Dear Christians, Stand Up Against God

apophis — The God Apophis from Stargate: SG1

As an atheist, I get Christians telling me that I am immoral all the time. Many Christians even inform me that the very reason why I am an atheist is because I want to “sin” and a belief in God would keep me from sinning. After all, it works so well for Christians, right? I wish Christians would stop telling me how moral they are and actually show me how moral they are through their actions. But I guess if they did that, then they would have to take a stand against their God.

Let’s face facts here; the Bible is filled with God committing or ordering all sorts of immoral acts and atrocities – not the least of which is genocide. God sends powerful delusions, he orders his people to steal, lie, cheat, rape, and murder. He supports slavery and wields power like a drunken tyrant – jealous and paranoid.

I know, I know; that was just the Old Testament. God was an asshole in that book series, but in the New Testament we forgive him, right? Yeah, in the New Testament God really made up for all that rape and genocide. He was all “turn the other cheek” and stuff. Well, if you advocated and committed all those immoral acts, you would be all “turn the other cheek” too after you got caught. Just like President Obama said about all Bush Jr.’s war crimes, “we have to look forward.”

Still, the New Testament isn’t as peace and love as most Christians think it is. For starters, Jesus specifically said that he did not come to bring peace; he came with a sword. Swords aren’t generally thought of as a symbol for peace. He also stated that he supports all of the Old Testament and didn’t come to change a single word of it. He came to “fulfill” it. That’s some scary stuff right there and it gets worse.

Jesus also invented the thought crime. If you even think about lusting, you just raped someone in your brain. But don’t worry, rape is okay – it’s the lusting part that you should be tortured for all eternity for according to Jesus. He is such a nicer guy than his daddy, isn’t he?

If Christians really want to show me how moral they are, than they have to come out against torture. They have to say that torture is wrong. It is wrong to torture someone for five minutes and it is wrong to torture someone for all eternity. It is wrong that God committed and ordered mass murder and genocide and it is wrong that God stood by as his chosen people took slaves and treated women as property. Oh yeah, he didn’t stand by and let his chosen people treat women as property. My bad; he commanded it!

The fact is that whether a Christian takes the Bible literally or not, it is filled with the principle characters acting and advocating immoral behavior – often times very immoral behavior. There is simply no way to justify the immoral lessons of the Bible; you can’t even chalk it up to the times. Even back then, people knew that much of this stuff was immoral.

Personally, I don’t believe God even exists and frankly, to paraphrase Jules Renard, it would be better for his reputation if he doesn’t exist. Christians on the other hand believe he exists and yet they are noticeably silent in condemning his grossly immoral behavior.

It is easy to claim the moral mantel in the absence of adverse consequences for moral action, but when your eternal fate hangs in the balance, that is where one’s moral mettle is really tested. That is why I have said that even if a Christian could present valid evidence for their deity, it would certainly convince me to no longer be an atheist, but it wouldn’t convince me to be a Christian. The God of the Bible is way too immoral for me to ever worship. I have to really wonder why anyone would worship such a deity. If the God of the Bible existed, I would fight against his tyranny even in the face of the looming threat of eternal torture – in large part because of the threat of eternal torture.