Questions that the gay-bashers and evangelical extremists have trouble answering.


I’ve been observing the activities of religious people and atheists on the internet, and some interesting questions have arisen.

QUESTIONS ABOUT GOD

Only a couple of chapters into the very first book of the Bible, not long after God creates all the people and animals, he says he’s going to destroy them because he regrets ever making them. So how is a deity who decides to destroy almost everything he created….all-wise? He admits he got almost all of the creation wrong. He seems to have gotten the sea and the sky right, but as soon as he started out messing with living things, it was like watching my daughter try to make spaghetti sauce. You would think that once his experiments with rats, cockroaches and mosquitos turned out badly, he should have known that creating complicated creatures was just beyond him.

That in turn opens a larger question. You’ve been telling us about God, the Infallible. Hmm…God put Adam, Eve, the snake, and the Tree of Knowledge all in the garden, gave Adam and Eve the thirst for knowledge, didn’t foresee what would obviously happen, and had to punish all of mankind for his own mistake. Then God made a covenant with Abraham, which all of the Israelites immediately broke – didn’t see it coming. In fact God punished all those Israelites for breaking laws he hadn’t even told them about – oops! Then God made a bunch of predictions for the success of the Israelites, which turned out to be dead wrong. Then since the covenant in the Old Testament was a mistake, he made a new one in the New Testament – um, I changed my mind! Then God had to create, and then kill, his own son, for the sins of everyone else. Then he promised to return within a man’s lifetime, and then disappeared for 2000 years. Then the people who founded his faith, Peter, Paul and James, realized all of Old Testament law was a mistake, and that Christians could just ignore it. And then God gave to the world the “word of God” in the form of the Bible, which is loaded with hundreds of factual errors and contradictions. And since then God has been hiding and ignoring all prayers, for twenty centuries. So…is this the deity that you’ve been presenting to us as an infallible God?

If god is omniscient, why did the Jews have to mark their doors during Passover? Didn’t he even know who was obeying his laws and who wasn’t?

The Bible says God made light for the first time 6000 years ago. Man was making fire 400,000 years before that. Primitive men. So how smart could God have been? In all those 400,000 years it never occurred to him to copy the idea from the Neanderthals and bang a couple of rocks together to try to make a spark? Also...When God said "Let there be light", who was he talking to?

What kind of God demands we believe in his existence, and then hides for two thousand years?

So….God creates hell so he can send almost all mankind to the eternal hellfire, and then he wants us to thank him for saving us from the hellfire he created? All he had to do, was create a system that wouldn’t put 99.999 percent of humanity into hellfire. Isn’t that essentially the same as a terrorist taking a hundred hostages, killing ninety-nine, and keeping the last one alive on condition of life-long obedience? Slavery? And expecting thanks from the surviving hostage?

So…God sacrificed himself to himself, to save the world from his own wrath, because people who were created by him did what he predetermined they would do?

If God gives you cancer, and then cures you, do you thank him?

“Love me or I’ll kill you.” Jehovah, or abusive boyfriend?

...Okay, parents, your child says he hates you. Do you…

a.    Love him anyway, like always?
b.    Try to torment him for all eternity? A little hellfire?

Almost every other parent in the world picks “a”. With two exceptions: abusive sociopaths, and Jehovah. But I’m repeating myself….


QUESTIONS ABOUT REASON

There are a thousand gods out there. Any one of them could be The One. You are so sure that the one you’ve picked is the right one, and the other 999 are all fraudulent, that you’re willing to change your entire life to obey that god’s preacher, and to gamble that their version of the afterlife is the correct one. Rather than play the God Lottery like that, wouldn’t it make more sense to give up your preacher’s hate, fear and intolerance, and just live a good life? That way, even if you picked the wrong god, the right god might give you a mulligan anyway? Most of the other 999 gods approve of people who live right and love each other – doesn’t loving your neighbor seem like the smart move?

The entire Judeo-Christian belief system was first given to us by means of the Old Testament, the original covenant with Abraham. Does it bother you that everything you believe goes back to...a psychopath who almost murdered his son because a voice in his head told him to? That neither Judaism nor Christianity would exist, except for this delusional, illiterate goatherd?

Jesus erased all the sin of the world, for all generations, for pretending to be dead from Friday night to Sunday morning? Does that really sound like sacrifice, when the rest of us have to stay dead permanently? He dies for thirty six hours and we are dead forever? No wonder God ignored him in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Father, please take this cup away from me!”…”Geez, what’s the big deal, you’re dead a day and a half. I’ve had longer hangovers. Stop whining and get ready for Judas to kiss you.”

Do you feel silly when you insist that God's magic must have happened, but that evolution is impossible despite the evidence?

Why did the Christian who said  “I love the Lord. His eye is on the sparrow, and he will always protect me!” follow that up with “Oops, gotta go, I’m meeting the State Farm guy to get the home, auto, life and health package!”

So first Christianity tells us that reason came to us from God, but doubt came from Satan. Aren’t they pretty much part of the same thing?

Did it ever occur to you believers that two professions which claim to believe in acts of God, are priests, who want to control you with lies, and insurance adjusters, so they can screw you out of your money after a disaster?

You folks keep telling us that the only path to wisdom is to go to the Bible, written by the ancient Israelites. Moses, Solomon, wisest of the wise. A bunch of semi-literate Iron-Age goatherders who didn’t even know the world was round, who were conquered with laughable ease by another race which had to teach the Israelites everything from civil government to logic to arithmetic to plumbing, astronomy, anatomy, geometry, ethics….Why didn’t the path to wisdom run through somewhere sensible like Rome or Athens?

Most atheists know the Bible, and know the scientific basis for evolution. Most evangelicals know nothing of evolution and a lot of them don’t even have much familiarity with the Bible. So how is it that the Jesus People are so positive they’re right and the atheists are wrong?

Most Christian denominations admit that you can’t take everything in the Bible literally. Well, in that case you lose the book of Genesis, and accordingly you lose the doctrine of original sin. Without original sin, isn’t salvation meaningless?

So, you folks in the parish downtown. God comes back to you every Sunday as…cookies. And then you eat him. You eat God. And you all wash him down with wine, even the kids, which in my state is illegal. But it’s the rest of us who don’t do this, who are immoral. Do I have that right?

Is being descended from dirt and ribs really less outrageous than being descended from monkeys and fish? 


If Adam had to give up a rib to create Eve, why do men and women have the same number of ribs?

Isn’t the trinity polytheism? And where did you find that trinity stuff in the Bible?

“My imaginary friend told me you’re a threat.” Is that belief, or a paranoid schizophrenic with hallucinations? My kids gave up imaginary friends when they were in middle school – how long are you hanging on to yours?

When your child gets to be about eight or nine and you tell him “There is no Santa or Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny, we lied about all that -- but the Jesus stuff is still true and we'll chuck you out if you deny it!”….Don’t they give you some funny looks? After that, how do you keep them in the church without the threat of punishment?

If heaven means standing around doing nothing all but praising God 24/7, no food, no drink, no sex, no conversation, no cable, no internet, just praise praise praise praise forever….can I go to hell instead?

Why do Christians demand incessantly that atheists explain where the universe came from, but then run for the hills when atheists ask Christians where God came from? Why does one need a cause but not the other?

Why is it that the drooling idiots who accept a fraudulent, error-filled 2000-year-old document as proof that Jesus not only lived but rose from the dead, are the same drooling idiots who screech that Obama's birth certificate is fake?

Deuteronomy: a bastard can never enter heaven, or any of his children to ten generations. So how positive are you about your family tree? Let’s start by checking the family frees of the folks in West Virginia and Kentucky – the same ones who refuse to accept Obama’s birth certificate….

Christians -- All the world has been ridiculing poor Linus van Pelt since 1959 for believing in the imminent return of the Great Pumpkin. His arrival has been overdue for 54 years, almost as long as Vladimir and Estragon have been waiting for Godot. Jesus has been overdue for 2000 years – after promising to return within a man’s lifetime. So why are you still out there in the pumpkin patch?


…The trouble with intelligent children.

I’m going to go tell my kids that they are going to burn in flames forever because a magical snake fooled a magical clone-woman into eating a magical apple.

And then they are going to giggle and say “Good one, Dad. And I’m Spiderman. No more beer for you.” And then turn back to Spongebob.


QUESTIONS ABOUT FREEDOM

So…Christians are so persecuted in this country that they…have the freedom to bang on everyone’s doors to convert the heathen, put God on the dollar bill, protest on the streets of our cities, and put Bibles in four million hotel rooms in the country? So persecuted, that they are free to spew their nonsense at home, on the job, on the street? So persecuted that they have their own TV networks, their own radio stations, their own rallies, camps, schools?

Thanks to you Christians, atheists over the years have been fired, slandered, shunned, their writings burned, their voices silenced, their property stolen, humiliated, exiled, jailed, tortured and burned to death. When has any atheist ever tried to treat you that way? Ever?

You people wave the first amendment in everyone’s faces when you think anyone is persecuting you in religious terms by doing horrible things like saying “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. But at the same time, you’re constantly trying to take away everyone else’s first-amendment rights by demanding laws that transform your religious beliefs into legislation, on everything from gays and abortion to evolution and stem-cell research. Now you have people in Arizona trying to ban atheists from even attending high school. How long are you going to insist on first-amendment rights for yourselves but not for anyone else, before we have to seriously smack you people around?


QUESTIONS ABOUT SEXUALITY

So….if the “clear-cut” argument against abortion is that if kills something that is human and alive….
Sperm and ova are human and alive, and life doesn’t ever “begin” – at best, a new life, the embryo, is created from two already-living things, the sperm and ovum….
So are the women using contraception murderers too?
Is masturbation murder?
Is everyone who has non-vaginal sex a murderer?
People who use the rhythm method?
Is a condom a murder weapon?
Women who have hysterectomies, men who have vasectomies… mass murderers?
Actually, anyone undergoing a procedure ending in –ectomy is probably killing living tissue – appendectomies, tonsillectomies, murder?  
And of course mastectomy and other cancer surgery: cancer cells are human life!
Haircuts, shaving, trimming toenails, plastic surgery?
Not quite so clear-cut, is it?

If you think pregnancy is God’s will and shouldn’t be interfered with….how do you feel about cancer? The flu? Polio? 
When someone has a heart attack, do we just let God “take” him? 
In fact, every time a doctor or nurse does something to keep us alive and healthy a little longer, isn’t that interfering with God’s plan?
Isn’t Viagra interfering with his will, and makeup, and hair implants and spray tans? 
Isn’t every scientific innovation since fire and the wheel an alteration of God’s blueprint? 



Why do anti-abortion zealots insist that life begins at conception, when Genesis says life begins when you take your first breath? Leviticus 27 goes even further: it says life has no value before the infant is a month old.

So God kills a million living breathing innocent babies a year, but opposes abortion? When he had Noah build the Ark and hit the world with the flood, God killed every fetus on planet earth. Every one. Over a million children die from diarrhea alone, every year. And 260,000 die of AIDS. And 90,000 from cancer. Oh, and by the way, a pregnancy has one chance in five of ending in miscarriage; in other words, God has caused two billion abortions. Let us worship him!

Oh, and by the way, after killing all the fetuses in the Flood and prescribing abortion in Numbers, there's this, from Hosea, 13:16, "The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.” In other words, not only does God approve of abortion, he approves abortion on a large scale as an instrument of war. Large, large numbers of abortions, just as in the Flood. Authored by God, in the Bible. Do you people even read the Bible?

What if we introduced a constitutional amendment that a state can only have as many gun stores as it has abortion clinics?

If you want to stop abortion, why fight contraception too? Contraception would stop two thirds of all abortions. Or is this just another way to stick it to women because they don’t vote the way you like?

All you guys who hate abortion – why don’t you get vasectomies, or pledge to give up sex entirely? Or not pressure a woman into sex when neither of you is ready to be a parent? That would absolutely cut down the abortion rate. What if your wives decided that since you’ve banned abortion and contraception, their only alternative is abstinence? Say goodnight, Mister Happy!

If a newly fertilized ovum is a person….is an egg a chicken, too? Is an acorn a tree?

If conservatives want to stop the deaths of the unborn, why do they refuse to fight things that kill the unborn, such as poverty, poor nutrition, pollutants, lack of access to prenatal care, domestic violence, poor maternal health, and gun violence?

Deuteronomy 22:5 says women aren’t supposed to be wearing pants like men do. Is your family obeying that law?

Why does the Bible prescribe the death penalty for the spilling of semen, but not the spilling of blood?

So…according to you folks, we can teach a child how to use a gun, but not how to use a condom?

Why do so many believers have tattoos, which are banned in the same book of the Bible that allegedly bans gays? Do they realize that if I came to their church on Sunday and tossed out all the people who were violating Biblical law – tattoos, eating ham and bacon, wearing cotton/polyester blends, trimming the corners of their beards and goatees, fornication, adultery, disobedient wives – I would be standing in the church by myself? In fact, isn’t that what Jesus was doing that day at the Temple, just before they arrested him?

When God made millions of gay people and thousands of species with gay behavior – was that a mistake too? And how did he end up making so many millions of atheists?

The Bible doesn’t say to stop gays from marrying, it says to kill gays. If you’re not killing gays today, aren’t you disobeying the Bible as much as the gays are?

The anti-gay language in Leviticus says that “you” will not lie with a male as with a woman, which, like the rest of the Torah, assumes that men will be making all the decisions about sex; how long before your wives figure out how abominably women are treated in the Bible?

Gay and lesbian teens are five times as likely to commit suicide, because of persecution and bullying from people from you. Did you realize that your tyrannical effort to “save” the rest of us now has a body count?

How wobbly is your marriage, if it can be “threatened” by the two gay computer programmers living down the street?

What kind of “loving God” would put love in our hearts and then force us to choose between loving the person we love, and loving God?

So the imaginary gay effort to convert straights to homosexuality is an abomination, but the very real Christian effort to brainwash gays to become straight is critical to saving America?

A religious group which tried to take people’s money for “gay conversion” therapy has now found itself in court, for fraud and abuse. They made unsubstantiated claims about the scientific validity and success rates of their “cures”, claims rejected by the American Psychiatric Association (even other “gay converters” are finally giving up the game and apologizing). They’re now claiming that the people suing them are preventing their clients/victims from seeking their own self-deterrmination – seriously. What if the government decided that America’s churches have abused the first amendment long enough? Go track down all the churches that get involved in politics (i.e. all of them) and veer off into non-religious fields like science and medicine, and revoke their tax exemptions? File charges of anti-trust violations for trying to stop other faiths, and atheists, from doing business? Charges of civil rights violations for trying to deprive women of their rights to abortion and contraception? RICO charges, for running a criminal enterprise, which would be a very easy case to make against the Catholic church for running a global pedophilia ring for centuries? Fraud charges across the board for taking people’s money and promising heaven in return?

The goofy “gay conversion” efforts in America are even less amusing when transplanted overseas. In South Africa, white supremacists, as a sideline, have built “gay conversion” camps, where children have died. “Conversion” by means of burns, beatings, starvation, dehydration, chaining children to their beds, forcing children to eat feces and cleansing powder, torturing children who beg to leave. Is this what you hope to impose in America? Huckabee already said he wants to put HIV patients in concentration camps – do you want that for all gays??

Do you really think those high-schoolers come out as gay by choice, because they know the other students are going to be so wonderfully understanding? And also, even if being gay was a choice….so what?

All you Christians – have you read the Biblical rules on divorce?....All divorced Christians who are screaming about gays -- to include a whopping 43 percent of evangelicals --  feel free to get the fuck out of the pool and go home now. Sanctity of marriage, my ass.


Christians -- Are you really going to argue that atheists are arrogant, and then climb the top of Arrogance Mountain by asserting that people who disagree with you on gays are causing hurricanes and earthquakes by making God mad?


Is it really more important for that paranoid schizophrenic next door to have access to assault rifles, than it is for those lesbians down the street to get a marriage license?


QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FLOOD

How did an omniscient deity not know Adam and Eve would lead mankind into evil, thus necessitating the flood?

If God destroyed mankind in the flood because men were evil, then why did human evil resume immediately after the flood and continue until this day – what was the point?

Didn’t God kill millions of unborn children in the flood?

During the era of the flood, other world civilizations were in existence and make no mention of any such flood, and this includes Babylon, Mesopotamia and Egypt; what’s up with that?

Where did Noah live, if every species of animal was right around the corner? What crazy-ass jungle did he live in?

Mankind has never built a ship that big without metal bracing: how did Noah do it, and why didn’t the Ark sink?

Did all of mankind really descend from Noah’s family?

Covering the earth with that much water would have required rainfall of six inches per minute: how did that not destroy the Ark? And where did all that water come from?

The flood should have left fossils of dead animals in land and sea – where are they?

How did the flood not destroy coral reefs and asteroid craters?

Where is the evidence of flood-related mountain erosion?

How did one man herd all those dangerous and stubborn animals into the Ark, and find food for them all, and how did they distribute the good during the entire trip?

How did animals from humid habitats survive the Mesopotamian desert?

How did all those animals breathe through that one hole in the roof? How did they not die from the buildup of feces-based methane?

How did the herbivores on the Ark avoid being eaten by the carnivores?

How did the flood not destroy the plant life needed to feed the surviving animals?

How did the fish not all die from the water pressure change caused by all the rain?

If you believe the flood was only a local flood, how could there be enough water to cover all the land from Mesopotamia to Turkey, without also covering the rest of the earth?

Why didn’t Noah’s neighbors just take the Ark when they saw the rains coming?


QUESTIONS ABOUT COURAGE

Here’s a screwball question for Christians: What if the Roman emperor Constantine hadn’t converted to Christianity?

At the time Constantine took the throne, Christianity was a tiny little sect in Palestine and Turkey, with a few churches sprinkled across southern Europe and northern Africa. Then Constantine converted to Christianity and the help he gave the Church was vital: he gave them one palace and began building a second, and a number of churches. These gifts, plus the legalization of the faith, made the pope a major power here on earth.

Even after Constantine, the Christians had to hustle, and trust to luck, in spreading the gospel: they had to enforce internal discipline, collect their writings on morality and the afterlife and other miracles, and sell their ideas to key rulers such as Clovis and Charlemagne, so they could beg for money, power, and most importantly land, namely a big strip of land running right across Italy.

But it was Constantine’s help at the beginning which was vital: if he hadn’t helped the Church, they would have remained a tiny sect centered in Palestine, Turkey and Armenia, and in a couple of centuries they would have been washed away by the tide of Islam. They would have ended up as a tiny sect hiding in the hills of the eastern Mediterranean, a few million at best, like the Jews.

Or they could have been exterminated: Turkey murdered over a million Christians a century ago, and without Constantine, that could have been all the Christians left on earth, dead. And either way, Christians would have had almost no impact on world history.

If Christianity was just a dinky despised cult in Turkey, would you still be proclaiming that Jesus is lord and trying to destroy anyone who challenges you? Would you still have the courage of your convictions if the ranks of Christians amounted to two million instead of two billion? It’s easy to be brave when your side has more troops: would you still stick to it, if you were the victim outnumbered by a mob of bullies, instead one of the bullies? A thousand years ago, would you have had the guts to stand up to the Muslims and say “Allah no, Jesus yes!”…?

  
AND FINALLY

Oh, and for extra credit:

Can you prove to me there are no mermaids or centaurs?
Prove to me there are no dragons or unicorns?
Prove to me there is no Santa or Easter Bunny?
Prove to me there is no Voldemort or Darth Vader?
Oh, you can’t? Then STFU about demanding that I prove there’s no God.