Utterly Meaningless

o_O
I wish people would, you know, CRACK THE BOOK every now and again before deciding what it does and doesn’t say.

(Sorry to double post)

Oh, and if she’s believes that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then yes, God kills children. And if she said, “Well, the Devil kills children”? God still allows it to happen.

But they keep telling me he has his reasons. Mysterious ways and all that.

(Note: I’m not an atheist. I just refuse to anthropomorphize the concept that many call God.)

Maybe she meant other then when he used Hebrew fighters, floods and bears?

Oh, so there were no children in Sodom and Gomorrha, at the time of the flood, in Jericho, etc, etc, etc (if you believe in these myths anyway).

And the Angel of Death.

I heard James Dobson on cable news earlier today accusing Obama of “fruitcake interpretation” for saying something about the bible accepting slavery while forbidding shellfish. Dobson sneered that one was Old Testament and the other was New, as if that made all the difference and Obama was just ignorant.

So maybe Dobson would say all that holy child-killing is only in the OLD Testament, which isn’t real and doesn’t count as much as the REAL (you know, historical, true, proven) stuff in the New?

In which case I say Dr. Dobson can spout fruitcake interpretation of bible stories (we can’t stop him) but his Ph.D. isn’t in theology, so his spouting is no better than Obama’s or mine. I think it’s in child development, and “dead” isn’t a developmental stage included in his expertise, is it?

Meanwhile Obama actually is a constitutional law professor unarguably more qualified than Dobson (or yours truly) to decide what’s fruitcake interpretation of THAT revered document —

Funny how the evangelicals always make the Old Testament/New Testament distinction when it supports their arguments, yet they aren’t willing to toss out the ten commandments or any of the stuff they quote when trying to justify their homophobia.

I read aloud significant parts of both parts of the Jewish/Christian religious texts (Bible) to my kids at the relevant historical points. We didn’t get through it all because it’s just so long, and we needed to keep moving ahead.

At the end of one session (can’t remember where we were in the text), my youngest wearily looked at me and said, “Can you read something else? I’m tired of all this smiting.”

Good story Valerie. 🙂

And I have the distinction of (unintentionally) having raised a daughter so ecumenical in the religious power of story she appreciates, that she’s decided to minor in religion as an unabashed atheist.