God and smiting

It finally took pinching myself and a bit of a self-arm-twisting, but I finally visited my local DVD store and picked up a copy of the Steve Corall's latest DVD release, Evan Almighty. This film is obviously a sequel to those who know about the first film, Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey (whom also plays a character role in the film Dumb & Dumber, just to give people notice).

Okay, so if you're not familiar with the first film it goes something like this: God (played by Morgan Freeman) finally answers "Bruce" and his prayers for a better life. To make a long story short, God gives Bruce his powers to see what it might be like having unlimited domain in the universe for a temporary amount of time until Bruce comes to the "moral" of the story that human beings can't do God's job as well as God can. Yeah, I know, it's pretty stupid stuff and I know just exactly what you might be thinking at this point: Well, why the hell not? After all, doesn't it say in the Bible that God made man a "perfect" creation? Is God so smug that he puts us to a limitation scale and boasts of his universally sovereign power? If that's the case, God is a real smug cornhole, and that's that.

Alright, so the second film focuses more on a character from the first film known as Evan Backster whom becomes the main character of the second film running into contact with God, blah, blah, blah. In the movie, Evan is elected Congressman and hopes that his campaign will "change the world." Then, God comes into the scene to tell Evan to build an ark. Yep, this takes after the mythical story of Noah's Ark as found within Genesis (if you take a look at some of the "Special Features" on the DVD rom you'll hear an interesting bit where the director wanted the ark used in the film to match "historical records" which tells you allot about who is behind the production of this film and how they are planning to continually push Creationist propaganda into the media and elsewhere just for a little profit for their Jesus-camps and pedophile priests). And this is where it gets interesting. Now, maybe the director didn't take a good enough look at the book of Genesis when he sought out writing the script to this movie, but according to the Bible it says that God promised Noah via a rainbow that he would never send such a destructive flood to mankind ever again:

Genesis 9:14-15

14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

Despite what the Bible says however, and being that the film's director is most likely a fundamentalist Christian, the producers of the film wanted to have God create a second global flood. What makes this even worse is that God describes the Noah myth as "a story of love" not of His wrath upon the sinful. That's how it goes throughout the rest of the movie: God is showing "love" by destroying the Earth with a great quantity of water. If you're a Christian and this somehow doesn't register well with you, perhaps you should be reading more of your Bible.

That's right folks. The Bible contains all of the same wishy washy garbage as does the movie itself. Somehow, God demonstrated his "love" to Abraham when he commands him to kill his own son and then to have that backfire as a sort of brutal strip tease (I know how those are, and believe me, they ain't pretty), and most importantly for Christianity, God shows "love" by sending himself in human form only to be nailed to a cross just to please his own deviance. Talk about a ridiculous fairy tale. Sheesh.

As an atheist I willingly choose to reject such doctrines. But, more importatingly aside from my own personal affairs, you have to wonder why there are such things as "Christian apologists". These type of people know what the Bible says inside and out, letter for letter, word for word, page by page. Yet, they continue to defend the notions that love comes about through torture, genocide, and crucifixion. If the Christian God does exist, he is the type of being that psychopathic freaks like Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas and Michael Jackson talk about when they use the word "God."

And besides all of the nasty theological implications in the film, the directing and scripting is just godawful. For one, the director picks a black man to portray the role of God? The director of course did this in the first film, but I mean, for sheesh's sake. A black man? Isn't God supposed to be the god of the Jews? How many Jews do you know that are black? Seriously....

My second issue with the moviescripting is the flood scene: There was no "global flood". In fact, the only flood in that film was one that destroyed the city dam and the city's urban areas. Then the water just literally dried up. What a waste of money! They didn't even have the nerve to create a global flood effect! Those cheapskakes, sheesh!

What I set out to do in this article was to explore pre-Christian theology. Christians are always hung up on the idea of their God being "merciful", "forgiving" and "all loving." It's almost as if they completely ignore the Old Testament. Why? I thought the entire Bible was the inerrant divinely inspired Word of God? And the Christians that do acknowledge the OT's content dismiss it as being of a "different time period." Well, I'll tell you what I think: I'm disturbed by it all, each and every part of it. The fact that we still live in a society where most people do not accept evolutionary biology is frightening in itself. I fear we may at some point regress back to Old Testament times, and I can only hope I will be long dead before then.

The Problem of Evil

This last July I had the honors of a live videotaped debate between myself and atheist-turned Christian apologist David Wood on "The Problem of Evil". So, you probably have the gist of all of this already. Here, I present the problem of evil as an objection to the existence of God; or, at least, that if God does in fact exist, why evil is even permitted in the first place:

Introduction

David Wood's Rebuttal

Rebuttal Exchange

Conclusion

Now I don't mean to be egocentric here, but the fact of the matter is that I had Wood absolutely speechless inevitably winning the debate. I don't want to give out all of the arguments that I used against his case, but I will leave you with a brief summary just to get the general idea. Once again, I am not inclined to SHOW ANYTHING, but I am willing to for information's sake.

Predation argument - Anyone who seriously thinks on the 'Creator' concept has to question at some point why "God" allows predation to exist. Think about it for just a minute: Wouldn't the world be better if we were all vegetarians? As I present in the debate, if the world were comprised of vegetarians and herbivores, there would be more peace and stability between each and every one of us. So if Christians are going to make the stand that an omnibolevelent god created the universe and our planet Earth, then they'll need to come forth with an argument that successfully rebuts mine. I'll be sitting by and waiting for the chance to come, if it ever does.

Hypothetical argument - Overall what about the general creation of God's supposed "handiwork"? If God created a paradise such as the Garden of Eden, clearly he wanted to have a heavenly oasis on Earth. And if God's creation was intenteded to be of the "perfect" stature, then why did God even waste his time creating all of the diverse species and living organisms that we now see today? Why did God create all of those plants, animals, and insects? Why not just leave it with Adam and Eve by themselves? Why did God create hunger and a digestive system (talk about gross)?

Now I know that some Christians will object by saying "Well, we need animals for compassion!" But that's just it! If God wanted to create a perfect heavenly oasis on Earth, it would be redundant and unneccessary for him to create animals or to create us humans with needs like social dependency. If I were God, I would have the world completely and 100% fool-proof. Everything that was designed would be in top working order: Humans would be the sole dominance of the Earth not needing to depend on others for comfort, there would be no need for the digestive system or obesity. If my humanly finite brain can come up with better hypothetical circumstances than what God supposeldy created (being our reality), then what does that say about God's intelligence? If God is all-knowing, then he's a moron for creating such an imperfect reality.

History/Titanic - Let's consider all of the genocide and major natural disasters that have occured within our historical timeline. Why would a god of omnibolevelence permit the suffering and death of all of those disasters and occurances? Maybe we should be asking ourselves, "Why did God allow the Titanic to sink?" Well, why did God allow the Titanic to sink? Does anybody know or have any knowledge as to what reason a omnibolevelent god might have for allowing the world's largest ship in recorded history to sink in the middle of the freezing Atlantic killing all of those Irish peasants? Well, hmmm?

Obviously to anyone who watches the debate with both of their eyes wide open, would see my opponent David Wood had a difficult time answering these arguments, which suggests that there are no successful rebuttals or refutations of what I have brought to the table. I do not seek to try to put pressure and difficulty on the Christian's capacity to rebut my arguments using logical reasoning. In fact, I present simple arguments so that it should be very possible if not indeed simple to answer my arguments. Yet there are still many of my arguments that have been left unanswered by Christians. I guess in the long-run Christianity just can't be intellectually defended. Good thing I'm an apostate. ;)

In other news, it seems that I have a YouTube imposter of me trying to sell something on "eBay". Chances are this is the doing of Frank Walton, as not only has he impersonated me before on multiple occasions, I don't even have a connection with the eBay Corporation. Better luck next time, Frank, and when you decide to hire a professional impersonator of me, make sure that you get my first name right: It's "John" not "Josh", idiot. Sheesh.

IrishFarmer and his "review" of my book

Yep, I stopped by "Atheism Sucks" again this morning and I came across their latest post dealing with my book! Well, it shouldn't come as a suprise knowing that this review was just going to be outright horrible. IrishFarmer, on his own website titled "Christian Free Thought" (an oxymoronic title) begins:

Chapter 1 doesn't require much commentary. Loftus gives a brief overview of his entry into Christianity. What interests me more than anything else would be John's references to his study in apologetics. That is, John says something which I hear many apostate Christian apologists say. That is, in 1:1 he speaks of how he started simply with the assumption of the truth of the Bible without justification (what he means by truth I don't know, but based on the rest of his book, I would assume it means complete inerrancy), and then moved on to reading large amounts of theological works by people like Josh McDowell, Hal Lindsay, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and so on. [Loftus, p. 16] The problem I have with this is, I hope, somewhat clear. John went from uncritically accepting the 'truth' of the Bible, to reading Christian literature, presumably to tell him what to believe. Certainly, John can't claim he critically considered these theological works - at least not as completely as he should have - since eventually his critical consideration would lead him to disagree with those authors.

Gee, maybe that's because I wasn't so critically established before I became an atheist, hmm? How do you go about answering that? Remember that a critical Christian apologist does not equate with a critically thinking mind. Duh.

There's not much of a comment against Loftus here, I would just encourage Christians to use theological works as a "guide", not as a means to allow others to think for you. Even if I'm misrepresenting Loftus' mindset, I would encourage Christians to be careful to avoid this sort of thinking, since this would rightly make someone an "atheist in the making".

That's the whole point of my this blog and my book, idiot. Sheesh. Does he not understand that my intentions are to convince people of an atheistic worldview or not?

Now, that aside, chapter 2 is where things start to get interesting. John discusses the events leading up to his de-conversion. But, I was surprised at the complete lack of any relevant reason for why he would actually leave Christianity. I'll list the events surrounding John's crisis of faith, and let you decide for yourself whether they warrant a loss of belief.
He cheated on his wife with a woman named "Linda". This woman went on to falsely accuse him of raping her. [Loftus, p. 21-22]
Loftus abandons his belief in young earth creationism because of a correspondence with his cousin, "Larry", who was a lieutenant in the Air Force (woot!). [Loftus, p. 22-23]
Loftus' cousin, "Jeff", takes away (amongst other people, it seems) John's sense of a loving Christian community. [Loftus, p. 26]

Oh, this should be good. No "relevant reasons" for deconverting huh? Let's answer each one of these dubious examples just to show how this review doesn't hold up to any logical platform nor holds any water of its own:

• As I've already explained in my self-defense over the matter, when I was a Christian I perceived Linda the stripper to be Satan incarnate. Back in the days of my strong Christianity, I thought Linda's rack and large ass were to inhumanly shaped that she must have been a demon incarnated. That's "relevant reason" #1, wise guy.
• My cousin Larry showed me the science that was against Young-Earth Creationism and thus led me down my path to questioning the valid tenants of Christianity, if there were any. The Air Force is a technical branch of the military, and so I entrusted much of what Larry told me in favor of evolutionary science. Relevant reason #2.
• My ideas on the Christian community are still being held to this day as an atheist. I have already explained in part one and part two of why I deconverted in the first place as to why these reasons are relevant to my case. That's the third relevant reason. Guess IrishFarmer will have to pick out another argument against my deconversion story won't he?

Now IrishFarmer returns on the Young Earth Creationism issue again:

So, with that aside, I want to nitpick a few details. First, on Loftus' abandonment of young-earth creationism, I personally am not going to argue against this. At least not the result of his change-of-mind, only the means by which he arrived there. For instance, Loftus wonders why God would allow the universe to evolve, but not mankind. Which, again, seems to be a rather sophomoric treatment of the issue. He asks, "...if God took so long to create the universe, then why would he all of a sudden snap his fingers, so to speak, and create human beings? If time is not a factor with God when he created the universe, then why should time be a factor when it came to creating human beings?" [Loftus, p. 23]

Yes and the problem with this IS? That very argument IrishFarmer delusionally thinks he's rebutting infact brings up the point that God is not very intelligent. And if God is not smart, then which God is he? Of course, Christians believe that God sent himself to be nailed to a pair of boards just to "sacrafice" and somehow "please" himself. Maybe the Christian God is an idiot. There are certaintly good reasons to think so.

It seems Loftus might have this issue backwards. That is, he decides what makes the most sense in his own mind, and then presumably works backwards to support that decision with evidence. Whereas, I think the more rational thing to do is leave value judgements aside, see where the evidence leads, and then accept that even if the truth isn't what we expect, there either is a good reason for it, or there doesn't have to be a good reason for it.

Let's just keep on splitting hairs here, right? If I want to "support that descision with evidence" and then I go along the roads of seeing "where the evidence leads" then it is the same exact difference, idiot. Sheesh.

The final point I want to make is that John was involved in the Church of Christ. I've heard some bad things about the CoC, and many apostates reinforce my weariness. That is, John seems to have taken a very rigid, literal, black-and-white approach to his theology. For instance, much of his argument hinges on the inerrancy of Genesis.

Of course my faith as a Christian depended on the inerrancy of Genesis. You can't be a Christian and an evolutionist at the same time, as it goes against the precepts of the "inerrancy" argument. And why is it that Genesis sounds so familiar to other neighboring predating creation myths? Did God create the world in seven literal days as it says in the Bible, or did the universe evolve and God sat around waiting for man to show up when he could have done it in just a few seconds (or even seven days if he wanted too). What exaclty are you going to believe, the infallible, inerrant, literal Word of God or the secular reasoning of man influenced by "Satan"?

So here we see Irish Farmer's "review" of my book is clearly lacking in objectivity and reason. Christians will have to come up with waaay better arguments against my book.