What Good is God?

By Carl S ~

Believers tell you your prayers weren't answered because, “You didn't have enough faith.” Why should you need any faith? How can one person’s believing something more intensely than another change the outcome of a petition to an invisible being? Why would an all-powerful deity care? Doesn't a god realize that, when you need real help you need it now, and should receive it now, no conditions required? If Christians believe, according to their scriptures, that their heavenly father will not give a stone to his children who ask for bread, why are so many of them accepting stones and blaming themselves for absence of bread?

Did belief in God do anything for the Jewish people who prayed for deliverance in concentration camps? What good is a god who does nothing about that? Useless. If he was in any way human with super powers, he'd be prosecuted and maybe, executed, as guilty of genocide.

Did all the prayers and sacrifices to all the gods prevent the collapse of god-worshiping civilizations? Has a god ever stepped in and stopped religious wars? Has God ever clarified the dogmas that keep dividing believers for centuries, thus preventing them from engaging in sectarian warfare? If you say there is no god who fits the definition of “good,” but rather “indifferent,” the pieces fit together logically. Anything else requires denying the evidence (Of course, denying evidence is meat and potatoes for faith.)

If “God helps those who help themselves,” who needs God? How many trusting believers have killed others when God told them to, and had to pay the price for obeying? Did God show up in court to defend them? God is a useful way for them to walk away from responsibility. How many women have acquired abusive and/or unfaithful husbands because they trusted, please God, to send them a “Christian man?” They “know in my heart he is Mr. Right” just as sure as they know in their hearts their God is real. So why did they make such a bad choice? Is it because “God” is an option who tells believers what they want to hear? A Father who gave a damn wouldn't steer his daughters in the wrong direction. Better such women shouldn't have trusted faith and listened to their friends.

After tornadoes, hurricanes, massive flooding, and other major disasters, who has to pick up the pieces, clean up the mess, rebuild our structures and lives? We do, that's who. We rescue and help each other, so where’s this bodiless spirit when push comes to shove? Prayers, far from moving mountains, don't even move a scrap of trash from a destroyed environment.

This humans helping humans goes for everything we value: freedom, livelihood, safety, cleanliness, etc. Whatever we can't do for ourselves, we look to human support for. “In God we trust” is total bullshit, especially on currency, always minted by governments. A ten dollar bill gets you ten dollars, nothing more nor less. You’ll wait forever for a god to turn prayers into hard cash, or water into wine. Even with infinite faith, it's not happening. Who needs God?

If “God helps those who help themselves,” who needs God?

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