Oh, Just One More Thing

Something else that I forgot about last nite. This is also something I'm stealing from Zoe.

The Garden of Eden. If Eden was so great, if it was supposed to be paradise on earth, what the devil was the serpent doing there? God couldn't keep it out? What a load of crap. Zoe nailed it. How could either Adam or Eve know about the devil? How could they have known about anything? Did god educate them? Or did they learn from the serpent?

Why would any god create sentient beings only to set them up as it were by exposing them to evil without any prior warning? Were they just supposed to intuit right and wrong? Why create naturally curious beings who can reason and make judgements, then condemn them as sinners and expel them from the Garden, simply for using their natural "god given" abilities? What kind of a creep is this god?

If human parents did something similar to their children, the kids would likely be removed from the home and their parents arrested for abuse. Humans have a superior sense of right and wrong and justice than the gods depicted in the bible, the talmud or the koran. These respective gods are supposedly all powerful but are also jealous, demanding and supremely spiteful. And why would an omnipotent god need people to carry out his vengeance?

As I noted in my last post the god of the old testament was want to wipe out any number of people at a single stroke as punishment for the merest of infractions. We, at least, attempt to match the punishment to the crime.

What's up with god, anyhow?

Take the 7 plagues he inflicted on the Egyptians. What was that all about? If god is omnipotent and omniscient why did he take such ineffectual actions? Given his omniscience, god had to know that the Egyptians would not buckle under the pressure of the first 6 plagues. Presumably, god could have done something much more effective from the get go. This has the feel of a god who gets his jollies by watching people suffer. Were the Egyptians all that bad? Were they any worse than dozens of other oppressive civilizations throughout human history? I'd say NOT!

I guess I could go on ad nauseam. I know I have in the past. But I'll stifle myself. After all, I've made it obvious that I have no particular ideas of my own. I just usurp them from others. At least I gave them proper credit.

Apropos of nothing:

I've decided to let my eyebrows grow out. I was going to stop at, say some narley Bob Knights, but now I think I may go all the way to the penultimate and do Andy Rooneys. What do you all think?

TLS