I was raised in a devout Christian household. I believed. I prayed. I had faith. I was also very young. Later, once I had gained a more sophisticated intellect, I began to notice that what I believe did not match up with what I was seeing every day, and what I knew of human history (horrible and disgusting).
Everyone seems to agree on the premise that God loves us, and desires to be with us forever. But in order to be with him, you have to go through a pass/fail test called life. Consider all the people throughout history who have lived and died. It’s a number that completely dwarfs the number of people alive at present, more on that later. Now consider how many of those people likely passed the test. Keep in mind that God murdered entire cities for doing so poorly on the test he didn’t even wait until they died to send them to forever-hell (not just non-existence like the time before birth, but eternal punishment for a finite life). I think it’s safe to say the vast majority of people who have lived and died here did NOT pass the test for one reason or another. After all, it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle etc etc…
Setting that aside for a moment, consider the fact that the majority of people alive at the moment are not Christians. God must be very disappointed (again…more) because Christianity, while being a major world religion, is totally eclipsed by the other major religions, population-wise. That isn’t even counting the atheists and the I’m-not-sures. So, God doesn’t get what he wants? Why? Because free-will is more important? Seriously, God’s success rate looks very, very low – like an idea that appears good in theory but fails in execution. He even had to drown ALL of us at one point because things were going so badly. This is the etch-a-sketch version of creation. This is the absent watch-maker which, sadly, makes more sense to me every day. People say they have experienced the hand of God in their lives, but all I see is coincidence. It’s a thing, guys. It happens.
Free-will obviously existed before we did, if the Bible is to be believed. God already created a cadre of angels, seemingly on a ranking system since Lucifer was the main dude in charge. But Lucifer, having intimate knowledge of God’s omniscience and power, figured he could challenge God and win? Wait, what? Was he stupid? How am I supposed to believe that? And to make matters worse, ONE THIRD of God’s soldiers followed Lucifer? So even within God’s own angels he has a failing grade: 66.6% is an F+. If God is so awesome (in the real context of that word) why would his creations rebel? Because free-will? That makes NO sense to me. I would happily give up free will to get out of this place (earth).
To sum up: God created lots of angels, then 33% of them left, figuring they could beat God. Then God created an unthinkable number of human beings for the specific purpose of populating hell forever, as punishment for their finite lives. He knew what he was doing and what would happen. This constitutes the vast majority of the entire human race, living and dead, which really looks like failure (or, at the very least not love) to me. And lastly, our only guide comes in the form of an ancient book, written by ancient people in antiquated languages (classical Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) which have NO PUNCTUATION, VERB TENSE OR EVEN SPACES BETWEEN WORDS. In Greek, you can’t tell the difference between
God is now here
And
God is nowhere
Because what you're looking at is Godisnowhere. Or maybe it's "God I Snow Here". You don't know.
There’s a reason why “It’s all Greek to me” is an expression. The result: A crazy long book we have no hope of understanding unless we are fluent in classical Hebrew, ancient Aramaic and Greek, and can time-travel in order to understand the social context of all these documents when they were written. The book is so vague and open to misinterpretation it seems unlikely anyone can decipher its original meaning. That’s probably why there’s 150 different flavors of Christianity. And furthermore, within this document, he calls us sheep. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around sheep, but they are the dumbest things ever to walk the earth. Astoundingly stupid. How could us sheep ever decipher the Bible in any meaningful way? If God is Love, I don’t feel it, I don’t see it, and believe me, I’m looking.
I really want to believe like I did before, but too many things just make no sense to me. Baaaaaaa.
Everyone seems to agree on the premise that God loves us, and desires to be with us forever. But in order to be with him, you have to go through a pass/fail test called life. Consider all the people throughout history who have lived and died. It’s a number that completely dwarfs the number of people alive at present, more on that later. Now consider how many of those people likely passed the test. Keep in mind that God murdered entire cities for doing so poorly on the test he didn’t even wait until they died to send them to forever-hell (not just non-existence like the time before birth, but eternal punishment for a finite life). I think it’s safe to say the vast majority of people who have lived and died here did NOT pass the test for one reason or another. After all, it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle etc etc…
Setting that aside for a moment, consider the fact that the majority of people alive at the moment are not Christians. God must be very disappointed (again…more) because Christianity, while being a major world religion, is totally eclipsed by the other major religions, population-wise. That isn’t even counting the atheists and the I’m-not-sures. So, God doesn’t get what he wants? Why? Because free-will is more important? Seriously, God’s success rate looks very, very low – like an idea that appears good in theory but fails in execution. He even had to drown ALL of us at one point because things were going so badly. This is the etch-a-sketch version of creation. This is the absent watch-maker which, sadly, makes more sense to me every day. People say they have experienced the hand of God in their lives, but all I see is coincidence. It’s a thing, guys. It happens.
Free-will obviously existed before we did, if the Bible is to be believed. God already created a cadre of angels, seemingly on a ranking system since Lucifer was the main dude in charge. But Lucifer, having intimate knowledge of God’s omniscience and power, figured he could challenge God and win? Wait, what? Was he stupid? How am I supposed to believe that? And to make matters worse, ONE THIRD of God’s soldiers followed Lucifer? So even within God’s own angels he has a failing grade: 66.6% is an F+. If God is so awesome (in the real context of that word) why would his creations rebel? Because free-will? That makes NO sense to me. I would happily give up free will to get out of this place (earth).
To sum up: God created lots of angels, then 33% of them left, figuring they could beat God. Then God created an unthinkable number of human beings for the specific purpose of populating hell forever, as punishment for their finite lives. He knew what he was doing and what would happen. This constitutes the vast majority of the entire human race, living and dead, which really looks like failure (or, at the very least not love) to me. And lastly, our only guide comes in the form of an ancient book, written by ancient people in antiquated languages (classical Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) which have NO PUNCTUATION, VERB TENSE OR EVEN SPACES BETWEEN WORDS. In Greek, you can’t tell the difference between
God is now here
And
God is nowhere
Because what you're looking at is Godisnowhere. Or maybe it's "God I Snow Here". You don't know.
There’s a reason why “It’s all Greek to me” is an expression. The result: A crazy long book we have no hope of understanding unless we are fluent in classical Hebrew, ancient Aramaic and Greek, and can time-travel in order to understand the social context of all these documents when they were written. The book is so vague and open to misinterpretation it seems unlikely anyone can decipher its original meaning. That’s probably why there’s 150 different flavors of Christianity. And furthermore, within this document, he calls us sheep. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around sheep, but they are the dumbest things ever to walk the earth. Astoundingly stupid. How could us sheep ever decipher the Bible in any meaningful way? If God is Love, I don’t feel it, I don’t see it, and believe me, I’m looking.
I really want to believe like I did before, but too many things just make no sense to me. Baaaaaaa.