An Almighty Screw-Up

[Bella]

Someone here had already linked me to this site... but I thought that this essay was particularly amusing.  

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/screwup.html

At this point, God could have used his omniscience to determine exactly what punishment he had to mete out to Pharaoh to cause this. Instead, he began to punish the entire nation with progressively worse punishments, thereby inflicting much pain and suffering on innocent people who had no hand in the decision anyway. However, each of these failed to persuade Pharaoh to release the Israelites, and since God must have known ahead of time that they would fail, the inescapable conclusion is that he caused vast amounts of innocent suffering for nothing. Pharaoh was not persuaded to free the Israelites until God killed every completely innocent firstborn child in Egypt. Why didn't he just punish the one person responsible with something that would have been adequate from the start? Who knows?

But after all this innocent death and suffering, the people of Israel were free, and God led them out of Egypt. Then, through Moses, he burdened them with a long and arbitrary set of rules covering every aspect of daily life - what kinds of animals they were not allowed to eat, what activities they were not allowed to engage in on certain days of the week, how they had to mutilate their genitals to show their faith in him, and so on - and specified the horrible punishments for breaking any of them, most of which involved death in various cruel ways. The Israelites hated these rules so much that they rejected God's deliverance, preferring their slavery in Egypt. (No surprise there. According to fundamentalist Christians, the Mosaic law is impossible to faithfully follow. It is little wonder the people preferred their Egyptian taskmasters - at least they could please them some of the time!) As punishment, God forced them to wander in the desert until most of them had died. This included his great prophet Moses, who had given his entire life to leading the Israelites out of Egypt and was rewarded for his service by never even getting to set foot on the earth of the promised land.

[shoruke]

Yeah, for an "all-knowing" god, it sure messed making the bible... it's too self-contradictory. Such as "Thou shalt not kill" in the midst of 9 other cammandments... all of which command someone to kill another.

[Raggy]

Christian defense: U R AN ATHEIST SCUMBAG SATAN WORSHIPER WAT DO U NO ABOUT THE HOLY BIBLE IT IS IMPOSIBLE FOR U 2 NO WAT IT MEANS SO SHUT UP U R GOIN 2 HELL FAGGOTS AND I WILL B AT THE LORD GODS SIDE LAFFIN AT U

THERE R NO CONTRADICTUNS IN THE HOLY BIBLE U TAKE IT ALL OUT OF CONTEXT U SEE, BCOZ GOD WANTED 2 PUNISH DA EYGIPTUNS FOR NOT BEING FAITHFUL IDIOTS

[shoruke]

haha, yup that's about right... I want to send an anonymous note to some priest saying to read some dumbass part of the bible, justify it, and I'll ask someone to record it... that'd be kinda funny...

[MysticalChicken]

I've read about half the essays on that site.  He's an excellent writer!  If he wrote a book I would totally buy it.

My favorite so far is "Rats in a Maze."  I've printed out that one and several others.