Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.
Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves” – these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.
If you believe in a God that uses violence to “save” humanity, you’ll start believing that violence is permissible in certain circumstances, such as suicide bombing or invading other countries to spread democracy, Crossan says.
The human addiction to violence, though, is so ingrained that even the authors of the New Testament had trouble accepting Jesus’ nonviolence, Crossan says.
So they did a little editing.
Crossan’s proof: Jesus preaches nonviolence at the beginning of the New Testament. By the book of Revelation, he’s leading armies through heaven to kill evildoers.
“Christianity both admits and subverts the historical Jesus,” Crossan says.
Over three years ago I argued that God’s existence could not be scientifically proven. It must be taken on faith. But it seems I was wrong. Bill O’Reilly has finally proven the existence of God with his genius:
Tides go in. Tides go out. Never a miscommunication.
That’s right — tides prove the existence of God. Wikipedia may say, “Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth” … but that was probably written by a 10 year old in his underwear. We really have NO IDEA how the tides work! We can’t predict them. It’s simply beyond our comprehension, and if someone says differently, they should be stoned to death with small pebbles.
You can watch Papa Bear stun the world with his revelation here (along with some heretics poking fun of him):
Jeremy said he was only going to “watch videos of cats (supplied by @jpsowin) and silly Christians” so I thought I’d take the opportunity to supply both in one post:
There’s more where that came from, I assure you.
Update: Here’s a combination of the two… but it’s a parody, thank God!
The main difference between a prophet and a psychopath, says Ralph Hood, who teaches psychology of religion at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, is “whether or not (they) can get followers.”
Fire and Knowledge aims to be thoughtful and challenging through quotes, links, commentary and essays.
Topics include science, religion, politics, literature, history and technology. As someone said, there are no uninteresting subjects, only uninterested people.
