Actually, there’s not much change left. The God-botherers want it all dropped in the collection plate.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” – Epicurus circa 300 BCE
The God of the Old Testament is a vindictive, bloodthirsty, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capricious, malevolent bully.
- If God exists, God is perfectly loving.
- If God is perfectly loving, then God is always open to personal relationship with finite persons.
- If God is always open to personal relationship with finite persons, then if any person fails to believe in God, it must be because they are resisting God.
- Therefore, if God exists, there are no nonresistant nonbelievers.
- There are nonresistant nonbelievers.
Conclusion: - Therefore, God does not exist.
The Roman Catholic Church is losing followers faster than Donald Trump. In mid-July 2022, Pope Frank came to western Canada to make nice to the Indigenous natives, apologize for the Church’s past actions, and hopefully get more paying people in the pews.
I saw a televised interview with the Bishop of Regina, talking about Papal Bulls. At first, I thought he meant that His High and Mightiness was doing some trick-riding at the Calgary Stampede, using techniques he’d learned in Brazil.
He started babbling about how the Pope was going to issue a Papal Bull, officially rescinding previous Papal Bulls on the Discovery Doctrine, and colonization, like this first one, below, to build bridges, and bring the relationship between the Church, and the Canadian Indigenous, more in line with current social conditions.
AD 1493; Pope Alexander VI issues a papal bull or decree, “Inter Caetera,” in which he authorizes Spain and Portugal to colonize the Americas and its Native peoples as subjects. The decree asserts the rights of Spain and Portugal to colonize, convert, and enslave. It also justifies the enslavement of Africans.
The interviewer asked if this document was in process right now.
Well, no. Not yet.
When could we expect it?
Well, he didn’t exactly know.
Turn around and face the other way, Bishop. It’s hard to understand you when you’re just talkin’ outta yer ass!
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Overheard on the Interwebz
Human beings eat meat and vegetable matter. Vegans don’t eat meat, just vegetation. If the Big Bang created humans, it wouldn’t have known what we would eat, so it couldn’t have created anything for us to eat – therefore, God created us, because only He would know what we would eat.
I don’t know how anyone could be this dumb, and not be on life-support. The Big Bang was an occurrence, it isn’t/wasn’t A Thing, and it didn’t create human beings – or anything else. It was the unfolding of a singularity, into the Universe we now inhabit. Abiogenesis created the first primitive life forms, and evolution through thousands of intermediate forms, finally produced human beings. At every step along the way, each form ate meat of some other form and/or vegetable matter. It was what was available – no planning ahead (or God) needed.
***
I live up here in Washington State. Some of the teenagers do stuff like get their nose pierced, or dye their hair blue. There aren’t any real Atheists, just people desperate for attention, who claim they are.
Are you related to the fool above??! There might be the faintest of possibilities for that, if Atheism were visible or obvious. Unlike having blue hair, or gauged earlobes, Atheists don’t run around with signs, declaring their (lack of) belief, or shouting it in your face.
You won’t know whether I, or anyone else, is an Atheist until you ask, or make some stupid, unsupported claim and get argued with. My Atheism is not like a trendy jacket that I just put on when I want to impress someone. It is as much a basic part of me as my name, or my Scottish heritage, and I am far past the teenage – or Christian – need for attention and peer support.
Archon's Den 