Ben Goren’s post on “The one question a Christian can’t answer” (aka “Why didn’t Jesus call 9-1-1?”) got lots of comments: over 150. One of them, a long screed critiquing Ben’s essay, didn’t appear. It was by a religious reader called “Nixak”, clearly Jewish, and I decided to put it as a standalone post. It’s an object lesson on the mentality of the True Believer, and I will leave it to the readers to comment. I particularly enjoyed point #2, which shows how some people can believe in a God who’s basically a jerk. The justification for evil is also interesting.
First of all- Ben’s premise assumes that the God [Yah] of Creation, NEVER answers anyone’s prayers. I personally know that’s FALSE! But of course if you’re a non-believer, you’ll never put it to the test, so exactly how could Ben know??
2nd} Most folks, even most ‘religious’ folks, call on the Lord using the wrong name. So if you call on Him using the wrong name, why do you expect for Him to respond to you?
3rd} Many folks, including the ‘religious’, conflate the idea of ‘Miracles’ w MAGIC- thus think you can just call on ‘Jesus’, & the Lord will just go ‘poof’ out of thin air like some ‘fairy’ out of a ‘fairy tale’ & save you. Yet there’s nothing in the Bible that says that’s actually how the Lord [Yah] really works.
4th} It’s written: ‘My spirit [of the Lord Yah] will not allows strive w man’ [as w the ancients]- till the appointed time. This is a statement even most ‘religious’ folks can’t really grasp- let alone atheists. It means that the [Biblical] ancients had a whole nother level of relationship w the ‘Creator’ than most folks do today- even so-called ‘religious’ folks. Most folks today, even the ‘religious’, don’t really know how to call on the Lord’s name – or even what his real name is.
5th} Ben’s whole premise shifts blame onto the Lord [Yah] instead of the actual perpetrators. For the most part we [collectively] are mainly responsible for what happens to us as a whole- IE: If there’s evil in the World [& that’s definitely so], it’s because some of us [collectively] are GUILTY of perpetrating &/or exacerbating it, &/or allowing it to flourish in our midst.
An example: This is the 10th anniversary of the Katrina Disaster. Since hurricanes are called ‘Acts of God’, one might argue that the Lord [Yah] is ‘guilty’ for the devastation & loss of life. Yet there’s much more to the story- 1st, New Orleans is on the Gulf coast at the mouth of the Miss River, yet much/most of it lies at-least 10ft below sea-level. Just that alone made it especially vulnerable to hurricanes, yet N.O. City & LA State officials & city engineers, etc- decided to do Little to Nothing to resolve that problem. 2nd} Katrina actually missed New Orleans- it was NOT a direct hit. Those Levees should have held even w Direct hit from a Force 5 Hurricane [FYI: Katrina was a Force 3 Near MISS]. But someone decided to build those levees inadequately & it was known in key circles they were improperly built 3rd} The N.O. City, LA State, & US Govts failed to properly evacuate the city, & failed to adequately prepare food, shelter, supplies, medicines, etc for those who could NOT evacuate; even though it was known at-least 4 days in advance that New Orleans would likely be hit by Katrina [which at one point reached Force 4 – 5]. 4th} Too many people in NO’s 9th Ward had been too poor for far too long, of-course making the folks living there especially vulnerable to DISASTER. Yet the power elites, Govt officials, Biz community, etc; allowed those impoverished conditions to persist for decades. 5th} In the wake of Katrina many of these same ‘Usual Suspects’ saw Katrina as an opportunity to implement a whole-slew of long held ‘Disaster Capitalist’ Agendas, especially since so many ‘undesirables’, were effectively swept from New Orleans by Katrina. Thus it almost seems like many of these afore mentioned issues were deliberately left improperly addressed.
If any of these first 4 points had been dealt w properly by those in charge, & especially if all 4 points had been- IMO the death toll would NOT have been 1800, it may have been less than 180, may be even less than 18. So who should be blamed for this God, or the officials who did a ‘Heck of a Wacked Job’??!
– The same could be said re: the Fukushima disaster- Yes the Earthquake &Tsunami were ‘Acts of God’, yet Fukushima did NOT have to have a triple melt-down & go up in smoke. Those in charge made a series of bad decisions IE: building it in a known earthquake & tsunami zone, taking down the natural rock-cliff wall that was well above the height of the tsunami, known design flaws in the Mark 4 Reactors, etc- that made it a Disaster waiting to happen!
6th} Directly addressing Ben’s issue re: the Catholic Pederastic Priest scandal: First- Ben seems to presume that the Vatican actually is the Biblical Yah’s [or even the Biblical Yeshua’s] true representative on Earth- IMO that’s false! The Vatican has instituted a number of policies that serve as a back-drop for this scandal. Most obvious- Its celibacy policy- which is NOT even based on Biblical Scripture. These Pederastic Priests violate the 3rd & 7th Commandments as well as laws against lewd sexual activities, homosexual acts, & the Biblical warning: ‘Woe onto the Shepherds who mislead [& abuse] My Flock…’ FYI The 3rd Commandment against Taking the ‘Lord’s Name in Vain’- don’t mean don’t say G-d-damn. ‘It means don’t turn the ‘Lord’s Name into a Vanity’- but in Hebrew the word used actually means FALSE-HOOD &/or LIE!!! Thus ‘Don’t Turn [misrepresent] the Lord’s NAME into a LIE’- and obviously Priest who misuse their office to sexually abuse kids [mainly under-age alter-boys] have done exactly that! And ‘Woe unto the ‘Church’’ for making it a long-standing policy to protect abusive priests instead of their child victims!!!
I always wonder this: if religion didn’t exist, would people like “Nixak” fulminate just as insanely, but about another issue?
