god, the Israelites killing on their own just for fun without god's permission, and the killing that everyone else did of the Israelites (Woohoo! We gonna hunt us some jews!) were just made up to impress those in need of a religion and a god stronger than the gods of their neighbors. I also believe that the bible god is a figment of human imagination and the Jesus story is a bunch of hooey. Why do I think this? Because I read the Book of Mormon. If Joseph Smith is capable of completely inventing stories about visiting with god and about angels and Jesus visiting the native Americans and these stories end up as the basis of the fastest growing religion 150 year later, then, by gum, the same thing could have been pulled off much more easily 4000-2000 years ago in a much more primitive (read that stupid) human era. So, these people are essentially arguing that they are justified in worshiping a god who kills innocents whose lives are supposed to be precious because the killings that did not occur by a god who does not exist were required to cause a resurrection to occur which both is not needed and never happened.

(excuse me while I lol)

The second problem I have with this theory is that it is completely baseless. A person can take any occurrence (like me eating at Coco's for dinner yesterday) and then make the assumption that the gods made sure that that occurrence took place. But how do we know this is true? Any evidence anyone uses for such a conclusion is circumstantial. (I just watched Law & Order SVU, and they confirmed my understanding of the word circumstantial.) They must draw this conclusion using inferences that seem far from obvious, rather than being able to point to god's hand prints on my car, for instance, the hand which allegedly forced it to turn into the Coco's parking lot. They can't even go to the bible for this theory. The Bible never says that the killing was required. It says that it was done to get things accomplished but never that there weren't other options. This theory is pure conjecture based in a self-important world view. When you fart and a car accident happens at exactly the same moment down the street, it seems to me that it would take extreme self-importance to conclude that the fart was somehow the cause of the accident. But this is precisely the thinking that these people use. There is no reason to believe that any killings were required to get the resurrection to happen, but believers MUST conclude this since they have to admit they would be pretty foolish to follow a being that was killing unnecessarily. So the argument is really just a shield over their decision to continue to involve themselves in a brutal belief system. It's just a way of covering their own asses from their own sensibility and from smart people like Yark. I mean, Argy. It's like the people who buy the snake oil and then imagine excuses for why the snake oil didn't make joint pain go away rather than question their purchase of the snake oil itself. No one wants to look like an idiot.

The third problem I have is with this idea that somehow it is proper to kill one person to cause another person to do something (in this case be obedient). This is an odd suggestion. It basically means that the person who was killed existed simply to be killed off to make another person's life change somehow. It means that the remainder of the life that he could have lived would have been pointless. This is really a weird scenario when it is children whose deaths were to be the catalyst for change in others. As I mentioned above, what about the preciousness of every life? Isn't every person supposed to grow to the age of being able to make a decision to believe in Jesus so they can be saved? How important was Jesus' short-term death and resurrection if the people he supposedly died for don't even get to hear about it? Sure, Bob turned to god after his 5-year-old died of leukemia, but what about the life that the 5 year old was supposed to live? Wasn't his life and chance to be obedient as important as Bob's? And did the child have to have a life of pain and hospital treatment? How important is life really if all conceptions are not required to live it? I can't imagine a more ego-centric view than "god killed my unborn child to get me to believe in him so I can go to heaven." I mean that is truly demented.

The fourth problem I have (wow, we're up to four?) is with the idea that people are supposed to have free-will, yet god is apparently FORCING people to be obedient by killing to guarantee some future outcome. Why can Christians believe that god will allow people to kill each other out of respect for free-will, but he also forces people to obey him? Man, you really have to have crappy thinking skills to be a Christian. Inconsistent as hell. So, if he can force people to obey by killing others, can't he just simply force them to obey? Just force their brain to make them do what he wants them to do. Why does he have to kill another person to achieve exactly the same outcome: forced obedience? I mean, he's only fooling the believers with that tactic.

Seriously, though, how exactly is killing the only solution? Let's look at the typical amercuhn nukyuler family. You got George and Laura and their daughters, Barbara and Scuz. (I'm sorry.) Anyway, imagine that the family wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese's with their church group. It is easy to imagine that extreme disobedience on the part of the children could disrupt these plans. However, it is difficult to imagine what kind of disobedience would have to be perpetrated that would require George to take a daughter out and shoot her in the head in the backyard so that the rest of them can get to have some pizza and prayer. Perhaps a daughter is planning to shoot up the family car with George's myriad hunting rifles. Or maybe she plans on killing George himself. Yeah. That's it. She's gonna kill George. Hell, that's more than any human could ever do to the bible god, supposedly. At least that's what the believers believe. Maybe we are capable of offing god but haven't figured out how yet. Anyway, back to the evil daughter. Now let's add another facet to this story. George is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful. Why exactly is he limited to taking his daughter out and shooting her? In my mind, if George had these capabilities, he would foresee the plan, and could simply separate the evil daughter from the situation, or incapacitate her in a very precise way to ensure that she couldn't mess up his plans. I mean, the guy can make a jail cell appear in the living room by snapping his fingers. Why does he have to kill her? I'm sorry, but this story doesn't hold up. The god described in the bible could have done probably an infiinte number of things short of killing anyone and could still get his plan accomplished.

Here is another way to think about it. Humans have to deal with assholes who try to ruin plans all the time. They are called criminals and we have complicated justice systems in place today to handle the situation. We have these systems in place only because, for some reason, the bible god stopped killing people to get things accomplished, oh, sometime around the time that humans began to develop strong critical thinking skills (coincidentally enough). But we don't just kill people to get things accomplished, do we? No. We lock them up. Simple as that. The problem with our system, of course, is that the bible god doesn't really help us, so we have to do all the investigating, trying, and incarcerating, and sometimes we mess up. The innocent go to jail and the guilty go free. But why is god satisfied with this system? How can believers believe that god had to kill anyone when today, the only people who get killed by the system are those who are already out of the way and are only being killed to give the family of the victim some closure? It doesn't make sense to believe that god had to kill anyone ever, especially the kids that were allegedly killed (good old first-borns of Egypt).

Of course, then I go big picture and I wonder, why did god design a race of beings who had to be killed in order for him to get things accomplished? Does he really delight in such a fragile and often self-destructive and stupid creation? Why did god make people such assholes? Why should I revere a being whose offspring are murderers, rapists, scam artists, cold-callers, and computer hackers? As someone once said, the fruit usually doesn't fall far from the tree. Why does god place such an importance on obedience rather than on independence? Is he really pleased by a sea of lesser beings who can't comprehend him telling him how great he is simply because they are too stupid to do anything on their own? What the hell is this being, anyway? The whole bible god story simply doesn't make any sense, and it certainly seems foolish to me to devote myself to a being that I can't comprehend. At all.

Love your avatar btw. Mmmm...donuts....

When you need mindless, nutritionless comfort, look for Homer...