From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: You should be a Christian because (30 words max):
Date: 16 Dec 92 22:03:45 GMT
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...

In article <78352@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
>[I don't have access to the alt groups.]
>
>In article <1992Dec14.135939.1888@lut.ac.uk> A.J.Robinson@lut.ac.uk (Alan Robinson) writes:
>|In article <1992Dec11.140927.21058@cs.cornell.edu> rodmoten@cs.cornell.edu (Roderick Moten) writes:
>|>Answer:
>|>
>|>To be Christ like and obtain a relationship with the Father.
>|
>|But I don't want to be like Christ and I don't want a relationship
>|with his dad.
>
>What is there about either Jesus the Christ or the Father that you
>don't want to be like or even know?  

I wouldn't want to be known as the entity which:

    - Created a universe which is inherently hostile (but not completely
      so) towards life, and then claiming to "love" that life

    - Was so intolerant of its own creations that it destroyed most of
      them in a flood instead of simply fixing what it didn't like or,
      better yet, creating things the way it wanted to begin with.

    - Is such a bastard that it insists that people "believe" in it
      while simultaneously insisting on remaining so well hidden as
      to be virtually invisible, and arranging the consequences of
      non-belief to be far worse than what such non-belief deserves.

    - Is so cruel as to give its creations "free will" while simultaneously
      insisting that there is only One Right Way to do things, and
      arranging things so that those who don't do things that One Right
      Way will have nasty problems later.

    - Nukes cities, creates plagues, etc., simply because the very
      people it created (who have free will, mind you) aren't doing
      things the way it wants them to be done.

    - Is so bloodthirsty that it created a person for the explicit
      purpose of dying a horrible death in order to satisfy its
      desire that transgressions upon its own ill-enforced rules
      be "atoned" for, rather than simply relaxing the rules or
      simply forgiving everyone and leaving it at that.  Indeed, one
      wonders why this entity even *cares* about such petty things
      as whether or not someone had sex before marriage.

    - Is such a busybody that it *insists* on running the lives of
      others, dictating things like under what conditions one should
      have sex, and such a coward that it hides behind the excuse
      that "well, they *did* have free will, after all, so they deserve
      what they're getting" when those that break these arbitrary and
      useless rules it has set down are punished (eternally, no less!),
      rather than facing up to the fact that arbitrary rules and free
      will are mutually exclusive.

In short, I wouldn't want to be the incredibly childish bastard that your
God obviously is.

>What does it require of you
>to let go of?

All of my mental faculties.  I would have to be a *vegetable*, or worse,
in order to believe that the God which exhibits the sorts of
characteristics outlined above is "good" and "loving".

How can you worship such a bastard????  Doing so, to me, would be worse
than worshipping the likes of Hitler.

>For Christ and His Kingdom,

You can have them.

>Richard Pitts


-- 
Kevin Brown					kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
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