God, You're Fired!

By Ubi Dubium ~

Over on her blog, Astreja asked this question:

"Armed only with a vivid imagination, assume the persona of a god and come up with one or more god-like responses....We hear about gods who hear the *thud* of the sparrow when it hits the living room window, chirps feebly and staggers off muttering rude things about the idiot who left the drapes open. Then there are the gods lurking "outside time and space," wherever the Sam Hill that's supposed to be, supposedly controlling reality without actually touching it. Finally, there are the gods who do things like wandering into the Inn and starting a riot, or arguing with a tree.... Where do you fit on this continuum?" LINK

So that got me thinking, if there actually were a god, and I could fire him and take his place, what would I do? And could I do a better job? So here's my "perfect plan":

Day 1: No more "divine hiddenness" crap for me. The first thing that I do, as soon as I take over the omnipotence gig, is to get on every TV channel, radio, twitter feed, blog, and say very clearly "Here I am! No more wondering, no more apologetics or lame excuses. Tonight I am rearranging the stars into some new constellations so you can all watch. Tomorrow morning on every single tree you will find a magic book growing, which can be read by anybody, no matter what language you speak, because it's magic. In the book you will find one single commandment: "Be excellent to each other."

Day 2: Back on the media, "Well that was a great show last night. I'm especially proud of my new constellations "Awesome Face" and "Spork". Next announcement, now that you know I'm here, I want to let you know that every single person who has ever claimed to have a divine revelation is completely wrong. Anybody who claims that they speak for god is full of shit. There are no ancient "holy books" that you need to hold sacred. You can figure out morality for yourself, because it's what you've always done anyway. You can keep your churches and stuff if you they make you happy, but no more groveling or pretending you are better than everybody else, or spending millions on fancy buildings. Music and potlucks are fine, keep those. If your pastor is a nice person and a good counselor and social event coordinator, keep him/her, otherwise you can chuck them out."

Day 3: "OK, next. When something inexplicably bad happens, you know how you guys will says "It's all part of god's perfect plan"? Well screw that! There is no perfect plan. There's no plan at all, other than to let you guys do your best and see what happens. So take care of each other for a change, willya?"

Day 4: "There's a bunch of stuff that my predecessor allowed for no good reason. So I'm calling it off. Childhood cancer is right out, as are all the other birth defects. Botflies are cancelled, as are a bunch of other human parasites. (I'll leave some diseases around to leave you a challenge, don't worry.) Also, teenage acne, I'm eliminating that one. And candy bars now have negative calories, so chow down and lose some weight. Earthquakes are officially changed from a few big ones to lots of little ones. And volcanos will now give you a year's warning before they blow. Tornadoes are reserved only for people who violate the "pretending you can speak for god" rule above. I'm also sending down instructions on how to build a cheap and efficient desalinator and pipeline system, so you can get water from the coast to send to your farmland."

Day 5: "I'm fixing a few problems with human anatomy. Everybody now gets earlids. Appendixes no longer explode and kill you. And most importantly, women who don't want to be pregnant can actually shut down the babymaking system, just by deciding to. And they can re-absorb a pregnancy that's going badly if they want to, and it's nobody's business but their own. (Since the ladies get this, I'll cancel enlarged prostates, so the men get something good out of this too.)

Day 6: "I reserve the right to meddle occasionally when the situation calls for it. You'll know when, because it won't be subtle or "mysterious ways". For instance, if a person is being really completely horrible to other people, and won't meet me for lunch to discuss it or anything, you might notice that their head suddenly falls off, probably while they are on national TV. And no praying for this either, if I'm omniscient that means I'm already paying attention. I think politicians who lie for personal gain will now have their noses grow, or turn to broccoli, or something else really obvious. If your cellphone turns into cheese, it means hang up and drive."

Day 7: I'm taking a break now and having some fun. I like iridescence and metallic shine and sparkles and cute. So to heck with natural selection for awhile, I'm going to make all the beetles come in cool shiny colors. All the spiders will now be fuzzy with cute faces. Moths get to be as pretty as butterflies. You will be able to breed cats that stay looking like adorable fluffy kittens. I'm going to pop some plants into being that grow already faceted gemstones. Oh, and unicorns. I'm making unicorns that actually fart rainbows. You're welcome.

So how's that? Suggestions on what to do the next week?

Website: http://boldquestions.wordpress.com

Comments

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~ S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden – Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~ A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins Accepting Christ as Savior Frequently reading the Bible Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules) Attending church services Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Tithing Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc. Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro

Search This Blog

God, You're Fired!

Labels