God: The Sadistic Joker
by If God was truly all-knowing, could he not stop original sin?
According to the Bible, God is an all-knowing higher power, who is the creator of us and our universe. He is commonly adapted today, as an old man with long white hair, a great beard who lives among clouds.
In the beginning, according to the Bible, God created the universe, within the space of 6 days, and took a rest on the seventh. Creating Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, he sent them to Earth into a garden of paradise, where ripe fruit was not a rarity. Yet, one fruit in this divine garden was not to be touched. So, a serpent came from a tree and told Eve to take a bite from the fruit, despite God’s clear orders not to even touch the fruit in question. She took a bite, then she and Adam were cast out of paradise.
Now, Christians believe that all humans are born with a harsh curse known as “original sin”. It can be removed via the ritual of baptism. Yet, only two “people” thus far have been free from this common courtesy : one being their lord and ’saviour’ Jesus Christ, and his ‘blessed’ virgin mother, Mary. The two cornerstones of the Christian faith, both of which did not receive this mandatory mark of life.
Now, here’s the question : if this God the Christians speak of is all-knowing, and all-powerful and did have a plan, then how come the concept of original sin occured? God knowingly gave people free will, according to the Bible, and yet, seeing as he knows ALL, he would of known what Eve’s decision would of been, regarding the fruit from the tree in the Garden of Eden. He would of been able to save beyond billions of people from this unholy mark that a woman, created from the rib of her husband, bestowed upon humanity. And in addition; the “serpent” involved in this story is usually believed to have been Satan, God’s most beautiful angel, whom was cast out of heaven after attempting to seize power in Heaven, being jealous of God himself.
Creating Satan (or Lucifer, as he was then known), God must have known what he would do. He must of known that he would become jealous of him, and that he would be cast from heaven, to become ‘Satan’. He must of known he would of taken the form of a serpent and convinced Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. He must of known that thousands of years later, he would attempt to seduce his only son Jesus, and would of known the apparent “hate” and “evil” which he has created over time.
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Post CommentRask Balavoine
On January 14, 2009 at 8:44 am
Can I clarify? Christians don’t believe that baptism removes sin, and we don’t believe Mary was sinless. You seem to have had a bit of a bad experience of Church – don’t dump it all because of that. Just keep asking questions.
Andy Martin
On January 17, 2009 at 9:29 am
The article’s logic seem OK – though I must confess I didn’t try to check it thoroughly. I didn’t because I see a fundamental weakness in it: it relies on the position that the Bible has to be interpreted literally, which for many Christians is not true.
If you allow me, without intention of offending anyone, the Bible is just a mean to teach us how to lead our lives. It was written by men (with divine inspiration if you want), trying to explain their fellow human beings how to live. It was not written in any modern language; it was not written -generally- by first-hand witnesses, but by someone retelling an account; and many accounts try to explain what none of us can feel with our senses, God.
Have you ever heard the story of the three blind men who come into contact with an elephant for the first time? One of them touches his trunk, and says “the elephant is like serpent”. The second goes, hugs the elephant’s leg and says, “no, it’s nothing like a serpent, it’s like a tree”. Finally, it’s the turn of the third one, who grabs the elephants’ ear and says “you are both wrong, the elephant is like a sail”.
Likewise, most human beings don’t have a sensory experience of God, so even ‘divinely inspired’ or ‘enlightened’ human beings have to use everyday language to describe God. E.g., Jesus taught in parables.
Now, if you want a real joke from God, if he was so concerned about us living according to his mandates, why is not every human being born with an imprinted ‘Holy Book’ (not to be specific about a religion) in his or her mind?
Let me emphasize I am not being specific about any religion here. You have to distinguish FAITH and RELIGION. The cornerstone of any religion is FAITH, the belief in the existence of a divinity beyond your senses. How that faith is expressed, depends largely on the culture of the people, and thus you have RELIGIONS, like those of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus… a very long list.
As you seem to come from an atheist position, you can criticize aspects of the individual religions, like their books, rituals or habits. However, I always see atheists struggling to understand that you cannot criticize FAITH – or I haven’t seen anyone doing it effectively.
Without faith, you are left with logic and empiricism, or in other words, science. Now, what science allows you to do is to prove within the limits of your experience that some description of the universe is correct. By definition, it is an incomplete truth, and progress in science is many times achieved by proving you were initially wrong: Galileo proved Aristotle was wrong, Newton improved over Galileo’s views, and Einstein improved over Newton’s, and…?
The key is that faith is a sort of ‘choice’, to call it somehow. It is a result of piety, which for Christians at least, is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
You can use science and logic to debate facts and measurable things, but not choices. In fact, the use of science and logic is a choice itself.
E.g. say it is cold and you have a scarf somewhere at home. When you are going out, you could choose to look for the scarf and wear it or not. You can argue in favor or against using the scarf, but what you cannot argue against the act of choosing. Similarly, people can go through their lives having faith or not, but denying God is denying the possibility that people has of choosing to have faith.
My friend (if you don’t mind my calling you so), I appreciate the efforts of atheists who try to make religious people use their (god-given?) intelligence and skills to question themselves. I believe myself that if people were more willing to do it, they would more easily become better people, and wish that religious people were more open about their own creeds. Nonetheless, as someone who chose faith, and in the spirit of the tale of the elephant and the blind men, I am willing to accept that God might meet different people in different ways – we just have to leave the choice open.
Finally, please accept my apologies if I have offended anyone, or if my choice of words is odds – my native language is not English. Live your life bravely.
Darwin
On February 23, 2009 at 6:15 pm
@GOD. : That is what silly, short-sighted humans believe… and why animals are in some ways a lot better than many humnans.
As long as we know, animals don’t have any kind of religion or belief in a higher power. Religions are just a cultural human creation.
Despite that, you see many examples in nature where the good of your kind comes above the individual good… maybe because animals cannot think they way they do, could that be a something good? E.g. flocks of bird tend to protect them from birds of prey, ants are organized (with specialized individuals) to defend the colony, higher mammals like dolphins and monkeys actually collaborate, and most animals will strive to protect their younglings even in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s just a matter of survival. It’s natural.
On the other side you have humans, who tend to believe they are the most intelligent thing ever… yet they degrage the environment where they live, deplete the resources that sustain them, starve a significant percentage of their fellow human beings, and strive to live and defeat disease as if they were going to live forever. I’ll leave you with one thought: as time passes by and science advances, life expectancy increases, people have less children as they become richer, and overall humakind becomes older. This means that during our lifetime, our “natural enemies” like bacteria and viruses have now more chances of evolving in something that might wipe off a large percentage of our population before we find a cure… is that smart?
Maybe there is no god – for any practical purpose it is irrelevant. But there are many good and wise reasons to think beyond ourselves.
Irani guy
On June 20, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Hi. I really enjoyed this intelligent discussion. I personally think God must be a joker, and he even some times make himself puzzled.. beyond all intelligence you can see in the universe but many thing looks silly and very amusing append in history and many unnecessary thing for example.. why human race for reproduction should suffer this much… all this waistings time and energy is for what we could enjoy each other and get our child why is it so much playing, cheatting , story telling.. is it the those child are important or those funny thing we do to get the girls??? i think god likes this part much more ….