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Time to put a cap on my religious comments.

Either God does NOT exist

or

He does not care

In the latter case, the examples of his failure to demonstrate care and compassion are endless. Maybe a neat one is the case of cojoined twins. Why would a God that cared ever go to such lengths to join two of his most loved and cherished people together in a way that will see the premature demise of at least one of them in many cases, and that requires countless hours of great skill by surgeons to undo His work to give them a hope of a meaningful life.

A stock answer is that they are paying the price for a former life. But they do not know anything of the former life. And God knows this. So how can that be a punishment that accords with the concept of a caring God?

And tell me why I should give my life over to someone who does not care?

It is claimed that there is no love that can compare to God’s love for each and everyone of us. A love that is unconditional, like that of a Mother for her children, but presumably even more so.

Why is it that if I fail to let this invisible, inaudible God into my life, that at the end of my life, I will be punished in hell for ever and ever and ever. Is this revenge, acted out as if by a child, but with a power and duration greater than all men on Earth could muster, really the demonstration of his unconditional love?

A quick dig at religion. Next time someone tries to convince you that God worked a miracle, ask them to explain why a loving God, guarding over us all the time, should fail to intervene in this true scenario :

Debby Mills-Newbroughton, 99 years old, was killed as she crossed the road. She was to turn 100 the next day but, crossing the road with her daughter to go to her own birthday party, her wheel chair was hit by the truck delivering her birthday cake.

If they say that God’s works in mysterious ways, explain, without getting to annoyed, that it was the lack of any activity that was his failing. So, he was happy to watch this stupendously tragic event unfold in all it’s gory, pointless, ill-timed glory?

In this dreadful excuse for a Summer, we are at least less inflicted by flies and insects. But when the sun blazes, I am out there, sunbathing as often as I can. I leave the back door open. And this is a golden invitation for flies.

So at the end of the day, I have flies buzzing around my house. I can open a window and one or two might, just might, escape.

The next day, those that have not died of exhaustion, dehydration or starvation overnight are flying in ever smaller trips, or slowly crawling up windows.

If I open a window, they rarely seek exit through it. So I often find myself coaxing an exhausted fly to an open window. They often struggle against what they perceive as a threat.And I have not got so much time to play the rescue man.

To me, this is a neat denial of the existance, as described, of God.  Why would a rational entity create flies only to see them pointlessly die? Surely this is a great opportunity to guide them to windows? Or does God like seeing them die prematurely?

Real quickie. After looking at a picture of Muslims praying in a Mosque to Mecca, I was wondering if they ever thought they might be ‘aiming’ in the wrong direction onoccasion.

How would Allah appreciate an array of bottoms upturned towards him?

Many of those that know me are abundantly aware of my weaknesses. Whether it be an excessive proneness to injury, ineptness at football, overly childish sense of humour, proneness to tension headaches, and so on. Sadly, human being as it is, weaknesses are a common source of attack, so I tend to be ridiculed for my frailalties. Often, I agree this is justified. But, not always. And I hope that some restraint can be exercised in this direction when you read the following. Only then will it have the appropriate meaning.

I have been on my change of diet for 6 weeks now. Most days, I have problems - low energy, weakness, leg cramps. Without the signs of benefit for my headaches and low blood sugar, I would not keep going.

This morning was different. I awoke at 6am with a surge of energy that was way above normal for the period of this diet. Except that I then struggled to go back to sleep. But I did, at last, fall back to sleep. At least I think so. Because it seemed that as soon as I had done so, a fl, quiet all night, decided to buzz in my room. This happened a few times before I managed to release it from the room. And then sleep was beyond me.

So the very first energised day - one to treasure - is handicapped by headache and tiredness that accompany the early awakening.

So why am I telling you all this?

I do so because it elegantly illustrates (anecdotally of course)  the non existance of a benign and benevolant God. If God is there with me all the while, why on earth would he meaninglessly compromise a potential breakthrough day? Why give me energy, only to take it away because of a fly?

More likely, by orders of magnitude that God does not exist.

—

I thought more about this, and thought it appropriate to give a fuller picture of my life and flies. You see, I am one of those people who are adverse to swatting them. Many times, I have waited patiently to guide flies out of doors and windows. Some are so weak that I can literally carry them out, and they then fly to their freedom.

But many do not escape, and die a probably painful death of dehydration and exhaustion.

So did God really make these flies and then not help them seek an escape from the confines of my house rather than repeatedly fly into window glass?

Again, the non existance of a benign and benevolant God is the most plausible answer.

The Atheist Bus Adverts in London have been paralleled in Italy, Canada and other cities to varying degrees of success.

They have solicited Bus adverts by three Religious groups.

Interesting how the prudent wording ‘There probably is no God…’ of the Atheist ads was not matched by at least one of the Religious ads : ‘There definitely is a God …’.

The atheists wanted to show humilty and avoid Advertising Standards Association scrutiny. Interesting how the mentioned Religious ad was not subject to any ASA scrutiny at all, because the Religious group was the Christian Party, ad the ad was deemed a political ad. Yet it received the 4th biggest  level of public complaint.

The ads are moving to buildings, and diversifying their message.

But the Atheist-Religious conflict stakes have been raised.

Why are Atheists becoming active when they have a non-existance at the core of their Worldly view? It is simply to counter the excessive privileges Religion receives, such as Tax breaks. And the growing subversion of the concept of a secular government.

I am really intrugued as to where this will lead. Sadly, I suspect that the atheists will be outnumbered in number and experience - the Church has stoutly defended it’s comfortable position for decades, centuries, with force where necessary.

At least, this is what the religious community would have you believe. That God in his all powerful, all knowing, all loving capacity is with you all the time, caring for and guiding you.

Well let me tell you what happened today. But before I do, I will add that I am aware that in the general scale of things, what happened was entirely trivial.

Mid afternoon, having made great progress on my book, and feeling a bit stale, I decided it was a good time to drive to my sister’s house to start work on relocating a power socket for her. I scanned the house and loft for equipement. When I switched the loft light off, it made a popping sound. Oh oh - a fuse has gone. I switched it back on but it was fine.

So I drove to my sisters, and got down to work. I could not finish because I had forgotten things. I left my tools there.

When I got home, I switched on the room light and discovered that the fuse had indeed gone.  Abd of course, the fuse wire was way over at my sisters. I popped to my local DIY shop and they were shut early.

So there I am, going out of my way to help my sister, and I get a kick in the teeth. So was God really watching all the way, loving me more than any human could,  infinite in power, and yet cannot use this combination to stop the fuse going, or getting me to need to switch on the light downstairs.

So maybe God did not feel my good deed was worthy of a matching level of kindness from Him? He is all powerful, so why the reluctance? Ah - becasue I do not believe in him? I must give my heart to him, and then he will guide me.

But that is conditional love, I am afraid. And his love is hardly the more powerful than human love if it fails at such a simple hurdle.

Or God is simply a fiction.

I can see you wince as you wonder what I can say on this contentious subject. My motivation for writing is the treatment of Geert Wilder, the Dutch Politician, as a political scapegoat. He was invited to the UK by a British MP for an airing of his anti-Islam film ‘Fitna’. But summarily ejected from the UK by the British Parilament.

OK, the guy us extremist, and his film is overly emotive. But the need to bow down to any stirring of the Islamic angst is all too common. He was ejected on the grounds that he would be likely to incite religious hatred.

What on earth does that actually mean? I presume, it means an enflaming of ill feeling towards a religion or religious figures. This, I agree, is unwise. Whether it should be a criminal offence is another matter.

Is the action of creating the Dutch cartoons that apparently generated religious hatred a bigger offence than the religiously legitamised killing of the cartoonist by some of those duly offended?

But I want to look at it from another angle. That religions themselves are often guilty of creating religious hatred, and not in the way you might first think. But religions are exempt from the close scrutiny applied to those who might question them.

Is the man sporting a sign that says you must repent or you will go to hell not inciting hatred towars religion? The deeply vicious, disproportionate and unprovable threat used by Christianity to threaten you with a life time in hell if you do not adopt their way of life is lightly ignored. Yet it frightens children into submission - like lambs to the slaughter.

But we are not allowed to hate religions since the offence this gives the religions is deemed much larger than the catalyst for our hatred.

The Atheist bus messages in London is the start of a campaign against the priviliged status of religions that will lead to much conflict, I fear.

With the enormous power of thousands of years of indoctrination, with massive churches and cathedrals legitimising their activities, religions can carry out otherwise criminal acts. We appear to be morally obliged to accede to all requests made in the name of religion.

Islamists butcher the genitals of young females. Americans ostracise non-believers.

But religion, like atheism, is a belief system. You act according to what you believe to be true in the absence of form corroborating truth.

I would like to claim that my belief that the World was not created by an almighty power be respected in the same way that a religious view claims the converse. But more importantly, I want to claim freedom for those oppressed in the name of religion. And have the weight of numbers of atheists as my support - atheism is hardly a fringe, eletist belief system.

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