GOD IS AN INHUMAN AND EVIL MONSTER

Or he's omnibenevolent and therefore has very little, if anything, to do with the Christian Bible. If he exists at all, that is.

From AlterNet, an intellectual meditation on the power of prayer:

Why God Doesn’t Listen To Your Prayers

In the debate Wilson is asked by Barker if it is good that God ordered the killing of the Amalekite men, women, children and babies in the Hebrew Bible (1 Sam 15:3 NIV): “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” His response is scary, but granted it is consistent with his ethic that everything God does is good:

Barker: You think it was right?

Wilson: The people of God were blessed by this when they were conquering the enemies of God. And the one who took the children of the enemies of God and bashed them on the rock was blessed by God. That’s in the Bible and I have no apologies for it.

Barker: Do you think that’s good morality? Do you think that’s not a cruel thing to do? Do you think its a good thing to do?

Wilson: God is the definition of good. We begin all our reasoning from this position. We reason from what God says to our morality.

Wilson has also tried to be morally consistent in respect to other aspects of the Bible. From “The Controversialist” in Christianity Today:

But when I asked what he thought of the death penalty for homosexual acts suggested in Leviticus 20:13, he did not shy away from the theonomic hard line that disturbs many Christians. “You can’t apply Scripture woodenly,” he says. “You might exile some homosexuals, depending on the circumstances and the age of the victim. There are circumstances where I’d be in favor of execution for adultery. … I’m not proposing legislation. All I’m doing is refusing to apologize for certain parts of the Bible.”

The same distortion of the word “good” by Wilson is what is required if we are to believe that an interventionist God who answers prayer is good.

More here.

The essay writer uses these statements to argue from a believer's point of view that God doesn't answer prayer, which, to me, is self evident.

But the passage excerpted above makes plain a point that long ago helped make me an agnostic: God, if he exists, cannot possibly be the being described in the Bible. If God is all good, the fountainhead of all morality in the universe, which is a fairly commonplace description of the Almighty, then the entity named Yahweh automatically rules himself out. After all, genocide is immoral. This wipes out in one fell swoop three of the world's major religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, all grounded in the Old Testament.

Of course, defenders of the Bible assert that if God does something, it is, by definition, absolutely moral. That is, God and morality are the same thing. Never mind for a moment how this reeks of President Nixon's defense of his Watergate crimes - "If the President does it, it's legal." - my take is that if a supernaturally powerful being comes my way and tells me that I should worship him, he should, at least, pass the smell test: powerful entities who tell me that genocide is right and good don't pass the smell test.

That is, Christians have it the wrong way around: you start with morality, and determine whether a given "God" fits that; then you decide to worship him. 'Cause, lemme tell ya, if the Biblical God really is the all powerful owner and operator of the universe, we're all in a heap of trouble, both in this life, and in the next. Torture and justice become the same thing. It doesn't matter what kind of life you lead, how kindly you treat people, how much you've sacrificed for others. All that matters is that you've sworn allegiance to a narcissistic and powerful creature with the temperament of a two year old. It would be like that Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life." Horrifying.

Of course, you'd have to be a fucking moron to believe that this is the essential nature of the universe.

Lots of fucking morons out there, I guess.

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