Preposterous

It is preposterous that an all-knowing and all-powerful; a just and loving God should create humans with a life span like the blink of an eye when compared with the infinity of the geological time span.  And a species of mammal that has been at each other's throats since time immemorial and is now committing mass ecocide.  Most responsible is that section of humanity that is most committed to burning up the delights of finite fossil fuels to live it up today and to hell with tomorrow.  A practice that gives wealth beyond imagination but also has the most unfortunate side effect of the runaway greenhouse effect to turn, possibly earth into venus.

And God knew how we would turn out but still went on to create us.  This is preposterous.

We are flawed individuals from day one.  Floored, too.  Knocked out, fair and square by our own sin but sin that was evident so soon after we were created.  And the good Lord must have known that would happen before creating us.

It reflects so badly on God

I've just listened to Australia's Energy Minister on their climate policy.  They are having hotter temperatures, longer droughts and more wildfires.  Yet, how complacent, ineffective and useless their wishes and hopes are, let alone their intentions and actions!

THUS:

Intelligent, sophisticated humans are behaving that is defying nature and life support systems.  It makes me wonder what on earth was the Lord of all creation doing in creating humanity when he must have known how stupidly and ecocidal we would turn out to be.  It reflects very badly on God.

It is not the problem of suffering but my problem of humanity lasting for the blink of an eye compared with the 165 million years that dinosaurs lasted for.  The planet created for dinosaurs and not for us so superior and top of the pyramid beings?

"Non-bird dinosaurs lived between about 245 and 66 million years ago, in a time known as the Mesozoic Era. This was many millions of years before the first modern humans, Homo sapiens, appeared."

FROM:

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/when-did-dinosaurs-live.html

BEN GOLDSMITH says:

 “Man worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature; unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.” Hubert Reeves

Monarchs obeying the Bible turned out miserably

 For centuries, certain W European Great Powers have ​been guilty of piracy, ​​sailed around the world exploring​, settling down in far off lands​ and trading - ​mostly ​uninvited!  It led to coercion, exploitation, slavery, empire building and countless wars where the blacks got the rough end of our supposed '​white, democratic, Christian based ​civilisations'. ​ Yet, remarkably, our subjugated subjects still helped us fight our wars in the last century!

​

E​very English monarch,​ in recent centuries, has had these words said to them as part of their vows:

Our gracious Queen​/King​:
to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God
as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes,
we present you with this Book,
the most valuable thing that this world affords.

And the Moderator shall continue:
Here is Wisdom;
This is the royal Law;
These are the lively Oracles of God.

​But the monarchs sanctioned piracy, colonisation and warfare.  ​From the white peoples of Western Europe ​who colonised N America, the native American tribes succumbed to "God, guns and germs".  God because the believers thought that the Lord was paving the way for them in the New Promised Land when the inhabitants fell like flies - no immunity at all - to the diseases that the new settlers​, unwittingly,​ had brought with them.

"We see asylum seekers washed up on the beaches dead.  Held in inhumane conditions behind barbed wire around Europe.  W​hat​ does our message say to them?  What should the Gospel be to them?"  John Neale - talk on Sun 22 Nov 2020

SELF: From the terrible way that our ancestors treated strangers and foreigners, you would think that we would now be more empathetic and compassionate and even wanting to help the descendants of those we treated so poorly​.  Really poorly in capturing, enslaving and deporting them to work in foreign fields under the baking sun to make us as wealthy ​as ​we are now​.​  ​A​nd, without even paying them a cent for their manual labours in atrocious conditions​.  Any employer or business would be successful on that basis​!

Using God as a fire extinguisher

USING GOD AS A FIRE EXTINGUISHER - for emergency use only

Christianity is not an insurance policy against death and misfortune.  In fact, it’s the exact opposite, for the sun rises on the righteous and the unrighteous; the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  When Les, Christ-like, God fearing, what you see is what you get, the genuine article, Les Hardwick loses his beloved wife so prematurely, it does destroy my faith in a loving and just God.  It also shook his faith, from what he told me.  God cannot possibly be a God of love, justice and who is able to protect His own.  Les should have been the very last person whom the Lord should have allowed to lose his wife in 2000.

Therefore, as I see it, we have 
           the problem of Christians suffering.  Indicating a God who does not care, even about His own people.

           the problem of the Bible - favouritism for one tribe, only, for one set of peoples, only.  God promised that their ancestors would bless the rest of humanity but the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, the children of Abraham, have most certainly not been a blessing to everyone else.  In fact, they have been at each others throats and the Christians have, for centuries, been somewhat domineering around the world - to put it mildly.  This, contrary to what their founder flatly rejected in one of the three temptations in the wilderness of Judea.
          the problem of human ecocide - very short-lived human species when compared with very long-lived dinosaurs.
          the problem of human intolerance of each other and their inability to live in peace one with the other.
the problem of the vast majority of the best Christians - the Bible believing, born again ones - being quite content with having employment in the arms industry, the armed forces and voting for the war parties. Coercion, force and aggression is acceptable for the most virtuous, sanctified and holy of people.
the problem of abortion and voluntary euthanasia being more evil than killing the born in time of war.
          the problem of human stupidity - especially over foreign, military, transport, economic and energy policy - not much left after than list. But, actually, we humans are homo sapiens - "wise man" - so we can't be that stupid!
          the problem of the infinite, immensities of space, of nothingness yet the existence of earth created by the human construct of ‘God’.
          the problem of how God came about, if He was not thought up by humans.

          the problem of religion being pre-scientific.  It was, quite naturally, an outcome of humans needing to keep in with Nature - the sun, wind and rain, for their very survival and comfort.  Not surprisingly, it developed and grew as humans grew in size and in dominance of all other livings things on earth.  Now, an over dominance that is likely to be our own undoing.

God is on OUR side. So there!

We always like to call Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Castro, Mugabe, al Qaeda and the Taliban as mass murderers but, oh no, never ourselves.  We are always angels and have God on our side, so what we do is just fine!

Colonialism and subjugation, imperialism and domination of others, of strangers, of foreigners.  And, this carry on went on for centuries, all over the world; and was official government policy and was widely accepted as very proper, civilised behaviour.  Even accepted by the Church and virtually all individual Christians and who went in on the coat tails of the explorers, traders and the armed forces to make Christians of the heathen natives.  This behaviour of domination and empire building all too soon led to the pernicious and murderous slave trade - again, with the Church fully implicated in this crime against humanity.  Astonishing!

Letter to sister Jude

Dear Jude

What on earth was she (the petition organiser) doing bringing four children into the world at a time of living on the environmental knife edge (She wrote, "We are currently living on an environmental knife edge and this backward step will be damaging to our future.")  We have rising populations, decreasing/depleting sources of energy and renewables even being opposed by many that, anyway, will never be sufficient to meet an ever rising demand for elecy.  The UK's energy gap is an uncomfortable reality, as we now have to scrabble on world markets for depleting gas reserves.

People in Halesowen are still buying 150 watt incandescent bulbs in our local Smiths electrical shop!  The well lagged with clothing shop owner, right now, is pouring out electricity from fan heaters with his doors open wide with a bitterly cold east wind blowing in.  I got nowhere in a brief conversation, even when he knew people should not be buying very wasteful 'E' energy rated bulbs.  He refuses to no longer stock them to stop them buying the things.  He refuses to close his doors to boost his profits - insanity.  We live in a mad, mad world!  What on earth was our perfect God doing when he knew we humans would turn out so imperfectly - and all made in his image, too?!

I despair of the future and I am only too glad I am no younger than I am!

Skyfall-ing in

The most spectacular and the most impossible to nod off Bond film ever.  In the process, perhaps, the film with the world's worst driving!

'Skyfall' underlines the status quo, so that the next generation is brought up 'right'.  It passes on our society's established values, attitudes and beliefs, over recent centuries, that are not the most worthy - of getting our way by coercion, force and, astonishingly, the slaughter of the innocents (this latter is not in the Bond films).

I think the films reinforce our Western predilection for such things that has been at the heart of too much European life for centuries of going out to conquer and dominate other countries.  All this, even after the Europeans' world wars that finally brought them up short to unite in peace between themselves.  Such a pity that the European's non-violence between themselves did not spread to leaving other countries well alone, too.

We had twenty children killed in Connecticut a few days ago;
twenty thousand children in our 13 years War of Terrorism;
even, many more than that, in the War on Communism in SE Asia between 1945 and 1975.
The Bond films nurture our Western ways for such things, to ensure they are passed on to the next and succeeding generations.  The general media message is: enemies are essential but, making and keeping friends with those who do things differently from us - other cultures, religious beliefs, political systems and traditions - is not so essential.

The film glorifies and promotes behaviour that we are not meant to indulge in - from speeding over roof tops breaking every imaginable speed limit, even sending old ladies flying on pedestrian crossings, to blowing up a beautiful old and isolated Scottish mansion.  It also continues the silent, imperceptible, so easily absorbed indoctrination of us all that we have very dangerous enemies of the State and that attack, aggression and violence is the only way - to get them before they get us.  Therefore, we cannot possibly abandon our love affair with guns and grenades, rifles and bombs - even when the sky falls in on the New England families of the latest killings.  We are subconsciously inculcated with this drivel via entertainment, of which fifty years of Bond is the most popular.

 It is totally incomprehensible for us that our invading, attacking and occupying of other countries might make them so ungrateful that they turn into our enemies and try and hit back.  Indeed, quite outrageous for them wanting to harm us.  We can't have them defending their lands and resources from us.  Or, of letting them be so un-Christian (or un-Muslim) as to show revenge on us.

Never mind - "Man is God's greatest work."  (Sister Wendy Beckett on Desert Island Discs 16.12.2012.)  She could not possibly have meant the nation's greatest role model.  Could she?  What does Sister Wendy make of 007?

Israel or the USA or the Church?

Is it Israel or the USA that is the apple of God's eye?

How can you have a God of justice and equality having one Chosen Nation, Israel, only and, then putting that nation on a pedestal above all others as the apple of His eye?

Is he not meant to be the God of all the nations? Or, perhaps, he is the God of none of them.
And, supposedly, along with Israel, He is God of one of the most military powerful and economically one of the strongest nations in the world - the USA. This is the exact opposite of what the Founder of this most Christian of all nations intended, from what we know of His life and teachings. Therefore, it is not Israel, the Chosen Nation that is the top dog amongst all the nations of the world but the USA that is. In addition, it claims that it is the City set on a hill, to give a light to all the Jews and gentiles and is the salt of the earth. It is called manifest destiny. It is the USA that claims to be especially blessed of the Lord and has a special place in God's heart. Yet, it is these same Christians who so highly regard Israel as especially favoured of God.

Is Israel the Lord's Chosen Nation or is it the USA or, as in replacement theology, is it the Christian Church?
God must have two or even three Chosen Nations on whom he heaps all His favours and blessings - at the expense of the rest.

Why not believe in God?

• There is no evidence for 'God'. It has to be solely a question of faith.
• There was no creation moment for life on earth but, perhaps, there was for the universe almost 14 billion years ago, after the Big Bang gave birth to it.
• But, there is evidence that 'God' created the earth for dinosaurs - from their successful occupation of the planet for many tens of millions of years. Unlike humans very brief track record and their malign effect for both themselves and all other life forms.
• Therefore, why did 'God' create the world for humans AND, in his image, too?! Does that not reflect very badly on 'God'? What on earth was 'God' doing creating humans? He was either mad, bad or made a genuine mistake! None of these options are consistent with 'God' and the nature that the theists say he has.

Colin's thought:

If God is all knowing, why would he embark upon a pointless
experiment to test our faith ? After all, he is GOD and would therefore
already know who would fail and who would pass the tests and temptations He
places in our paths. The idea of free will seems equally odd for God would
already know our fate. He would also be aware of the misery and pain we
would inflict upon our fellow, innocent creatures and our planet. This
God, or at least as I understand the whole set up, seems a bit of a sadist.
(I say this whilst checking behind me just in case there is a bolt of
lightening on its way). Colin Port

Myself: Is not a temptation - for example a lustful thought - a sin in itself, quite apart from the act of lust itself? In addition, isn't lust an essential element of human nature to ensure the continuation of the species? The Lord's Prayer, "lead us not into temptation" is well meaning but unrealistic and is asking God to censor our thoughts that is quite impossible ever to happen.

The theists say that God has given us free will, so we are not robots. We are free to disobey him and free to obey him. His omniscience should have told him that there would be the Fall in the Garden of Eden and more disobedience, as you write, and very much more disobedience. So why create the suicidal and ecocidal maniacs that are humans? It just does not add up; no, not one little bit!

However, the scientific, open, objective mind set should properly lead us to agnosticism until there is cast iron proof that it was man who created God. The believers get out of that by saying that it was God who put the thought of himself in their heads and who allowed them to work out his nature. So you can't win!

The Bible says, God created the world, not the solar system, not the

galaxy, not the universe! The Bible view, I believe I'm right in saying,

is of a flat world, with the stars in the heavens as the roof or ceiling

for the world and hell or hades is in the basement. It was the RCs who

tortured Galileo for saying it was nothing like that, I understand! (But I

must check my facts, sometime.)

Hello Tim,

Just one final thought. Atheists are, no doubt, overjoyed by Stephen

Hawking's pronouncement that God's presence was not essential for the

universe to form as this was just a coincidental collision of gases and

elements. The Believers would argue however, that it was God who put the

gases and elements there in the first place. And if that doesn't silence

the doubters, the Believers can always revert to their usual response

"because it says so in the Bible".

On a lighter note, it is said that we are all products of the "Big Bang".

The question is, does that mean we are formed of stardust........ or

nuclear waste?

Colin 7 September 2010

Thanks for this amusing piece.

And, at what point did God create the world and everything in it - at the
Big Bang or when the planet emerged or when life of some kind was first
seen or when the first section of the Bible was written or when the Church
of England was created by King Henry 8th who gave himself the divine right
to rule? The earth and everything on it is constantly and very slowly
changing!

The words that the Christians use for Jesus Christ are also anachronistic
eg King (I'm a republican); Lord (part of the aristocracy); Master (better
to be a servant, according to Jesus). In our history, kings and lords were shockingly brutal
and murderous and rarely exemplary role models.

Tim

Islam and War

I listened to an address from Karen Armstrong at Carrs Lane Church Centre
in October 2007. It was the first in the series, 'Dialogues in Faith' that
were recorded and put on CD.

"Islam means surrender", commented Karen Armstong. The war cry from the
fundamentalist, evangelical Christians of N Ireland is 'No surrender'. I
heard it with my own ears, shouted at us, in 2007 on an open top bus tour
of Belfast when we drove through a Loyalist area! And, it is the
evangelicals and Loyalists of N Ireland who support the War of Terrorism
and not the Republicans, from the panelists speaking on Question Time a
year or two ago.

Karen said,

"We talk about Islam today as though it is inherently violent. This is
nonsense of course. We should never equate a few extremists with the vast
majority of billions of Muslims who have lived throughout history far more
peaceably with peoples of other faiths than the people in western
Christendom, for example.

"You may hear in the Koran, in an English translation, talk about infidels
- a very bad translation. The word translated infidel does not mean an
unbeliever. ... The word for infidel means ingratitude to Allah; hurling
God's bounty back at him and, not being generous and peaceable. Another
word translated as infidel means aggressive, irascible, a pre-emptive
strike. ... It has nothing to do with unbelief.

"The Koran permits only war in self-defence in order to maintain decent
values. Mohamed was creating primitive just war theology, as we in the
West call it. So religion is not violent."

The Purpose Driven Life - an alternative view

What on earth am I here for?

To pass on my genes;
to live as sustainably as possible;
to prepare for heaven;
to make my peace with God/to get right with God;
to glorify God and enjoy him for ever;
to support Israel in all that it does 'cos the Lord is working his purposes out through Israel for the return of Christ;
to tread as lightly as possible on the planet;
to leave the place in as good a heart as when I was born;
to be faithful to Christ in living out his life and teachings;
to turn my back on invading other countries to sort them out when there is no UN mandate to do so;
to make disciples of all nations - as long as they become non-violent disciples of all nations; and, it does not look like colonialism/imperialism or, we're right your wrong; and, it doesn't look like more white supremacy by the rich West telling everyone else how to behave;
to live for others, especially for those yet unborn, in order to leave a habitable planet for them;
to support Israel right or wrong, violent or non-violent, aggessive or non-aggressive, despite all the UN resolutions flouted and its transformation from oppressed to oppressor;
to live for God's pleasure;
to make all life on earth last for an eternity - a grand purpose, a magnificent obsession for me that is no part of God's purpose for his believers.

Unholy human inhumanity to human in the Holy Land!

Everyone seems unmoved by the latest slaughter - a ratio of 100:1 in Gaza in favour of the Jews. Their big supporters, like some at our church, see what is going on in Israel/Palestine as fulfilment of biblical prophecy and everything working together for the return of Christ. Turning their back on violence and sharing the land with the Palestinians seems to be an alien concept! I really do despair for our God-fearing people and explains my infrequent church attendance, these days, on principle.

One friend wrote in reply:

If all this slaughter is there to prepare the way for the Second Coming, I do not want to accept a God who uses innocent humans as fodder to trumpet his eventual arrival...

I do not believe this is "God's Will"... it is the behaviour of a collective aggressive neurosis which has its basis in the Holocaust .. the Palestinians are only second in the queue behind the Jews when it comes to their revulsion of Hitler.

God should be Green (and red!)

My sermon (off the Mount) on selected texts, outrageously cherry-picked and totally out of context!

Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. "Either, we get our numbers and our activities into harmony with the powers of the earth to support life or, collapsing ecosystems will do the job for us." (Green Party Manifesto for a Sustainable Society) It seems to me as though the white Christians down the centuries have done the most to fill the earth and to subdue it and, often, at the expense of the 'heathen' from the numerous tribes and peoples who simply wanted to be left alone to get on with their sustainable ways of life!

First, reducing the growth in our numbers and then reducing our high impact western populations, is still rarely discussed outside the Green Party. I fear that with the rise of creationism and fervent, right wing interpretations of the Bible in favour of armed force and homophobia, evangelical Christianity is still going in the wrong direction. Ironically, they insist they are the only ones with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the rest of us are the great unwashed - we have not been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Do God but don't do aggression, the war crimes and the colonialism that is the hallmark of the nations that have sought to live by the Bible. Seek to live more sustainably, with a lower carbon footprint, having less of an impact and taking fewer of your unfair share of the earth's limited resources.

The early Church had all things in common, according to the Acts of the Apostles. Very Communistic, very red and very Christian - but you would never have thought so! 2 Corinthians 8 v 13-15 says in effect, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." Here, in the Bible itself, we have good, left wing principles espoused. Ironically, it has been the traditional Christian nations, that regard Communism as so evil and godless, that have spent their taxes on decades of fighting and, in the process, killing millions of people, like you and me, that we labelled as Communists. This was in SE Asia!

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. The earth is now dominated by the rich humans in the north of the planet who rule as Lords and masters of all - with our World Bank, our World Trade Organisation and our International Monetary Fund. The black dominated UN is ignored by the white dominated USA/UK/Israel when it suits them. These three powerful nations rule the Middle East and act with impunity, whenever they wish, in protecting their vital strategic interests.

All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes. But, not work for good for anyone if we persist in the widespread and weird attitude that money and electricity grow on trees and that we have a God-given right to ever rising population and ever rising material standards of living. Nature for some, God for others, will have the last word if we persist in behaving as if we know better than nature/God.

There is, therefore, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8 But, we all condemn ourselves if we persist in living outside the laws that say that it is pretty foolish to continue to live infinitely on a planet that is finite; living unnaturally on a planet that is natural; living with constant economic growth on a planet that is not growing in line with our ever greedy demands.

The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'. The fool says - even those or especially those who believe in God - that there is no climate change caused by human activities and that we humans can carry on regardless with burning up our one off geological inheritance, as if it will last forever and have no negative consequences from that burning.

Let not the sun go down on your anger. However, there is an anger that is acceptable and very necessary. For example, as seen by not the aggressive Jesus but the angry Jesus in the Temple. In one discussion, someone thought I was cross. I denied it at the time but what others say about you is invariably correct. More people like me who are living simply so that others may simply live, should be cross that the big majority are living greedily with an even bigger eco-footprint than me and are, therefore, doing even more than me to bring our way of life crashing down around our ears, even sooner. I am, in fact, more the true patriot and the true friend of the motorist!

9/11 - Tutu called it a criminal act

'Time' magazine wrote: "If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith ... The Twin Towers and the Pentagon ... are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God."

However, I think it is what a nation does and not its spiritual or Christian faith beliefs that defines it and that it is judged by. "By their (rich) fruits shall ye know them", declared the Lord and Master of a higher proportion of Americans than any other nation. Riches for the richest nation on earth is contrary to the teaching and practice of their Lord and Master, who had no permanent home but was an itinerant preacher. Riches that have come from an abundance of its own natural resources, certainly but also by decades of running the world's structures and systems for its own material and military advantage.

It is richly ironic that for the nation that is fullest with the Lord's disciples should be the most powerful economically and militarily. This is completely contrary to the life and teaching of the Man for Others, the Servant of all and who came into Jerusalem for the last time not on a war horse but, non-violently, on a donkey.

America's true God is not the God, Jesus, of the Sermon on the Mount and who told the disciple Peter to put away his sword. It is, in fact, the wealth and vast military power that enables it to show that might is right on the world stage by keeping the weak and powerless, like Jesus, well under its dictatorial thumb.

The Anglo/American/Israeli hegemony is well and truly in charge. Indeed, Israel is the regional super-power and is funded by the devout US. Yet, the Jew who was the founder of America's Christian faith rejected the Devil's offer to give him all the kingdoms of the world if only he were to bow down to him. The most devout nation on earth, with its closest allies - the UK and Israel - has warmly embraced that offer! It has fallen at the feet of the devil. It is a fallen nation. Its crimes of aggression that come out of its empire, its imperialistic nature, its colonial ways, invite a similar response from the victims of its false God of money and power. For America's victims, revenge is so, so sweet.