Guest Post by Neil Robinson who blogs at Rejecting Jesus
I’ve been reading a recent post on Gary Matson’s Escaping Christian Fundamentalism blog: ‘God Is So Good! He Allowed Ten Thousand Children to Starve to Death Today‘ in which Gary asks where God is when this staggering number of children die of hunger every day.
Gary has his very own ‘Doctor Tee‘ — all atheist/agnostic bloggers have them, though admittedly Bruce seems to have more than most — and ‘Swordmanjr’ leapt to God’s defence. The Almighty Creator-Of-All-Things, you see, needs fallible, flawed human beings to do this for him. Swordmanjr accused Gary of scapegoating God who, apparently, is not really responsible for suffering, nor indeed anything horrible.
I guess God could be being scapegoated if it weren’t for the fact his Son, God Incarnate according to some, tells us he cares for human beings much more than he cares for sparrows (which is, admittedly, not much at all), that he is concerned to the extent that he numbers each and every hair on individuals’ heads (Matthew 10:29-30). This must be before he allows so many of them to die of starvation and in natural disasters.
The evidence is that God does not care. He doesn’t care if you’re a child born into poverty who then dies a slow, miserable, painful death through malnutrition. He doesn’t care if you’re caught up in a natural disaster like the recent earthquake in Turkey (which, according to some Christian nutjob, was God’s response to Sam Smith’s satanic performance at the Grammy’s) in which your entire community and you yourself are wiped out. He doesn’t care if you die of a nasty virus, which ultimately he’s responsible for, as millions, including Christians, did during the pandemic. He doesn’t care that you die, when, or how horribly. He – just – doesn’t – care, period.
Jesus, as he was about so much, was plain wrong about his Father’s caring. The real world does not and will not match up with this early Christian fantasy.
Believers who leap to God’s defence invariably do it by launching vitriolic ad hominem attacks on non-theists who dare to criticise his shoddy performance. In doing so, they demonstrate yet another of Christianity’s disconnects: its promise that it makes new creatures of people, filled with love and compassion (2 Corinthians 5:17).
‘By their fruits shall ye know them,’ proclaims Jesus in Matthew 7:15-20. If the Christians who lurk around atheist blogs are anything to go by, those fruits are often pretty rotten: spiteful, vitriolic, hateful . . . ‘evil,’ Jesus calls it. These Christians frequently end their comments with a threat: one day the atheist will stand before God’s judgement throne and then they’ll be sorry; Hell awaits!
God is not there in this kind of behavior. He’s not there when humans suffer and die, frequently horribly. He’s not there in the Bible verses that promise he is there in such circumstances. God is not there.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Re: Sam Smith’s performance at the Grammys
Wow! Just another example of God having bad aim and being a bad communicator, since God appears to demonstrate his disapproval of Sam Smith by killing thousands and thousands of people (including babies, children and old people) half way around the world in Turkey and Syria instead of releasing an earthquake beneath the Cryto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles. Apparently, the theology of Uncle Pat Robertson still exists, even if Uncle Pat is now retired.
Dr. David Tee responds:
https://theologyarchaeology.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/they-never-learn/
As a teen, I would fish 🐟 a pond that was teeming with bluegill 🎣. You could put virtually anything on the hook for bait and the fish would bite. Tee is like those bluegills. So easy to bait, hook, and reel in. ❤️❤️
I’ve just returned from Dr Tee’s site and now need a lie down in a darkened room, preferably with a stiff drink.
All the same, I’m pleased to have pushed his buttons.
Sorry, i didn’t bother to read beyond the first sentence of Dr Tee’s screed: “We will have to link to a couple of websites this time as it is the only way to refer to there content.” It is a pet peeve of mine that a native English speaker didn’t bother to learn the differences among “there”, “their”, and “they’re”. Call me what you will. I must be slipping as I didn’t conjure the notion that some fundamentalist Christian would blame the earthquake in Turkey and Syria on Sam Smith’s Grammy performance – my bad!
I feel bad when I see people on social media imploring their friends to pray for the Christian deity to heal their loved ine from cancer or other illness. It’s heartbreaking as the care and treatment is in the hands of people who spent years in school and in practice learning to treat illnesses. There is no evidence that a deity is swooping in to wave its magic appendage to save the sick person, but the medical treatment devised and practiced by trained professionals may help – or it may not. There is no evidence that deities cause, prevent, or rescue people from calamity. Things happen. But often trained and untrained people can rescue others in need. This is the way of the world.
unsurprisingly, a rabbi also wants to join in the claim of divine punishment, showing that these morons have no problem in claiming a idiot god who can’t actually hit the people its supposedly aiming at.
What kind of God takes out his rage at Sam Smith by killing thousands of people in an earthquake thousands of miles away?
The same kind of God, apparently,that expresses umbrage over Western European countries and US States legalizing same-sex marriage by sending a similarly destructive earthquake to a country—Haiti—even poorer than Turkey or Syria that, moreover, probably never even thought about same-sex unions:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/02/does-gay-sex-cause-earthquakes/36039/
Is such a God an avatar of mercy, compassion or justice? I think not. That’s why I’m happy, or at least relieved, that he doesn’t exist.