Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

The true God lives in the real world

153 views
Skip to first unread message

Beth Christy

unread,
Aug 13, 1985, 10:25:23 AM8/13/85
to
From: p...@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman), Message-ID: <2...@pyuxn.UUCP>:
> [lotta stuff about "an evil Damager-God", and mention of "maltheism"]
>--
>Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories

Sh*t. If this wasn't satire, then *something* evil sure hurt this
boy. Hang in there, Paul. Take it slow'n'easy.

Peace,
Beth

Paul Zimmerman

unread,
Aug 15, 1985, 8:58:11 PM8/15/85
to

There are alot of people on this net who talk alot about God.
Then there are alot of people who yell at them and tell them that
they're making a bunch of ``wifhful thinking'' assumptions, which prompts
them to yell back and say that they're not, and so on, and so on.

What people like Mr. Hubeynz and Mr. Rosen and their colleagues
fail to realize is that the predominating evidence shows that there
most certainly is a God. What people like Mr. Boscovich and Mr. Wingate
and their colleagues fail to realize is that the evidence indicates that
this God is an asshole. Allow me to explain.

Let's think about the origin of the universe and where God
fits in. If you think of God as the creator of the universe in some
space-timeframe outside our own, then you're left with the open
question of who created God and His space-timeframe, and so on, and
so on. So the best we can do is have God created along with the
whole universe. Thus His claim to the title ``creator of the universe''
is most likely a sham. Think about it.

In fact, the claim that He created anything at all is a sham.
Heavenly bodies, life, mankind, all evolved out of the natural forces
of the universe. But what are the great things that God has taken
credit for since this creation? Throwing people out of the Garden of
Eden and hiding it forever from mankind. A great flood that destroyed
virtually all life on Earth. The violent destruction of two cities.
The murder of every firstborn Egyptian son. The obliteration of the
native inhabitants of Caanan. In other words, all destructive forces.
This God is not a creator in any sense of the word. Instead, He is a
destroyer, a damager who rips through the world of nature to wreak His
havoc of destruction.

Think about this for a minute. Scientists do a fairly good
job of explaining the scientific laws that govern our universe, but
when it comes to certain deteriorating destructive forces, they just
throw up their hands and say, ``Well, that's ENTROPY.'' Well, what is
this entropy if not the will of an evil Damager-God vindictively
engaging in destruction at every turn? Ever hear the maxim ``It's so
much easier to destroy something than to construct something?'' Ever
wonder why that was? In a world of supposedly equal and unbiased
physical forces, why is destruction so much easier than creation?
Scientists will say ``that's entropy,'' but isn't that just begging the
question by giving the phenomenon a name?

I see this as unequivocal evidence of the existence of an
evil Damager-God. I see this as especially applicable to our lives
as human beings. This Damager-God sees us as playthings to toy with
and mutilate for pleasure. Take a look at the way wars wind up being
fought for the stupidest of reasons. It's as if someone deliberately
made some stupid destructive mistake just to provoke a war, despite
the best efforts of human beings to avoid it. Take a look at our own
daily lives. No matter how much we prepare or take precautions
against something, it (or something else we ``forgot'') occurs. I put
the word forgot in quotes with good reason. Ever prepare really hard
for an event, laying out everything to be done, only to forget something
anyway? How could that happen? Could it be that the Damager-God
damaged your mind to make you forget, just to cause you trouble and
provide Him with a good laugh?

When I first read Tim Maroney's ``Even If I Believed in Your
God'' essay a few years ago, I recognized some really good points there.
Since that time, I've come to recognize a lot more. His writing exposed
the nature of the Biblical God by dissecting the Bible itself. What I
realized later was that Tim had reached the wrong conclusion. Tim
thought ``This picture of God is so full of contradiction and lies that
it cannot be true.'' I thought ``This picture of God is so full of
contradiction and lies that it could only be the product of a God as
evil as the one it depicts.'' Look at how the Damager-God teaches you
with His books that all He does is good. In infesting your minds with
the desire to believe in a good, loving father figure, He offers you
Himself as that image. When you see his destructiveness and damaging
and still believe and pray to Him, He gets the last laugh again. He
has you in the most bent over position you could possibly dream up.
You want Him to be your loving father. You still believe that He is
even when He unleashes His destructiveness. And what's more, you
accept that destructiveness as ``good'' just because He was the one who
did it. He's trapped you, to use Rich Rosen's language, in your own
wishful thinking. Like Pavlov training his dog through intermittent
reinforcement, he answers the prayers of some of his followers, just
enough to keep the rest of them praying, tongues hanging out, tails
wagging. He's trained you to want to believe in Him as the loving
father, and He uses that against you to keep you believing.

What does all this mean? It means that life is basically a
war with God. God kills us all in the end. (``Entropy'' causes our
bodies to wither away and die.) But He has His share of fun stringing
out our lives, toying with us, delighting in our suffering, and then
claiming ``That's not me, that's the evil Satan.'' (Actually they're
one and the same.) Which gets the faithful back to their assigned
task of praying and paying homage to Him, and associating any possible
reprieve of pleasure that may present itself in this life with that
evil Satan. To top it all off, He gives you the illusion of self and
free will to make you feel responsible for all that He does to you.
What more perfect system of tyranny could possibly be envisioned?

I wonder why I capitalize words like God and He and His
when referring to this monster. Just a bad habit, I guess. I wish
there were letters smaller than lower case with which to begin His
name. Unfortunately, my ``religion'' as it were (call it ``maltheism''
if you like) offers little hope, little advice as to what we can do
in the face of a hideous evil monster Damager-God. He has even
built into us a revulsion to suicide that prevents us from taking our
own lives, ending our misery and His opportunities to abuse us. The
best we can hope to do is fight Him at every turn, gain some happiness
against His will, grapple with Him for it every chance we get, and spit
in His face as we do it. Perhaps someday science will discover a way
to shred the fabric of space-time and destroy His entropic evil.
But who can we pray to in hopes that they will?


--
Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories

pyuxn!pez

0 new messages