gOd..and Friday Photo Dump

Being the week of Darwin’s 200th birthday, I’ve read and have had a number of conversations about evolution and gOd and I just wanted to briefly discuss two things; one of which showed up in my notes and one that I read in a favs notes.

The note of mine was left in an entry I titled "Conversation with God", and I had said to gOd that in a moment of crisis he was a no show while my friends really saved me. The note pointed out that, perhaps, through my friends, gOd did show up. This I have heard often…"gOd works in mysterious ways", "gOd always shows up indirectly" are a couple common answers I get when I tell theists that I’ve looked for, even sought out, gOd but have never found him. The problem I have with this is that if I were to want a god, to worship a god, I most certainly would want an engaged, active god that cares to show up and say "hey" every once in awhile. I wouldn’t want a god that is elusive, that tries to be witty and complex, and certainly not one that tries to test me in moments of weakness. That is the last thing anyone needs. Not only that, but my friends showed up of their own free will, and to thank gOd for that instead of them, seems to me, to undermine their commitment to me as friends. It seems that gOd wants credit for things he plays no role in. 

Okay, as for the note on a favs diary(the brilliant Tak): Tak was questioning how anyone could possibly call the Judeo/Christian gOd a "loving god" when there are so many horrible things like diseases, birth defects, genetic flaws, etc. The noter argued that this was not gOd, but rather Satan. Blame Satan, he/she says, because Jesus spent his time healing the sick and blaming God for what Jesus was fixing is just crazy because God & Jesus are the same thing was the gist of his/her note. Now, I have heard many times that gOd has created every and all things, so logic would indicate that he must have also created the evil things. If he didn’t, then the claim that gOd is the creator of all things is obviously bunk. I have also heard that gOd is all powerful, which leads me to believe that he is able to stop this stuff but doesn’t. He would prefer to watch his creation suffer. This doesn’t spell out "loving god" to me, it spells out "immoral, selfish god"

As for the noters claim that Jesus was healing all these sick people, it must come from the Bible because there is no independent historical source that mentions Jesus as a god-like figure that I’m aware of, other than in Josephus’ work but it’s likely that that part of his work is a forgery. If I am left to rely on the Bible, I may as well rely conspiracytheory.com for my every day news. I recently got a chance to see a lecture by Bart Ehrman who wrote "Misquoting Jesus", and his talk was amazing. His argument is that the Bible has been cut and pasted and incorrectly translated and cut and pasted so much over the centuries by many different scribes that we cannot possibly know what was in the original texts. With so many different people, with their own agenda, adding things into a book that is supposed to be the "word of god", how can this book still be considered a credible source for what Jesus did? (If your interested, you can find a video of one of Ehrmans lectures on youtube and in podcast form on iTunes U.)  

I don’t know, I guess my point is that religion, thus gOd, is so crissed-crossed, so muddled and paradoxical that it is illogical. Now, why would gOd create a species that largely follows reason, logic, and common sense in their daily lives and then expect them to follow something that is so diametrically opposed to that? It makes no sense. 

Okay, I went on for longer than I intended…but before I go I wanted to post a couple of photo I rediscovered on my computer yesterday. They’re all pre-accident and when I was looking at them, for some reason, I was floored. The guy in these pictures is such a distant memory. I don’ recognize him, no matter how strongly I’ve tried to hold onto him. They’re all really old and some were scanned in the 1800’s so, and may have been posted in here at some earlier point. (Oh, and you, I know I haven’t got back to your emails yet…but I figured the last picture would make up for that. At least for now.)