Hi folksies,
I think there has been some confusion. People who read my blog tend to get confused by the profusion of ideas which are often conflicting. The reason is simple. My views have been evolving. I make it a point not to amend or delete my past posts in this blog and so I get to see the progression of my thoughts. Also, some of my posts were made after I had a fight with people on the internet and I naturally said the nastiest things of them. They could be atheists or even religious people such as Roman Catholics with whom I crossed swords at one time.
I will talk about myself here so it becomes clear what my beliefs really are.
My preparatory school is a choir school for boys in a very famous and ancient cathedral. There were only about 30 boys in the entire school and the selection process was rigorous. All boys had to be musical and we had to pass voice auditions.
Apart from being a choir boy in the Abbey, I also served as an altar boy. I've been an altar boy since I was 6 and I still serve at the altar which means I've been an altar boy for more than half my life - almost my entire conscious life.
I was a very successful choirboy and had a somewhat illustrious career, having sung solo in many performances. But alas, the day came when my voice became unstable about two years ago and I had to leave the choir. I continued to play the clarinet which I've played since I was pretty young and the beauty of the clarinet is that it's the closest to the human voice.
I now have a tenor voice and I've been roped in for some performances but I still miss the grand soprano parts. What my voice cannot achieve, my clarinet can. I still play some of the oratorios which I used to sing as a boy. There are many pieces for the soprano voice by Bach and Handel which I used to sing but can now only play on my clarinet but they mean a lot to me, particularly the religious ones.
Not too long ago, I was made a thurifer (which means I'm the cool guy who swings the incense into church). Before I accepted my appointment (most thurifers are priests), I told my vicar my beliefs. Oh, before I go on, I should explain what my beliefs are.
When I was a boy, I naturally believed in God as a real being. Any kid would believe in that.
I also thought to myself that the Bible had to be true and had to be the word of God. After all, in the Liturgy, the reader will say "This is the word of the Lord" after each reading of the biblical texts except for the Gospels which call for a different response. As a lifelong altar boy, I know the liturgy like the back of my hand.
It suddenly dawned on me one day that I should read up more about how we got the Canon in the first place. My readings took me to FF Bruce, Bruce Metzger, Lee McDonald and finally, Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman. I learnt from the very start that Josh McDowell got his facts all wrong and anyway, he's not a scholar at all and he knows nothing.
It would be tedious to go into detail as to what I believed from year to year and in some periods of my life, from month to month or even from day to day. What's important is where do I stand now?
I believe God does not exist as a being at all. I discount everything that is supernatural. God is a metaphor for goodness, justice and truth. The ultimate goodness, justice and truth. The metaphor takes the shape of the Christian religion to me because of my culture and identity.
That's precisely what I told my vicar and in a discussion with my bishop as well. The conclusion of the prelates of my church is that I'm still a faithful adherent to Holy Church and I'm a faithful and devout Christian and member of the Church of England. Or if I may use a more international language, I'm a faithful Anglican which means I'm a faithful and devout Christian.
There is a lot of good in the Church and it would be foolish to abandon the Church just because we have a different view of God.
It's not always that Christians have believed in God the way Christians now do. I discovered that even Origen, that bastion of Christian scholarship, had a different idea of what God really is. He thought Jesus was created by the Father (the firstborn of all creation). Subsequent amendment to the concept of God made Origen posthumously a heretic. A Christian of an earlier generation may baulk at my metaphorical God concept but there may come a time when his view would be considered superstitious and heretical.
These are my views at present. I'm confident they would remain my views even when I'm 50.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Back from the Alps!!!
Yoopsies doodles, folksies and blokesies!!!!
Like a bear in winter, I've been hybernating or at least my blog has. In early September, I spent some time in the Alps. The views were stunning and everyone spoke German but the hotel I stayed in that had a lovely view of the mountains was very British. It's even got a very British name. It's called Victoria Jungfrau. I'm sure it's named after Queen Victoria. Here's a pic:

Like a bear in winter, I've been hybernating or at least my blog has. In early September, I spent some time in the Alps. The views were stunning and everyone spoke German but the hotel I stayed in that had a lovely view of the mountains was very British. It's even got a very British name. It's called Victoria Jungfrau. I'm sure it's named after Queen Victoria. Here's a pic:
Sunday, May 24, 2009
CRIME AGAINST THE BEAMISHBOY
PARADISE LOST
Last Thursday, the beamishboy went biking as usual. Nothing in the air whispered of a tragedy that was about to happen. The beamishboy felt a need for a drink for it was a hot afternoon. He stopped his bike by the roadside, locked his bike to a railing on the pavement and dashed into a supermarket to buy a bottle of Coke. Having fortified himself with a swig from the Coke bottle, he dashed back to his bike and what greeted him was any biker's nightmare. His bike was gone!!! And so was the lock.
PARADISE REGAINED
Yoopsies doodles, toads and poodles!!! Heaven really exists!!!!
Yesterday, the beamishboy bought a new bike. This is the coolest bike that's ever been made by any bike company. It's got all the lovely parts and a set of charming hydraulic disc brakes. My previous bike didn't have hydraulic disc brakes.
The beamishboy has vowed NEVER to leave his bike unattended even for a few seconds. If he has to go anywhere that he can't have the bike with him ALL THE TIME, he won't take the bike out and will just travel on the tube.
Last Thursday, the beamishboy went biking as usual. Nothing in the air whispered of a tragedy that was about to happen. The beamishboy felt a need for a drink for it was a hot afternoon. He stopped his bike by the roadside, locked his bike to a railing on the pavement and dashed into a supermarket to buy a bottle of Coke. Having fortified himself with a swig from the Coke bottle, he dashed back to his bike and what greeted him was any biker's nightmare. His bike was gone!!! And so was the lock.
PARADISE REGAINED
Yoopsies doodles, toads and poodles!!! Heaven really exists!!!!
Yesterday, the beamishboy bought a new bike. This is the coolest bike that's ever been made by any bike company. It's got all the lovely parts and a set of charming hydraulic disc brakes. My previous bike didn't have hydraulic disc brakes.
The beamishboy has vowed NEVER to leave his bike unattended even for a few seconds. If he has to go anywhere that he can't have the bike with him ALL THE TIME, he won't take the bike out and will just travel on the tube.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Belief in God
Do I believe in God?
Well yes, I suppose, in a sort of way;
It's really terribly hard to say.
I'm sure there must be, of course,
Some kind of vital, motive force,
Some power that holds the winning cards
Behind life's ambiguous facades,
But whether you think me odd or not
I can't decide if it's God or not.
I look at the changing sea and sky
And try to picture eternity;
I gaze at immensities of blue
And say to myself "It can't be true
That somewhere up in that abstract sphere
Are all the people that once were here,
Attired in white and shapeless gowns
Sitting on clouds like eiderdowns
Plucking on harps and twanging lutes
With cherubim in their birthday suits,
Set in an ageless, timeless dream
Part of a formulated scheme
Formulated before the Flood
Before the amoeba left the mud
And, stranded upon a rocky shelf
Proceeded to subdivide itself."
I look at the changing sea and sky
And try to picture infinity;
I gaze at a multitude of stars
Envisaging the men on Mars,
Wondering if they too are torn
Between their sunset and their dawn
By dreadful night-engendered fears
Of what may lie beyond their years
And if they too, through thick and thin,
Are dogged by consciousness of Sin.
Have they, to give them self-reliance,
A form of Martian Christian Science?
Or do they live in constant hope
Of dispensations from some Pope?
Are they pursued from womb to tomb
By hideous prophesies of doom?
Have they cathedral, church or chapel?
Are they concerned with Adam's Apple?
Have they immortal souls like us
Or are they - less presumptuous?
Well yes, I suppose, in a sort of way;
It's really terribly hard to say.
I'm sure there must be, of course,
Some kind of vital, motive force,
Some power that holds the winning cards
Behind life's ambiguous facades,
But whether you think me odd or not
I can't decide if it's God or not.
I look at the changing sea and sky
And try to picture eternity;
I gaze at immensities of blue
And say to myself "It can't be true
That somewhere up in that abstract sphere
Are all the people that once were here,
Attired in white and shapeless gowns
Sitting on clouds like eiderdowns
Plucking on harps and twanging lutes
With cherubim in their birthday suits,
Set in an ageless, timeless dream
Part of a formulated scheme
Formulated before the Flood
Before the amoeba left the mud
And, stranded upon a rocky shelf
Proceeded to subdivide itself."
I look at the changing sea and sky
And try to picture infinity;
I gaze at a multitude of stars
Envisaging the men on Mars,
Wondering if they too are torn
Between their sunset and their dawn
By dreadful night-engendered fears
Of what may lie beyond their years
And if they too, through thick and thin,
Are dogged by consciousness of Sin.
Have they, to give them self-reliance,
A form of Martian Christian Science?
Or do they live in constant hope
Of dispensations from some Pope?
Are they pursued from womb to tomb
By hideous prophesies of doom?
Have they cathedral, church or chapel?
Are they concerned with Adam's Apple?
Have they immortal souls like us
Or are they - less presumptuous?
Monday, April 6, 2009
The Creed of Beamishboyism
The Story of God in a Nutshell
God exists outside of time and space. He is the originator of the universe. He originated the universe about 14 billion years ago. Many planets that could support life appeared but I will focus only on our planet because I'm anthropocentric (which sounds better than egocentric, hehe).
God is bound by the laws of physics and he is NOT almighty. He is limited by physics laws which are the laws of the universe.
In a sense, he created the earth because he probably originated the Big Bang. But once the Big Bang took place, everything became set in motion and everything that followed, took its course quite naturally. The earth soon cooled down after it was formed 4.5 billion years ago. As we know today, crystals can form naturally and on earth, there happened to be carbon and hydrogen in abundance. Just as crystals would bond to form the crystals we can see, so did the carbon molecules bond. With the aid of natural lightning, the first formation of what we later term "life" was nothing more than the affinity between molecules that is no different from the natural bonding of crystals. Unicellular organisms began to thrive. One organism ingests another in a most natural process of chemical reaction.
Thus began the "life" of our first ancestor. In a sense, because God originated the Big Bang, he "created" life on earth.
We moved along from unicellular organisms to worms to marine creatures to piakia (spelling uncertain but that is the ancestor of all vertebrates) which dwelt in the sea to the first animal that left the sea (a bit like mudskippers today) to reptiles to the mammalian reptiles that swarmed the earth just before (and possibly even after) the Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago, ultimately to primates. About 8 million years ago, we split from the gorillas and about 5 or 6 million years ago, so our genetic record tells us, we parted ways with the chimpanzees and we developed and evolved differently.
As it was the case with most evolutionary divergences, it could very well be that a river separated our common ancestors with the chimpanzee into two groups and over hundreds of thousands of years, we evolved into humans and they into modern-day chimps. About 500,000 years ago, we split again from the Neanderthals and they evolved in their own way. They probably became quite intelligent too because they had an even bigger brain than ours. They made the flute about 50,000 years ago whereas the earliest musical instrument (also a flute) found among us was about 30,000 years old in a Cro-Magnon settlement. But they became extinct about 30,000 years ago. It is possible that we viewed them as rivals and exterminated them. It's not the first time we exterminated a whole species.
Where does God come in? God saw that the hominids had grown intelligence and could communicate through language. There were times when he, out of compassion, tried to intervene in human affairs. But God had his limits and he couldn't do much. Our evolutionary paths continued unhindered. Sometimes, God did help us but at times he only served to create misunderstanding among the early hominids which created unnecessary trouble. God realised it was best that he didn't interfere too much, given the fact that he had very limited powers.
Did God communicated with the Neanderthals? Possibly. High concentrations of pollen were found in Neanderthal graves which suggest that they had some form of funeral rites that made use of flowers. We still sprinkle flowers in graves!!! It's likely that they also had some form of religious beliefs.
People ask why God didn't save the 6 million Jews from the evil Nazis or the hundreds of thousands of Chinese from the evil Japs. There is only one answer. He was powerless. He couldn't save the Neanderthals either, could he?
Christians have tried to have it both ways. They make God Almighty AND loving and compassionate. Sorry folksies, you can't have it both ways. If he were almighty, he'd be a nasty little bugger.
Because God communicated with hominids such as ourselves and the extinct Neanderthals, only we are capable of having this concept of God. But we all make God to be what he isn't. The Judeo-Christian religion makes him out to be Almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omni-everything. But no siree, he isn't. We collected a stack of ancient books and we say it's his Word but sorry folksies, it's not. The ancient Jews, like all ancient people, were a violent lot. Like any nomadic tribe (think of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan of the Monggols), they would attack cities and kill everyone including children. Naturally, the Jews would say in their holy books that God commanded them to kill. But poor God could do nothing to correct the slur on his name.
But all was not lost for God. He decided to make an appearance among men. He became incarnate and was born Jesus. Jesus taught the Jews how wrong their ancient books were. He'd say, your law says this but I say this. He didn't say "my law". While the OT tells us that God commanded the killing of a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples WILFULLY did many things on the Sabbath and when confronted, did he repent? No siree!!! He said rather "The Sabbath was made for men and not men for the Sabbath". Would a God who says that sort of thing order the murder of a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath??? Certainly NOT.
The law talks of killing a person caught in adultery. What did Jesus say when they were about to stone an adulteress? Did he say, "Obey the law"? Of course not. He effectively stopped them from murdering the woman and he set her free. Did Christ disobey God's law? Of course not. That wasn't God's law. Some people say Christ could forgive and not flout the law. RUBBISH!!!! Read the law. There was no proviso for forgiveness. There was no exception. An adulteress MUST be executed.
Anyway, God continues to be misunderstood today. Churches reinterpret everything and they bark up the wrong tree and try to read in the Bible some special message from God and they wrongly accept the Bible in its entirety as God's word.
God exists outside of time and space. He is the originator of the universe. He originated the universe about 14 billion years ago. Many planets that could support life appeared but I will focus only on our planet because I'm anthropocentric (which sounds better than egocentric, hehe).
God is bound by the laws of physics and he is NOT almighty. He is limited by physics laws which are the laws of the universe.
In a sense, he created the earth because he probably originated the Big Bang. But once the Big Bang took place, everything became set in motion and everything that followed, took its course quite naturally. The earth soon cooled down after it was formed 4.5 billion years ago. As we know today, crystals can form naturally and on earth, there happened to be carbon and hydrogen in abundance. Just as crystals would bond to form the crystals we can see, so did the carbon molecules bond. With the aid of natural lightning, the first formation of what we later term "life" was nothing more than the affinity between molecules that is no different from the natural bonding of crystals. Unicellular organisms began to thrive. One organism ingests another in a most natural process of chemical reaction.
Thus began the "life" of our first ancestor. In a sense, because God originated the Big Bang, he "created" life on earth.
We moved along from unicellular organisms to worms to marine creatures to piakia (spelling uncertain but that is the ancestor of all vertebrates) which dwelt in the sea to the first animal that left the sea (a bit like mudskippers today) to reptiles to the mammalian reptiles that swarmed the earth just before (and possibly even after) the Permian-Triassic Extinction 250 million years ago, ultimately to primates. About 8 million years ago, we split from the gorillas and about 5 or 6 million years ago, so our genetic record tells us, we parted ways with the chimpanzees and we developed and evolved differently.
As it was the case with most evolutionary divergences, it could very well be that a river separated our common ancestors with the chimpanzee into two groups and over hundreds of thousands of years, we evolved into humans and they into modern-day chimps. About 500,000 years ago, we split again from the Neanderthals and they evolved in their own way. They probably became quite intelligent too because they had an even bigger brain than ours. They made the flute about 50,000 years ago whereas the earliest musical instrument (also a flute) found among us was about 30,000 years old in a Cro-Magnon settlement. But they became extinct about 30,000 years ago. It is possible that we viewed them as rivals and exterminated them. It's not the first time we exterminated a whole species.
Where does God come in? God saw that the hominids had grown intelligence and could communicate through language. There were times when he, out of compassion, tried to intervene in human affairs. But God had his limits and he couldn't do much. Our evolutionary paths continued unhindered. Sometimes, God did help us but at times he only served to create misunderstanding among the early hominids which created unnecessary trouble. God realised it was best that he didn't interfere too much, given the fact that he had very limited powers.
Did God communicated with the Neanderthals? Possibly. High concentrations of pollen were found in Neanderthal graves which suggest that they had some form of funeral rites that made use of flowers. We still sprinkle flowers in graves!!! It's likely that they also had some form of religious beliefs.
People ask why God didn't save the 6 million Jews from the evil Nazis or the hundreds of thousands of Chinese from the evil Japs. There is only one answer. He was powerless. He couldn't save the Neanderthals either, could he?
Christians have tried to have it both ways. They make God Almighty AND loving and compassionate. Sorry folksies, you can't have it both ways. If he were almighty, he'd be a nasty little bugger.
Because God communicated with hominids such as ourselves and the extinct Neanderthals, only we are capable of having this concept of God. But we all make God to be what he isn't. The Judeo-Christian religion makes him out to be Almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omni-everything. But no siree, he isn't. We collected a stack of ancient books and we say it's his Word but sorry folksies, it's not. The ancient Jews, like all ancient people, were a violent lot. Like any nomadic tribe (think of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan of the Monggols), they would attack cities and kill everyone including children. Naturally, the Jews would say in their holy books that God commanded them to kill. But poor God could do nothing to correct the slur on his name.
But all was not lost for God. He decided to make an appearance among men. He became incarnate and was born Jesus. Jesus taught the Jews how wrong their ancient books were. He'd say, your law says this but I say this. He didn't say "my law". While the OT tells us that God commanded the killing of a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples WILFULLY did many things on the Sabbath and when confronted, did he repent? No siree!!! He said rather "The Sabbath was made for men and not men for the Sabbath". Would a God who says that sort of thing order the murder of a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath??? Certainly NOT.
The law talks of killing a person caught in adultery. What did Jesus say when they were about to stone an adulteress? Did he say, "Obey the law"? Of course not. He effectively stopped them from murdering the woman and he set her free. Did Christ disobey God's law? Of course not. That wasn't God's law. Some people say Christ could forgive and not flout the law. RUBBISH!!!! Read the law. There was no proviso for forgiveness. There was no exception. An adulteress MUST be executed.
Anyway, God continues to be misunderstood today. Churches reinterpret everything and they bark up the wrong tree and try to read in the Bible some special message from God and they wrongly accept the Bible in its entirety as God's word.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The Christian's Fire Escape No. 1
The interesting thing about the internet is that people don't measure you according to your age. Right now, I have an email exchange with a very famous architect who's very old (he's about 55 or 56) who is extremely knowledgeable in religion. He's a devout Christian who actually does not accept evolution. He's really an old man and not a student pretending to be an old man - he's featured in top magazines on his field of work.
He does not agree with the beamishboy on religion and on God. I've examined his arguments and I've noticed a common thread that runs through the arguments of ALL Christians. One would have thought the beamishboy would be reluctant to debate with intelligent old men on religion but I think I've won not because I'm clever but because my beliefs are correct. I've got right on my side.
I have decided to group together what I call the Christian's Fire Escape. When a fundamentalist Christian is confronted with an argument that will shatter his beliefs, his usual response is "Yoopsies doodles, toads and poodles! I'm off to my Fire Escape!!!"
Fire Escape No. 1 is one which this highly intelligent architect uses. To be fair to him, he's only used it in one line of his email but I think it's quite common in Christian circles to use this. I feel obliged to show up its flaw.
FIRE ESCAPE NO. 1 - THE AUTOMATON ARGUMENT
There are a few charges that we can lay at God's door. One, if the Christian religion is so blooming true and all non-believers would perish, why doesn't God make it clear and in unequivocal terms that the triune God is the only true one? The charge can come in various forms. In my email communication with the architect, I explained that I've been studying the human genome and one appalling story I've read is that of Huntington's Disease that is caused by Chromosome No. 4. In the US, people with this horrible genetic disease descend from two brothers who emigrated to the US in the 1600s. Some of the descendants of these two brothers were burnt as witches in Salem.
I stated that these Christians at Salem were honest, sincere believers who wanted to do the will of God. They loved Jesus and studied the Bible and really wanted to do what was right in the eyes of God. The Old Testament says that witches are to be put to death. They killed sufferers of Huntington's Disease in the name of Jesus and out of obedience to what they sincerely believed was God's holy will.
If someone loves me and is going to kill a Huntington sufferer for my sake and out of a misunderstanding that I want that chap killed, there would be no expense that I would spare to ensure that his misunderstanding is corrected. And I'm not even almighty. God, by failing to do this and many other similar things that I'm sure you can think of, must be guilty of the most heinous crime that only the ultimate evil beast can possibly be guilty of.
My correspondent defends God in this manner. God is not responsible for the evil state of human nature. He can't go round eradicating our evil nature and turn us into "mindless robots happy to do His will".
This is the famous Automaton argument. It's a very common argument that every Christian from childhood onwards is taught to resort to when occasion demands it. As in all Christian arguments, this is applicable in a variety of ways. Christian arguments are usually not very precise. They are nebulous and hazy and this is important because just a few arguments are usually recycled and used for a huge variety of problems.
The biggest flaw in this argument is of course the fact that correcting the Salem Christians' misunderstanding is not turning them into automatons. Similarly, making it absolutely clear to people that only a particular religion is true is not turning them into mindless robots. Rather the converse is cruel and unfair especially if not making it absolutely clear to everyone will result in hell fire for unbelievers.
He does not agree with the beamishboy on religion and on God. I've examined his arguments and I've noticed a common thread that runs through the arguments of ALL Christians. One would have thought the beamishboy would be reluctant to debate with intelligent old men on religion but I think I've won not because I'm clever but because my beliefs are correct. I've got right on my side.
I have decided to group together what I call the Christian's Fire Escape. When a fundamentalist Christian is confronted with an argument that will shatter his beliefs, his usual response is "Yoopsies doodles, toads and poodles! I'm off to my Fire Escape!!!"
Fire Escape No. 1 is one which this highly intelligent architect uses. To be fair to him, he's only used it in one line of his email but I think it's quite common in Christian circles to use this. I feel obliged to show up its flaw.
FIRE ESCAPE NO. 1 - THE AUTOMATON ARGUMENT
There are a few charges that we can lay at God's door. One, if the Christian religion is so blooming true and all non-believers would perish, why doesn't God make it clear and in unequivocal terms that the triune God is the only true one? The charge can come in various forms. In my email communication with the architect, I explained that I've been studying the human genome and one appalling story I've read is that of Huntington's Disease that is caused by Chromosome No. 4. In the US, people with this horrible genetic disease descend from two brothers who emigrated to the US in the 1600s. Some of the descendants of these two brothers were burnt as witches in Salem.
I stated that these Christians at Salem were honest, sincere believers who wanted to do the will of God. They loved Jesus and studied the Bible and really wanted to do what was right in the eyes of God. The Old Testament says that witches are to be put to death. They killed sufferers of Huntington's Disease in the name of Jesus and out of obedience to what they sincerely believed was God's holy will.
If someone loves me and is going to kill a Huntington sufferer for my sake and out of a misunderstanding that I want that chap killed, there would be no expense that I would spare to ensure that his misunderstanding is corrected. And I'm not even almighty. God, by failing to do this and many other similar things that I'm sure you can think of, must be guilty of the most heinous crime that only the ultimate evil beast can possibly be guilty of.
My correspondent defends God in this manner. God is not responsible for the evil state of human nature. He can't go round eradicating our evil nature and turn us into "mindless robots happy to do His will".
This is the famous Automaton argument. It's a very common argument that every Christian from childhood onwards is taught to resort to when occasion demands it. As in all Christian arguments, this is applicable in a variety of ways. Christian arguments are usually not very precise. They are nebulous and hazy and this is important because just a few arguments are usually recycled and used for a huge variety of problems.
The biggest flaw in this argument is of course the fact that correcting the Salem Christians' misunderstanding is not turning them into automatons. Similarly, making it absolutely clear to people that only a particular religion is true is not turning them into mindless robots. Rather the converse is cruel and unfair especially if not making it absolutely clear to everyone will result in hell fire for unbelievers.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
How can anyone love God?
The other day, my aunt who is a fundamentalist, asked me if I loved God. Wow!!! Love God??? Let's see, how does one begin to love God? Can one love something that one has never seen or heard or touched or felt or tasted or smelt? I love the taste of steak and kidney pie (especially if it's got a lot of gravy on it) and I love the smell of fried salmon but God is different. He's hidden himself so well that to demand love from anyone would be unjust and wrong.
Jesus compares God to our earthly fathers. But our earthly fathers are infinitely more responsible and fatherly than God. If there really is a God, it'd be very bold and shamelessly presumptuous of him to demand love. He is worse than an absentee father who despite his almighty powers, have concealed himself from his "child" . God gives his child 5 senses and ensures that he can't with these senses perceive God's existence at all. The poor child gathers a motley collection of ancient books and takes it to be God's word only to find the collection of books filled with errors and violence expected of any ancient literature. Yet the poor child soldiers on and bravely defends his pitiful collection of books as God's word, excusing God and defending him at every turn. God is better off non-existent.
It's hypocritical of anyone to say he loves God. It's impossible to do so, if you really think about it. What I love is the CONCEPT of God. I like the IDEA of him. But I most certainly don't love him any more than I love a green unicorn. Perhaps I love a green unicorn more because I can at least imagine what it looks like.
Get thee behind me, God.
It's hypocritical of anyone to say he loves God. It's impossible to do so, if you really think about it. What I love is the CONCEPT of God. I like the IDEA of him. But I most certainly don't love him any more than I love a green unicorn. Perhaps I love a green unicorn more because I can at least imagine what it looks like.
Get thee behind me, God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)