Sunday, May 11, 2008

God Has Bad Aim





God has bad aim. This may come as a shock to people who believe in God (i.e. Jesus; Jesus' Daddy, Jehovah; Allah; the Holy Ghost; or any other invisible bearded guy in the sky who insists on being the one and true God and maker of the universe and mini-donuts). I say this may come as a shock, but actually, it shouldn't, and at the same time it should.

It should not shock believers because when individuals engage in god damning actions which require as a "just" form of punishment a good smiting, people who believe that their respective God is about to get his smite on move away from the object of the Almighty's smitiness. They even say things such as "let me move out of the way cuz I don't want god to get me when he gets you." Here, they admit that God's lightning strikes are not laser-guided-precise, but rather broad and sprawling, incinerating the blasphemer and any by-standers who have the terrible luck to get in the way of the bolt from above. If they were pin-point accurate and only consumed the target of God's wrath, there would be no need to move at all.

It should shock believers because this points to the fact that their big daddy in the sky is not all powerful. His retribution and vengeance is messy, sloppy, and over reaching. Osama bin Laden and little old black Pentacostal-speaking-in-tongues ladies with wide floral hats can get charred by lightning at the same time if they happen to be sitting on the same pew (okay, I know bin Laden is still in a cave or more than likely dead in a cave, but you get my point).

Leaders of religion obviously believe that God kills the wicked and the innocent alike with his smiting since they proclaim that natural disasters, far less precise than bolts of lightning, are also forms of God's smiting. From hurricanes to earthquakes, religious leaders are always taking smite claim for their God, suggesting that it was Sodom and Gomorrah 2.0. But if that is true, that Katrina was sent to take care of the gays, the whores, and the godless in New Orleans, what about the sweet old Catholic woman who fed the pigeons everyday and could never say no to a stray cat? That woman, someone's sweet grandmother who made them Christmas cookies even in August, drowned and was a bloated, floating corpse down the streets of the Big Easy.

And why? Because god has bad aim. He doesn't shoot heat vision from his eyes like Clark Kent and vaporize a specific target, nor does he bend time and space and reality to disintegrate the molecules of some thong wearing 23 year old dirty blonde hooker who utters "goddammit" while doing the booty dance on the church altar while wearing transparent six inch heels. He doesn't do any of that...instead, he sends tornadoes and floods to sweep away the wretched, and the meek get swept away too like a hundred dollar bill accidentally dropped into a flushing toilet.

This belief that the Almighty has crooked trajectory explains a lot, however. It explains why many of the religious minded are control freaks. They want every one around them to be without sin, because sin is like an open furnace to God's heat seeking smite. They believe that sin is like blood in the water for sharks, and it's a Peter Benchley free ocean when sin is on lock down. To cut back on the sin factor, believers have to control the people around them, making sure they follow "god's laws" to avoid him getting pissed off and sending an F5 tornado to go with that blaphemous remark.

Of course, fearing this kind of retribution from a fashion challenged deity who wears sandals instead of red Prada shoes makes as much sense as fearing that lump of coal from Santa Claus if you've been naughty, not nice, or having an empty Easter Egg Basket if you screw up in early spring.

To believe that God actually sends natural disasters as a sign or displeasure deserves ridicule and scorn directed towards anyone propping up such B.C.E. thinking. If there were such a thing as God, and his aim is this off the mark, it would deserve neither worship or obedience--rather, it would merit scorn and revulsion--or maybe a prescription for a good pair of eyeglasses.

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