If God exists then he/she/it/whatever is the most cold and inhuman thing in the universe. The greatest people on this celestial plane (pun intended) are known as great for their services to society. What has God done for us? Given us life? We wouldn't have known the difference if he hadn't. That's like someone shoveling your driveway for you in the middle of the summer. It was a nice thought but really didn't to anything for you at all.
If God exists what can we expect when we die? I for one want answers. Screw answering for my sins, what about those times I locked my keys in the car? Where was God when someone died, when I almost died? "It was their time," they say. God called them up. Well then when God calls me up, I'm not answering. I'm staying right here. Just this once I'm gonna be a little child: MAKE ME! And then drag me kicking and screaming. God wasn't there for me before I died, why the hell would I want him in my life after I died?
They say that God works through people. Hey reality check, I'm a nice person and I like to think when I do something nice for someone that it was of my own free will not just some puppet master pulling on my strings. So what you're saying is that God works through people to do kindness to others. Then we are only vessels of another's kindness. Does this mean that all the other crap, the lousy stuff we do to each other, is the real us's shining through. Or is this Satan working through us the same way God does? If so, then when are we ourselves? Likewise, how can we be judged by God for actions that we didn't have anything to do with? Actions that we could neither perform nor prevent.
Then they say that God works through us sometimes, that when he needs us to participate in his grand plan, we are his vessels to mankind. So he's working to complete a plan predestined before we were ever born? A plan that we have no control over or impact on? So we are predestined to Heaven or Hell? Our lives don't matter? Why are we here then unless our sole purpose is to be puppets to the All-Knowing Puppet Master. Besides, if God is all-knowing then God already knows how each of our lives is going to unfold, knew at the beginning of time how it was going to end, punished Adam and Eve for crimes that God knew they had to commit.
They say that God gave us his greatest gift free will. (I thought they said that his greatest gift was life, and then his son, and then the Holy Spirit, and so on. But I digress...) God gave us free will to do with ourselves everything that we wanted. Primarily he left us ignorant of evil, so that in his perfection, he only made something perfect too. But ignorance itself is an imperfection. In leaving us ignorant of evil he also left us completely susceptible to Satan like someone living downwind of Molokai. In leaving us ignorant, God let Satan trick us into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. (Where but in the Bible is knowledge a bad thing?) Then he punished us, casting Adam and Eve from the Garden, making them have to till the soil tirelessly for food, and caused child birth to be painful...
"16To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee. 17 And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. (Genesis 3:16-17)."
So basically what happened is that the all-knowing God who by definition must have known that they would have eaten from the Tree, punished them for something they were predestined to do? Furthermore, I ask this: Didn't Satan commit the actual crime here? He tempted Adam and Eve, and in not knowing any better they believed the snake, just as they would believe everything God said. Shouldn't he be the only one punished here? Barring that, at least Adam and Eve should have had a lighter sentence (I agree that theoretically they did disobey what he said).
"And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle, and beasts of the earth: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. (Genesis 3:14)."
It seems to me that both the serpent and Adam and Eve pretty much received the same punishment. Even though Adam and Eve were innocent ["And the eyes of them both were opened" (when they ate the fruit) (Genesis 3:7)] they received the same punishment as the serpent who apparently already had the knowledge that God wouldn't privy Adam and Eve to. Therefore, Adam and Eve were punished for being innocent, which is how God made them. God of course would know this was the case, but still he punished them?
By the way, did you catch the "and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee" line from above? (Genesis 3:16). Apparently God decided that man would have power over woman, essentially that every woman married in a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim (the Jewish also use the Old Testament and Muslims see a version of it in the Koran as well) wedding is owned by her husband. Why would a perfect being discriminate against one of his own creations? Why would God discriminate at all? Also in the same passage God said "I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions" (Genesis 3:16). Again talking to Eve: God will multiply thy conceptions? The way I see it, it takes two to conceive. So God's going to make men hornier or something? (Predestination?) I'm sure your girlfriend / wife would love to hear that it is because God is punishing her for Eve's mistake that he wants to get her in the sack. I think that seems rather like a know-nothing philosopher trying to make sense of why his wife doesn't have as strong a sex drive as him. And look it caught on too.
Summing everything up then, the way I see it, I'd be happier knowing that there is no God than to know that there is a vindictive, ignorant, tyrannical, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing being that rules over us in life and death. Or maybe I'm missing something (I hope I am, no God does seem lonely. I'll explain some other time.). Then again, maybe it's just a testament to the existence of God that we are all fucked up in the first place, after all look where we came from and look what we are doing to each other.
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