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So I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the god of the Old Testament is pretty bloodthirsty. On one page he’s telling the Israelites to murder the women and children of all the neighboring tribes, and on the next page it’s the Israelites who are having their salads tossed by the neighboring barbarians. He even executes innocent bystanders like Moses’s brother Aaron.

The fact that god is treating death as a punishment is very telling, because it implies that dying sucks. But, if there’s an afterlife that’s going to last a brazillion million years, we need to ask ourselves: death, so what?

The Torah never actually talks about the afterlife, but Judaism has an understanding of it (developed elsewhere) that is different from Christianity. In Christianity, a loving god throws non-believers into Hellfire for ever and ever because they made a few mistakes in life. In Judaism, almost everyone gets to spend eternity with god, although you might need a period of purification first. People like Hitler probably don’t get to join god in pleasure.

Constantly throughout both testaments, death is treated as a punishment in and of itself. For example, Moses is killed before he can enter the Promised Land. Or, the prophets of Baal (from I Kings) are put to death by Elijah. Or Ananias and his wife (Acts) are executed on the spot for keeping some money back from the apostles after they sold off their belongings. Or, god murders all the innocent first-born children of Egypt because Pharaoh won’t let the Israelites leave. Or, god has the Israelites kill all the Amalekites (including innocent infants and children) in 1 Samuel.

Now that we’ve established death as a punishment, let’s consider what happens at this exact moment. Here I am, a precocious little 10-year-old Amalekite girl. I’ve never hurt anyone. One day, my baby brother and I are playing Mario Kart on our Wii and Saul and his Israelite army roll into town. One of the soldiers approaches me and says that Jehovah has ordained my death, and then proceeds to stab me in the belly with a sword. He puts the sword through the face of my baby brother next. I fall to the ground and painfully bleed out, pissed off that Bowser keeps shooting my now driverless video game character with red turtles. I’m also distraught beyond belief that my innocent child brother whom I love dearly has a new sword hole in his face. He’s not dead yet, and will slowly die of thirst and blood loss over the next few days because me and my parents are only a few minutes from death.

At some point, I die. I now wake up in the spirit realm, and god says “what’s up” and gives me a new Wii and a Wii Fit. Two questions come to mind: first, how was my death a punishment? Even if I was a semi-bad person, I just need to work my way through Judaism’s “rooms” of atonement, and then it’s the Garden of Eden for eternity.

Second, what was the point of running me through with a damn rusty sword? I was a freaking innocent child!!!! Plus, I end up in relatively the same place no matter when I die, whether it’s at 10 or 80. So why all the sweaty man action of having an Israeli warrior stab me in the pancreas? Keeping me alive another 70 years will have no bearing whatsoever on the final destination of anyone alive, so a “punishment” death is just as irrelevant as an old age death. Another example: why throw rocks at adulterers? There is no permanent punishment for them in eternity as a result of their adultery, so why the needlessly painful ending to the human life? It’s almost as if people are being rewarded for their sins, because they get to go to Heaven sooner!

In the end, all this anger and warfare and a giant flood to kill all of mankind is completely and utterly unnecessary! So are the 10 commandments for that matter, as you can pretty much ignore them and still get to the same place! All death does is move you from one plane of existence to the next, so what’s the big deal? Essentially, god has an anger problem, and the only cure is to kill someone, preferably by some violent means like a sword to the chest or drowning. The dick thing about it though is that 8 seconds later he has to be all happy again and welcome you to eternal bliss. Personally, I’d be pretty pissed about all the theatrics and needless pain, and might consider giving god a right-cross to the family jewels. Take that, testicle Jesus!

I cannot imagine for a second that the most perfect being to ever exist would have such a retarded system of meting out punishment. Why all the hand wringing over sin only to have that sin and its capital punishment be rendered completely moot about 1 minute later?

P.S. Am I the first person to coin “testicle Jesus?” ‘Cause if so, that’s a pretty sweet name for my imaginary band.

In my last post, I tried to point out how abortion is the best thing that can happen to someone in the Protestant worldview. It also occurred to me that if god had moved up the Apocalypse, billions of people wouldn’t have been created only to end up thrown into Hell.

I wanted to pick up a little more on the weird notion of the ‘age of accountability‘ that I mentioned. This doctrine basically says the following: even though all mankind is guilty of sin because of Adam, god won’t hold Adam’s sin against those who are unable to save themselves (i.e. by believing in Jesus Christ). Ostensibly, this extends to children, and those who have never heard the gospel.

If this doctrine is true, one wonders why god would create these people anyways? He embued them with a soul at birth, only to let them live a random life completely absent from Jesus’s teachings. Then, when they die, that soul gets a free pass and gets into Heaven. This idea basically makes the whole believe in Jesus thing moot.

If anyone can get to Heaven so long as they don’t have the ability to choose Christ, why does the Bible say that Jesus is the only way into Heaven? Clearly, this presents a second option: be born in a place without access to missionaries, or die before you get old enough to make a proper choice on your salvation. Believing in Jesus is not the only way into Heaven.

So we’re back to an absurdity: if the devil is allowed to tempt you your entire life, and if you are more likely to go to Hell than to Heaven by default (because of Original Sin), it follows that the longer you’re alive the more opportunity you have to go to Hell. That sets up the following as true, in order of best to worse:

1. It is best to be aborted in the womb, because you as a human will never know the pain of life. You will never know pain, hunger, starvation, sickness, heartbreak, or warfare. Because you died before the age of accountability, you will go to Heaven.

2. It is second-best to die as a child (or as someone who is mentally retarded). Even though you might experience hardships like poverty, disease, hunger, or abuse, the fact that you are dying as a child guarantees you access to Heaven.

3. It is third-best to be born in a place that has not been introduced to the Bible. Even though you will almost certainly face physical hardships in your lifetime, the fact that you have never heard the word of Christ has saved you from Hell.

4. The worst scenario is to be born into a Christian nation and to survive into adulthood. You will have almost certainly suffered physical hardship, and now having survived into the age of accountability gives you a higher than likely chance of going to Hell.

It’s as if access to the gospel is a curse: so long as you’ve never heard it or are too young to understand it, you’re golden. But, as soon as you’ve heard it, you’re as good as doomed. So, in a nutshell, hearing the gospel is a detriment to your health.

If you’re a Christian and you love your family and friends, don’t tell them about Jesus, and abort your children if you have any. It’s the best thing you can do to help get them into Heaven.

Before I go, let’s look at the opposite of this real quick, since the Bible never technically says anything about this accountability thing. What it does say is that all of mankind is cut off from god because of original sin, which means that the only way for anyone to get to Heaven is through Christ. If that’s the case, the aborted, children of any age, and even those who have never heard of Jesus will go to Hell.

The other day, a friend of mine told me that children are a gift from god. Without the age of accountability, if this “gift” dies as a child, it would seem that god is perfectly content to throw it into a lake of never-ending fire and torment. Which basically brings us back to god being a colossal dick. After all, who would create a soul only to cast it into Hell when it dies a month after birth?

Or, consider someone who is born with mental retardation. According to Psalms, god actually made them with mental retardation, thus preventing them from being able to choose Christ, and thus creating them with full knowledge that they would go to Hell upon death.

If god is cool though and doesn’t toss newborns and children into Hell, it means he’s a dick to everyone else who was unlucky enough to hear the gospel later in life, because he gives other adults a pass for not having heard it. Again, I’ll ask: why do people believe in this?

So I’m back from my lengthy mission trip in Colorado Springs…or something…and thought I’d write again about abortion and the problems it creates for Protestantism.

Today I upset my dad in an e-mail, apparently because he thought I was starting to come a little unhinged (like my brother) with respect to politics. My dad is a dyed in the wool Christian Republican with an occasional independent streak. Well, I said something that made him upset, and before long I was a “people like you” and not someone who was inside his testicles at one point.

As he excoriated me for this and that, he ended up suggesting that California is being judged for various reasons, including the MURDER of millions of babies (emphasis his). Which brings me back to my point I wrote somewhere else here, a link to which I won’t provide because I’m in a sling right now and it hurts to type, so you can look it up yourself.

Anyways, I think my earlier point was this: no one seems to lose with abortion in the Protestant worldview. The fetus gets a free ride to Heaven, and the person doing the aborting gets to ask for forgiveness and go to Heaven. Had the child lived to the age of accountability, it’s more than likely that he or she would have gone to Hell and not Heaven. So, if anything, abortion is doing that kid a favor. It has guaranteed him eternity in Paradise, whereas a live birth would have virtually guaranteed an eternity in torment. In other words, the Protestant stand on abortion is dumb, and the paradox seems to be lost on them. They should be grateful for abortion, because it is the single best outcome for a soul.

This of course, leads us to a larger discussion about how creation itself is dumb, and how it demonstrates that either god is not all powerful, or we don’t have free will, in which case god’s a dick for sending me to hell. Follow me here:

• My parents knock it out of their own free will, conceiving me. This forces god to cook up a soul, perhaps against his will. I mean, are there any kids born without souls? God seems to have no choice in the matter, which means he’s our slave. A slave to my mad skills with the women! (In fact, by allowing my hundreds of conquests to bear children, you could even argue that he’s complicit in sending my handsome offspring to Hell some day!)
• Or, my parents knock it out because god made them, in which case they didn’t have free will to conceive me.
• Rather than let me get straight into Heaven by killing me in the womb, my parents birth me.
• Or, god prevents my parents from doing the sensible thing and aborting me, denying them free will and a life full of ample disposable income.
• I’m born a Christian, and live to the age of accountability, where god throws a series of tests at me and allows the devil to tempt me through some unknown mechanism. I become an atheist, and die while watching the Jeffersons. I go to Hell, because I’m so powerful that I was able to manipulate god’s emotions, making him angry enough to sentence me to Hell forever, rather than just a little while.
• Or, I’m born a Christian, and because god decides he doesn’t want my soul in Heaven because he’s already got enough of whatever I am, he makes me into an atheist, and then makes me watch the Jeffersons. Oh, and then send me to Hell when I die.

This basically demonstrates the absurdity of the birth/soul contract. If the point of this life is Heaven, why the intermediate step of this life in the first place and not just an immediate creation in Heaven? If god is perfect and wants for nothing, why create a universe? If the point of this universe is a place to host mankind, why have different planets and stars with all different compositions that mankind will never touch or see? And then why populate only a teeny, tiny fraction of all of this with beings that he knew would screw up? And then why allow these screwed up beings to continue to procreate, forcing him to create new souls that he gets to chuck into Hell most of the time? And if they can get a free ride to Heaven by dying as kids, why not just prevent the conception and put the kid straight into Heaven, instead of letting a mother shove a hanger up herself?

He could have stopped all this Hell-chucking a long time ago by simply moving up the Apocalypse a little sooner. Had it been 1,000 years ago, for example, billions of people would not be in Hell right now. But for some cruel reason, god went ahead and let them continue to slide out of their moms’ heathen vaginae on their way to an all-but-guaranteed trip to Hell. Did he not get the point that a kid born in Saudi Arabia 100 years ago probably wasn’t going to turn out Christian? Or were the first 10 million Saudi Arabian people thrown into Hell not enough proof of what every retarded freshman sociology major can figure out on his own: that the next Saudi Arabian was probably going to be Muslim, and probably not vote Christian?

Some will say he couldn’t move everything up, because he has a plan. This is nonsense of course, because what happens in the space of 1,000 years here on earth will have absolutely no relevance 100 billion years from now while Christians are floating around in space near the right-hand of god doing who knows what. It will, however, have relevance for the billions of people that could not be in hell right now, but which are, because of god’s dumb plan that he could have bumped up a little. Maybe he was busy with a tee time and couldn’t be bothered to move up End Times, seeing as how an eternity of fire and brimstone for countless people really isn’t all that big a deal after all.

So to recap, if I had died in the womb, I would have been guaranteed a trip to Heaven. Or, had god moved up the Apocalypse, I would at least never have existed, and would not have to go to Hell some day because the devil, which god allows to tempt me, did the job that god won’t stop him from doing.

Thanks Christianity, for that brilliant theology you’ve got there.