Double Standards

God, according to the omnipotence hypothesis, is a monster, both by human standards and by the standards he apparently sets for us, according to the Bible. Every day thousands of people die in accidents and natural ‘act of God’ disasters which an all-powerful god could easily prevent. Earthquakes, tyre blow-outs, typhoons, cancer—the list is endless.

If a human being were to cause such events, or were known to be able to prevent them but didn’t, we’d be horrified at them. They’d be pilloried from every parliament, podium and pulpit in the world. Even God, in his simple instruction, “Thou shalt not kill” tells us that this person would be clearly in the wrong. Yet, according to most religions, God is that person. He can prevent that suffering and death, but doesn’t. Indeed, if he’s the all-powerful creator of everything, he’s responsible for it. After all, an all-powerful perfect creator must, by definition, have been able to create a world with no suffering, no sin, and no need for pain or Hell.

All of which begs the questions; why is he revered as the ultimate good? Why is he regarded as perfect, when he’s apparently created an imperfect world? And why should we laud him if he’s not good and perfect? Just for trying? I tell you right now, if such a god existed I would spit in its face before praising it in hopes of escaping punishment. To do otherwise isn’t ‘love’ or ‘respect’. It’s toadying; kowtowing to a bully.

Put simply, the Biblical story of the human race’s creation goes something like this:

God creates our ancestors (apparently partly because he was lonely and partly because an all powerful being needed a gardener to maintain his ‘perfect’ creation) in the form of two people who have the capacity to disobey him.

They do so.

Having given them that capacity, he then punishes them for using it, even though he’s all-knowing as well as all-powerful and so must have known that they’d do so when he ‘perfectly’ created them. (So far, his reputation as a perfect designer doesn’t seem to be holding up to scrutiny.) Oh and he punishes their descendants too. All of their descendants. Through all generations to follow.

The punishment is something along the lines of every one of their descendants being born a sinner, and needing to kowtow to him for all of their lives in the hope that he’ll save them from being sent to a dungeon of endless torture, which he himself created as part of his perfect creation. This is known as ‘original sin’.

A while later, fed up with the imperfect toys lab-rats people he’s created in his oh-so-perfect way, he drowns the whole bleedin’ lot of ’em, apart from one family on a boat-load of animals. How’s that for “Thou shalt not kill”?

Now, seeing as he’s had the whole of the then existing human race to choose from, you’d think that he’d manage to find a few people so saintly, so free of sin and evil, that he could relax the original sin idea, wouldn’t you? Well, apparently not. Despite having the power to completely wipe the whole sorry mess out and start again with a ‘more perfect’ perfect creation, he instead seems to pick the best of a bad lot and hopes it’ll work out better this time.

So we still need to kneel and toady to this perfect being to save us from the imperfections inherent in his own perfect design, inflicted on us by him as punishment for transgressions not of our doing, which were committed by ancestors he designed in such a way that they were bound to commit them. A perfect being who does nothing to save us from unnecessary suffering caused by other imperfections he designed into that perfect design, which he could have wiped so cleanly away that it would never have even existed, and replaced it by more perfect perfection, but chose not to.

And we’re still supposed to laud him as perfect and loving?
—Daz