Obvious Paradoxes & Contradictions

The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio

In a discussion on the Atheist Camel's blog, an anonymous commenter made a few deductions which were so perfect I couldn't resist talking about it here.

The Atheist Camel's blog post was called Loving The One You Fear: The Peculiar Christian Dilemma. In it, Dromedary Hump points out the flawed and contradictory relationship literalist Christians have with their God. In essence, this is an abusive relationship.

Anonymous goes even deeper into the paradox saying,

"Do we love abusive parents too? I personally can't stand to read about a parent who abuses their own.

For example, would you build a playground for your kids, and than put a running chainsaw in the center?(garden of Eden).

Would you leave your toddler(s) alone in the neighborhood knowing that a drug pusher was going to try to convince your kids to do something forbidden?(Serpent in said garden).

Would you kill all your kids but one and his immediate family?(Noah).

Imagine two of your kids gave you a present. Would you tell one child how wonderful his present was, and tell the other what a piece of crap HIS present was?(Cain and Able)

How about this..... Your kids are having problems. So you instuct one child(Moses) to tell the other child (Pharaoh)to knock it off, or he will pay. In the mean time, you tell the other child NOT to listen to the first("and he harden the Pharaohs heart). Then, just for kicks you kill all the innocent first born in the second childs village to teach him a lesson!!! Man, that's one terrible dad!!

The last example(of many) is one of my all time favorites. You make a bet with your sworn enemy(Satan) that he can't shake the love of your best behaved child(Job). Your enemy tortures your kid to the point of death, destroys those he loves, and generally is a real terror to him. Well, your kid still loves you, and your enemy is proven wrong. But to what end? All that horror has made absolutly zero difference!! Your enemy is still your enemy, he hasn't changed, but your kid is scarred for life!! What a great parent!!!

Above all, don't forget the Xtian mantra "god gave us free will". Yeah, sure he did "love me or burn". That's not free will. Free will would be "believe in me and go to heaven", or "don't believe and go to heaven". They confuse freedom of choice with free will. Sorry, abusers don't give free will."

-- The Serpent Was Right

Tree of Life

Since I was first old enough to read and comprehend the Bible from cover to cover there has always been something which upset me in Genesis. Gnosticism answers this question for me in such a way that while it makes sense, it also gives an example of the kind of simplicity which can be used to understand(and decode) the rest of the mysterious oxymoronic whims of the Bible's writers. Especially its editors and compilers.

The Tree of Life was placed in the Garden of Eden... why?

Literal/dogmatic Christians answer this question making a grand assumption. They say, "it was placed there to tempt humans to see if they were worthy of God's love." This answer worked for oh.. the first ten years of my life. After that it began to taste a bit sour. The reason is that I couldn't believe God would want to do something so vile to his own children. It's like leaving a book of matches out for a ten year old to find. Damn straight they're going to play with them!!

Adam and Eve were simple. They lived simply. They supposedly had no desires or needs beyond eating, naming animals and plants, and playing. But when Big Daddy puts a pretty tree smack in the middle of their playground and says, "Touch it and you'll die" what do you think they did? They did what any curious child would do. They circled it. Looked at it. Touched it. Trying to discern what was so special about it that their God didn't want them to know.

Gnostics' take on the Tree of Life is simple: God couldn't control what happened or what was created in Eden because it was a reflection of himself. ("I made humans in the image of myself.") Therefore the Tree of Life was created and the only thing He could do was warn his children away from it. What, he couldn't destroy it? Why not? And why wouldn't He? Answer: Eden is a reflection of what He is and therefore the Tree reflects a certain aspect of God at that age-- flawed concerning knowledge of surroundings and Himself in the grand scheme of the universe. He can't see past his own nose.

Think about it. What did the fruit do? It opened Adam and Eve's eyes to see their bodies and surroundings in new ways. God hobbled his two children with blindness. Why? For what purpose? Why would a father do such a thing to his children? This is the reason why Gnostics call the demiurge(God/Yahweh) "the arrogant one." He made humans to be a science project. He wanted someone to worship him. Then the guinea pigs got their eyes opened and saw the cage they were in. Darn! So naturally He does what any pissed off narcissist does: he threw them out of His playground. "You don't want to play right ... so go! Leave. Scram. Get out of here!"

And from then on humans have looked toward God with more fear than love.

A lighter, more humorous way to see just how out of control the demiurge's powers of creation are: look at the platypus.


What in the world was He thinking when he made that bizarre animal? A poisonous beaver/duck whose young lick it's mother's milk off its fur instead of from a teat. And whoever said all duckies were sweet, innocent little creatures should have their head examined. True story: I had my pants pulled down by a duck when I was five years old in a park because I wasn't feeding it fast enough. Evil little bastards.