While on the roof of the building where I work–because the A/C unit to my NOC decided to go belly up on one of the hottest bloody days of the year–I was chatting with a co-worker about a few things. Before long, the conversation turned to “miracle” cures for various ailments, and I outed myself. No, not as as a genetically defective “gay” (lol, btw), but as an atheist.
My coworker became very interested, and began to pepper me with questions. I don’t remember what prompted the response, but I must have asked him something about proof. To which he responded along the lines of “but if you had proof, you wouldn’t need faith.”
This is something I’ve heard before, and is pretty much the crappiest argument out there for why god doesn’t peek his head through the clouds from time to time and say “sup, my negroes?” It’s more or less the theological equivalent of saying “if you stopped disliking being raped, you might enjoy it.” Um…maybe it’s a little different, but not much. The only reason people have faith in anything is because that anything hasn’t given them any reason to know. If you had proof, you wouldn’t need faith. You would, as I said, just know.
In my book, proof is way the hell better than faith. Let me give you an example. Let’s suppose that you and I are standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I tell you that the Grand Canyon has magical powers, and that if you jump off the edge to retrieve the Flintstones Push Pop that I just threw off said edge, the GC would carry you safely down to the bottom to get that icy goodness. You’ve known me for like 60 years, and that Push Pop really would taste good, so you’re trying really hard to believe me. I promise you that if you only have faith, the GC will in fact violate the laws of gravity and bring you pleasantly into the outstretched arms of your strawberry lover.
In the real world, you and I both know that the moment you step off that edge, you’re going to fall straight down and totally ruin that Push Pop with your stupid dumb-ass blood. You didn’t have proof, but you had faith that I wouldn’t lie to you. Too bad. Me and your girlfriend will now go to the liquor store and buy more Flintstones Push Pops and make out. She’ll get like lemon flavor, and I’ll get cherry, and the flavors will mix into an exquisite orchestra of sugary nirvana. We’ll break up a few months later, but not until after we have one more sad make out session.
As usual, I digress. You had faith without proof, and you died. Idiot. If I had jumped off and had been carried down safely, you would have had proof that you could probably do so safely as well.
So you see, faith is pretty much only made up by people who want to make out with your girlfriend. No, wait. I mean, faith is made up by people who have have no real answers and are only making stuff up to placate you.
In any event, my friend was basically saying that if god manifested himself, it would some how ruin “something”, though what that something is, I’m not sure. If the Bible is correct, ol’ Yahweh was pretty much manifesting himself all over the place in days of yore. I’m convinced that the flood was him changing the sheets, so to speak. Skeeeeeet! (Holy crap, did I actually just type that? Anyone know the exact definition of blasphemy?)
If god was able to do all sorts of crazy stuff in front of the eyes of primitive man in the old days, he should be able to do some really cool stuff now. Burning bush? That’s only because raves hadn’t been invited yet. Killing babies like crazy every time a prophet or messiah comes along? That’s nothing to what he could do with modern genocide. Instead, god contents himself with cheap parlor tricks, like curing rabies or not saving boats full of drowning Christians. Heck, even I can not save 2,000 drowning people, and I pretty much suck. I mean, I would actually let you jump off the Grand Canyon and steal your girlfriend!
I guess what I’m trying to say is that faith is pretty much dumb. I’ll let kids have faith in stuff, because they’re pretty much all dumb anyways. Actually, most adults I know are borderline retarded too, so maybe they should get a pass also.
