Thursday 21 June 2012

Christians, Hypothetically Speaking


Why is it that I've rarely found a Christian on Facebook who understands how hypothetical questions work? Seriously, it's like they've never encountered such a concept. I've asked different hypothetical questions on multiple occasions and almost without fail the responses from the Christian contingent completely misunderstand how the damn things work.

I'll give you one example of a hypothetical question I've used;

I'm an atheist. If I go out tomorrow and stab a religious man in the spine, crippling him for life, it could set in motion a series of events. The man can't drive. He loses his job. This means he can't afford his mortgage, he loses his house. The stress on his relationship results in his wife leaving, taking their children with her. Left alone, crippled and with seemingly no hope, this man falls into despair and turns away from god completely. He becomes an atheist who can see no evidence for a god in such a desperate, violent world, and he curses the concept of god, blaspheming him daily. Ultimately, in a fit of deep depression, the man kills himself.

According to the bible, this man's atheism and blasphemy, along with his suicide, will result in god sending him to Hell for an eternity of torturous suffering. Sick, right?

It gets so much worse!

Some time in the future, I see the light. I turn to Christ and repent my sins. It's too late for me to make amends to my victim, he killed himself long before, but it doesn't seem to matter. Because I've repented my sins and been born again in Christ that means I go to Heaven from where, according to some, I will be able to watch my victim burning and writhing in agony.

Now, to me this strikes as wholly immoral; to damn for eternity somebody whom has already suffered interminably. To then reward the person who caused that suffering, and ultimately lead to the person's sentencing to hell, is utterly repellent. I can find no rationale that can make this anything but a disgusting, revolting travesty of justice.

Christians don't appear to see it that way, because they simply cannot deal with the underlying scenario. Whether this is because they're subconsciously aware of the ramifications or just too stupid to understand, I don't know. I'll tell you how it went when I posed the above to one theist recently.

The first response was that the man I stabbed didn't necessarily turn away from god, that many people who suffer hardship grow closer to god. Yes, that may be true, but not within the context of the hypothetical scenario outlined above. When this was pointed out, the moron simply repeated that I was wrong, my victim might not have turned from god.

Comprehension difficulties or just thick as pig shit? Hard to tell but, given other debates with him, I'm inclined towards the latter.

Another response was that once salvation has been given it's not taken away. Well this poses a problem, because what if I'd become born again before stabbing my victim? Unless salvation is taken away, Heaven could be full of hoodies with flick-knives. Clearly salvation can be taken away, and the bible makes it clear that the only way to god is through Jesus – so if my victim becomes an atheist and blasphemes god (the one unforgivable sin, apparently) then obviously he's fucked like a choirboy at a priest convention.

A further attempt to obfuscate by this Facebook fucktard was to reason it away by saying that my stabbing the man didn't force him to give up belief in god, it was his own choice to do so and so he sadly chose that path to Hell. Seriously? This is the lengths the arsetwittery will take them to avoid the consequences of their belief!

Now of course nobody can force another person to give up their faith, though Christians do have a history of doing just that by the point of a sword where necessary. However nowhere in my hypothetical scenario did I say I forced my victim to lose his faith, I merely stabbed him. It was the repercussions of my action that led to him losing his faith. I'm still ultimately responsible for that loss of faith, even if I didn't intentionally set out to cause to, nor attempt to force him to.

Yet again, this doesn't appear to matter to god. All that would seem to matter is that I repent and turn to Christ, be reborn and get a ticket to Harpville Central. That in the course of my life I caused another soul to lose their faith and end up in Fire & Brimstone Town is unimportant, my victim's eternal damnation is blithely forgotten.

I have a problem with this scenario. A big problem. Any god whom would sentence to eternal torture the victim of a crime who lost their faith as a result of that crime, yet would reward the perpetrator simply because they turned to Christ cannot be a moral entity. They are the very definition of narcissistic, interested solely in whether we worship them. You lost your faith because god allowed shit to happen to you? Tough, next pitchforking up the arse room on the right, I hope you like the smell of burning flesh. You were a bastard to everybody and a psychopath before repenting and turning to Christ? Suuuuure, come right in, grab a halo and find a cloud by the Hell viewing platform, popcorn is free.

But why can Christians not see this? Why must they always, always obfuscate and attempt to change the parameters of the hypothetical scenario in their favour? The whole idea of hypothetical questions is that you don't change the parameters to suit your outcome, you follow the parameters to see where they lead you. Not if you're Christian, though. Then you have to change the parameters, otherwise where you are led is to the inevitable, inescapable conclusion that your god is a c**t! As must be anybody morally bankrupt enough to consider the above scenario perfectly acceptable.

Then again, the arsehole Christian whom gave these responses above, Willis Vida, is currently arguing that atheists have no moral grounds for anything, because morals are god given - any attempt to explain how he is wrong, including citing experts in Evolutionary Psychology, is rejected out of hand. He's also a homophobic bigot, which should give you some idea of the morals he insists god gave him!

No wonder I'm increasingly anti-theist. Thanks for reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Feed the primate some of your wisdom here: