God Owes Us an Apology

February 20, 2005

The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest felony. Here we'd been placidly killing each other a few dozen at a time in Iraq, Darfur, Congo, Israel, and Palestine, when along comes the deity and whacks a quarter million in a couple of hours between breakfast and lunch. On CNN, NPR, Fox News, and in newspaper articles too numerous for Nexis to count, men and women of the cloth weighed in solemnly on His existence, His motives, and even His competence to continue as Ruler of Everything.Theodicy, in other words--the attempt to reconcile God's perfect goodness with the manifest evils of His world--has arisen from the waves. On the retro, fundamentalist, side, various men of the cloth announced that the tsunami was the rational act of a deity enraged by (take your pick): the suppression of Christianity in South Asia, pornography and child-trafficking in that same locale, or, in the view of some Muslim commentators, the bikini-clad tourists at Phuket.On the more liberal end of the theological spectrum, God's spokespeople hastened to stuff their fingers in the dike even as the floodwaters of doubt washed over it. Of course, God exists, seems to be the general consensus. And, of course, He is perfectly good. It's just that his jurisdiction doesn't extend to tectonic plates. Or maybe it does and He tosses us an occasional grenade like this just to see how quickly we can mobilize to clean up the damage. Besides, as the Catholic priests like to remind us, "He's a 'mystery' "--though that's never stopped them from pronouncing His views on abortion with absolute certainty.The clerics who are struggling to make sense of the tsunami must not have noticed that this is hardly the first display of God's penchant for wanton, homicidal mischief. Leaving out man-made genocide, war, and even those "natural" disasters, like drought and famine, to which "man" invariably contributes through his inept social arrangements, God has a lot to account for in the way of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and plagues. Nor has He ever shown much discrimination in his choice of victims. A tsunami hit Lisbon in 1755, on All Saints Day, when the good Christians were all in church. The faithful perished, while the denizens of the red light district, which was built on strong stone, simply carried on sinning. Similarly, last fall's hurricanes flattened the God-fearing, Republican parts of Florida while sparing sin-soaked Key West and South Beach.The Christian-style "God of love" should be particularly vulnerable to post-tsunami doubts. What kind of "love" inspired Him to wrest babies from their parents' arms, the better to drown them in a hurry? If He so loves us that He gave his only son etc., why couldn't he have held those tectonic plates in place at least until the kids were off the beach? So much, too, for the current pop-Christian God, who can be found, at least on the Internet, micro-managing people's careers, resolving marital spats, and taking excess pounds off the faithful--this last being Pat Robertson's latest fixation.If we are responsible for our actions, as most religions insist, then God should be, too, and I would propose, post-tsunami, an immediate withdrawal of prayer and other forms of flattery directed at a supposedly moral deity--at least until an apology is issued, such as, for example: "I was so busy with Cindy-in-Omaha's weight-loss program that I wasn't paying attention to the Earth's crust."It's not just Christianity. Any religion centered on a God who is both all-powerful and all-good, including Islam and the more monotheistically inclined versions of Hinduism, should be subject to a thorough post-tsunami evaluation. As many have noted before me: If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn.In fact, the best way for the religious to fend off the atheist threat might be to revive the old bad--or at least amoral and indifferent--gods. The tortured notion of a God who is both good and powerful is fairly recent, dating to roughly 1200 BC, after which Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam emerged. Before that, you had the feckless Greco-Roman pantheon, whose members interfered in human events only when their considerable egos were at stake. Or you had monstrous, human-sacrifice-consuming, psycho-gods like Ba'al and his Central American counterparts. Even earlier, as I pointed out in my book Blood Rites, there were prehistoric god(desses) modeled on man-eating animals like lions, and requiring a steady diet of human or animal sacrificial flesh.The faithful will protest that they don't want to worship a bad--or amoral or indifferent--God, but obviously they already do. Why not acknowledge what our prehistoric ancestors knew? If the Big Guy or Gal operates in any kind of moral framework, it has nothing to do with the rules we've come up with over the eons as primates attempting to live in groups-- rules like, for example, "no hitting."Yes, 12/26 was a warning, though not about the hazards of wearing bikinis. What it comes down to is that we're up shit creek here on the planet Earth. We're wide open to asteroid hits, with the latest near-miss coming in October, when a city-sized one passed within a mere million miles of Earth, which is just four times the distance between the Earth and the moon. Then, too, it's only a matter of time before the constant shuffling of viral DNA results in a global pandemic. And 12/26 was a reminder that the planet itself is a jerry-rigged affair, likely to keep belching and lurching. Even leaving out global warming and the possibility of nuclear war, this is not a good situation, in case you hadn't noticed so far.If there is a God, and He, She, or It had a message for us on 12/26, that message is: Get your act together, folks--your seismic detection systems, your first responders and global mobilization capacity--because no one, and I do mean no One, is coming to medi-vac us out of here.Barbara Ehrenriechhttp://www.progressive.org/march05/ehren0305.php

February 21, 2005

If you highlight any post that blocks with an add, you will be

able to read it.

Love,

Alton

Realization , " lostnTRANCElation "

<unbound@h...> wrote:

>

> The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami

of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest

felony. Here we'd been placidly killing each other a few dozen at a

time in Iraq, Darfur, Congo, Israel, and Palestine, when along comes

the deity and whacks a quarter million in a couple of hours between

breakfast and lunch. On CNN, NPR, Fox News, and in newspaper

articles too numerous for Nexis to count, men and women of the cloth

weighed in solemnly on His existence, His motives, and even His

competence to continue as Ruler of Everything.

>

> Theodicy, in other words--the attempt to reconcile God's

perfect goodness with the manifest evils of His world--has arisen

from the waves. On the retro, fundamentalist, side, various men of

the cloth announced that the tsunami was the rational act of a deity

enraged by (take your pick): the suppression of Christianity in

South Asia, pornography and child-trafficking in that same locale,

or, in the view of some Muslim commentators, the bikini-clad

tourists at Phuket.

>

> On the more liberal end of the theological spectrum, God's

spokespeople hastened to stuff their fingers in the dike even as the

floodwaters of doubt washed over it. Of course, God exists, seems to

be the general consensus. And, of course, He is perfectly good. It's

just that his jurisdiction doesn't extend to tectonic plates. Or

maybe it does and He tosses us an occasional grenade like this just

to see how quickly we can mobilize to clean up the damage. Besides,

as the Catholic priests like to remind us, " He's a 'mystery' " --

though that's never stopped them from pronouncing His views on

abortion with absolute certainty.

>

> The clerics who are struggling to make sense of the tsunami

must not have noticed that this is hardly the first display of God's

penchant for wanton, homicidal mischief. Leaving out man-made

genocide, war, and even those " natural " disasters, like drought and

famine, to which " man " invariably contributes through his inept

social arrangements, God has a lot to account for in the way of

earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and plagues. Nor has He ever

shown much discrimination in his choice of victims. A tsunami hit

Lisbon in 1755, on All Saints Day, when the good Christians were all

in church. The faithful perished, while the denizens of the red

light district, which was built on strong stone, simply carried on

sinning. Similarly, last fall's hurricanes flattened the God-

fearing, Republican parts of Florida while sparing sin-soaked Key

West and South Beach.

>

> The Christian-style " God of love " should be particularly

vulnerable to post-tsunami doubts. What kind of " love " inspired Him

to wrest babies from their parents' arms, the better to drown them

in a hurry? If He so loves us that He gave his only son etc., why

couldn't he have held those tectonic plates in place at least until

the kids were off the beach? So much, too, for the current pop-

Christian God, who can be found, at least on the Internet, micro-

managing people's careers, resolving marital spats, and taking

excess pounds off the faithful--this last being Pat Robertson's

latest fixation.

>

> If we are responsible for our actions, as most religions

insist, then God should be, too, and I would propose, post-tsunami,

an immediate withdrawal of prayer and other forms of flattery

directed at a supposedly moral deity--at least until an apology is

issued, such as, for example: " I was so busy with Cindy-in-Omaha's

weight-loss program that I wasn't paying attention to the Earth's

crust. "

>

> It's not just Christianity. Any religion centered on a God

who is both all-powerful and all-good, including Islam and the more

monotheistically inclined versions of Hinduism, should be subject to

a thorough post-tsunami evaluation. As many have noted before me: If

God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is

not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't

give a damn.

>

> In fact, the best way for the religious to fend off the

atheist threat might be to revive the old bad--or at least amoral

and indifferent--gods. The tortured notion of a God who is both good

and powerful is fairly recent, dating to roughly 1200 BC, after

which Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam emerged. Before

that, you had the feckless Greco-Roman pantheon, whose members

interfered in human events only when their considerable egos were at

stake. Or you had monstrous, human-sacrifice-consuming, psycho-gods

like Ba'al and his Central American counterparts. Even earlier, as I

pointed out in my book Blood Rites, there were prehistoric god

(desses) modeled on man-eating animals like lions, and requiring a

steady diet of human or animal sacrificial flesh.

>

> The faithful will protest that they don't want to worship a

bad--or amoral or indifferent--God, but obviously they already do.

Why not acknowledge what our prehistoric ancestors knew? If the Big

Guy or Gal operates in any kind of moral framework, it has nothing

to do with the rules we've come up with over the eons as primates

attempting to live in groups-- rules like, for example, " no hitting. "

>

> Yes, 12/26 was a warning, though not about the hazards of

wearing bikinis. What it comes down to is that we're up shit creek

here on the planet Earth. We're wide open to asteroid hits, with the

latest near-miss coming in October, when a city-sized one passed

within a mere million miles of Earth, which is just four times the

distance between the Earth and the moon. Then, too, it's only a

matter of time before the constant shuffling of viral DNA results in

a global pandemic. And 12/26 was a reminder that the planet itself

is a jerry-rigged affair, likely to keep belching and lurching. Even

leaving out global warming and the possibility of nuclear war, this

is not a good situation, in case you hadn't noticed so far.

>

> If there is a God, and He, She, or It had a message for us

on 12/26, that message is: Get your act together, folks--your

seismic detection systems, your first responders and global

mobilization capacity--because no one, and I do mean no One, is

coming to medi-vac us out of here.

>

> Barbara Ehrenriech

> http://www.progressive.org/march05/ehren0305.php

February 26, 2005

Hi Barbra,

I'm new here and would like to respond to you post.

I loved it by the way, you get your view and feelings across with a

fun dose of sarcasum. There is a lot of fear surrounding the stare

of our planet at this time, and the direction we as a species are

headed. I believe in God/spirit but don't follow a religion. I

find the insights from many of them actually agreeing with each

other and yet each insist that their way is the right one... There

are many paths to the same source and that's what makes God so rich.

I totally get your frustation, but I do question it as an action on

the part of God. I'm not offended at all by your suggestion or by

questioning God's motives, I think asking questions is absolutely

nessesary. I just see that the state of our planet and this latest

natural disaster has more to do with the energy generated by us. God

may very well be both aspects dark and light, we are as human

beings, I just experience that we are in a BPM 2-3 stage as a

species, trying to birth ourselves into a state of awareness and

unity with elements of Dark and Light, the balence of both in

everything we do.

I came across this poem in A Stormy Search for the Self (Grof 1990)

If there be righteousness in the heart,

there will be beauty in the character.

If there be beauty in the character,

there will be harmony in the home.

If there be harmony in the home,

there will be order in the nation.

If there be oder in the nation,

there will be peace on earth.

Confucius, The Great Learning-

If God acted to stop floods and quakes, (I say this with respect for

lives lost)we may never realise our ability to heal ourselves and

our plant. More people around the world are noticing that unity and

love among nations is the way to go, a message that spirit has been

giving us since the begining of time. We are more and more doing

exactly what God intended, but we had to go through the darkness of

our existence first inorder to see the light of it, it's not for

nothing, we are being allowed our way, because it's a valuble

learning.

blessings,

Tippiaca-

In Realization , " lostnTRANCElation " <unbound@h...>

wrote: