Gawd

Of all the inconsistencies associated with claims about an all-powerful, all-knowing perfectly-good, embodied creator of the Universe who also made humans beings in His image, the one that’s hardest to get my mind around is the claim He cares deeply about such mundane and trivial stuff as what humans eat, whom they have sex with, and how they are supposed to worship Him.

I mean, really, if I could make the world in just six days, do I really give a damn about whether or not you have a glass of milk with your roast beef sandwich or prefer playing with genitals that look like your own?

I’m thinking of this nutcase preacher in Florida who plans to memorialize September 11 with a bonfire of Korans; if he really wants to do things right, he ought to have a Freedom Fry Eat-Off instead.

(All you really need to know about the guy is captured in this quote: “Asked about his knowledge of the Koran, he said plainly: ‘I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.’”)

Does he really, though?

Particularly oxymoronic (with an emphasis on those last two syllables) is that folks who claim to know what God’s opinions on very granular policy matters typically also want to maintain that the Lord works in mysterious ways. What’s mysterious to me is how someone can simultaneously be so certain about some aspects of God’s preferences and so clueless about others.

(Of course, ascribing any intentions whatsoever to God is puzzling to say the least; as multiple observers over the last 2500 or so years have observed, it’s hard to see how a perfect being could have any desires, for to do so would be to imply a lack, something that, obviously, a perfect being could not have.)

Half the time (and regular readers will contend way more than that) I don’t even know what I’m talking about; God’s words? Ya got me.