20 April 2000, 800 words
I do not debate religion with believers. Followers of Hinduism understand this. I have never once received an e-mail or letter from any Hindu, trying to tell me that I misunderstand their religion and that I will discover real truth by turning to their God. On the other hand, I regularly get such missives from Christians, Muslims and, the other day, even a Bahai.
That difference in attitude does not only reflect a difference in theological belief, but a difference in the quality of faith. The desire to convert that exists among Christians and Muslims is a reflection of insecurity: evidence that, in some part of themselves, they know their beliefs to be untrue. (The same is true of the Maha Sabha spokespersons.) And Christianity, being the most contradictory of all the religions, naturally has the most missionaries.
One need not look further than the Bible to discover such contradictions. Take, for example, Exodus 20:5, in which God Himself says, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Yet in Ezekiel 18:20, He says, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." Perhaps He couldn't make up His mind.
Or take this quote from 1Peter 2:13 - "Submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." Yet Acts 5:29 says, "We ought to obey God rather than men". There's also the matter of good works: fundamentalist Christians love quoting Ephesians 2:8,9 - "For by grace are ye saved through faith, not of works" - but never James 2: 24 - "Ye see how that by works a man is justified and not by faith alone."
Obviously, the Author of the Bible needed a good editor. Yet Numbers 23:19 boldly - or, rather, boldfacedly - asserts, "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man that He should repent". Yet, in Exodus 32:14, there He is repenting like billy-o. "And the Lord repented of the evil which He had thought to do His people. Ditto for Genesis 6:6 and Jonah 3:10. So when, in Malachi 3:6, God says, "For I am the Lord thy God, I change not", one can take this with a large pinch of salt.
This being the case, it is not surprising that the statements of His putative son also need some sodium chloride. For instance, in Matthew 19:17, Jesus states, "There is none good but one, that is, God." Yet in Isaiah 45:7, God Himself says, "I make the peace and create evil." Nor did Jesus seem aware of what his Father did in Ezekiel 20: 25 - "I gave them statutes that were not good and judgments whereby they should not live. Maybe God didn't tell His only begotten son that He had a night job.
Yet, even if these contradictions didn't exist, I'd still have trouble believing in a God who claims to be good, yet who recommends executing people for even the slightest offence: "The adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10). "He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death" (Lev. 24:15). Even lack of virginity deserves lapidation, according to this God: "If the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die." (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
Yet, against all the evidence in their own Holy Book, Christians still insist that their God is "a loving God". They even argue that the above laws refer only to the Old Testament. Even if this were true (and it isn't - see Matthew 5:17), it still means that God changes His mind, which is a curious thing for a Supreme Being to do.
Yet these logical objections are not the main reason I am not, and never will be, a Christian. If Christians (and other religious fanatics) practised their religion purely as a belief system, I would keep silent. But their beliefs affect the world we live in, and nearly always for the worse. Biblical arguments are used by Pentecostal leaders such as Pastor Cuffie to support capital punishment, thus helping prevent the implementation of social policies that might actually reduce crime. School principals like Br. Michael Samuel continue to support corporal punishment because, like all very religious people, he is impervious to rational argument. Catholic fanatic Professor Courtenay Bartholomew, who is trying to introduce experimental vaccine trials here, argues against condom use even as HIV continues to kill.
All this is why I am not a Christian: to become a believer would, for me, be a completely immoral act.
Copyright ©2000 Kevin Baldeosingh