How could I?

What is it with deeply religious people?  Why do they seem intent on attacking points never raise in a blog post?  They would rather go after a weak straw man version, or something completely off topic?  Do they even read the articles, or is it that they simply do not have a response?

Take this person who has decided to label themselves “indifferent”, who commented on a post I wrote way back in February regarding Saint Mary Mackillop and the bizarre Catholic beatification rituals:

“How could you?? Have you ever had to face the unfair fact that someone you love is dying?? Someone that is a good person, before their time?? Someone that is the most important person in the world to you???”

Yes I have, thanks for asking.

My father in law battled lung cancer for 3 years before succumbing to the disease.  He was a loving, caring man who always had time for other people.  Nothing was too much to ask and he always helped out with a smile on his face and an encouraging attitude.  A year after my wife lost her father, my mother was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer deep in her lower back.

For two years she battled the beast.  We spent countless hours in hospital rooms talking to doctors and nurses ensuring we had the best medical care available.  We travelled interstate multiple times to attend the best cancer treatment facilities in the country.  Every available resource was utilised to ensure the best attention available – my father spent every last dim he had, then some.  When contemporary medicine failed we enrolled for experimental treatments, but nothing worked.  When the pain became too much, she was being given such high doses of pain killers it induced a coma.  We sat by her bedside 24 hours a day hoping she would recover.  After the longest week in my life watching my mother slowly die, she took her last breath.

At no stage during any of this did we feel the need to pray to a sky wizard for a personal favour – not even my mother.  I feel it is highly presumptuous to expect the creator of the universe to make us a special.  If you truly subscribe to the barbaric theology of your religion, then you must reluctantly admit that no one in history has avoid the sting of death – not even your blessed saviour.

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” – Genesis 3:19

According to your mythology, God himself created the universe and everything in it.  He created the first two people with innate curiosity, then demanded they do not eat from two trees he placed in paradise.  What did he think was going to happen?  Especially since he also placed a talking snake in the garden to trick them.

However, I would be remiss if I left it there – your god certainly didn’t.  He went on to drown every man, woman, and baby except for a drunk and his family.  He ignored most of his creation and chose a small tribe of illiterate desert people in the Middle East as his own.  He toyed with the Pharaoh of Egypt by continually sending waves of plagues, famine, drought, disease, and death while “hardening his heart” so he would not submit and when he tired of utilising his omnipotence in this manner, he lead his special tribe through the desert – signifying his presence as a massive pillar of smoke of fire.  He drowned the Egyptian armies who tried to follow, then though though it would be a good idea to give them some rules for living. Why he didn’t give these to Adam and Eve remains a mystery, but I guess God move in mysterious ways.

As soon as his back is turned his specially chosen people worshipped a golden calf.  His people did this after witnessing death and destruction from the Heavens, and following him through the desert for decades.  Exactly how stupid are they?

Is this really the deity you want us to ask for help in times of trouble?  This jealous, fussy, violent, immoral, prick who kills anything and everything that displeases him?  Why bother with creation at all if it is just going to irritate you so intensely?  Was his omniscience broken that day?

Then you go on to say:

“This is the time when you make take comfort in the talk of miracles.. and pray your arse off for one.. “

No, it is not.  I seek the best medical care available, then hope it works.  I do not think a super helpful magic genie will step in and make everything all rainbows and bunny rabbits if I simply ask him nicely.  Especially if he was the one who inflicted this evil in the first place.  A more cogent question may be “Why does God give people cancer in the first place?”

“… don’t take away peoples coping mechanisms.”

Are you suggesting people cannot deal with reality?  That’s just sad.

“You cannot tell me if you were dangling from a cliff edge by your fingernail… that you might not utter… Oh, god, please help me????!!!”

I might, but only in the colloquial.  I do not expect “the hand of god” to reach down and pluck me from the cliff face.  I would hold on tight and fight with everything in my being to cling to the one life I truly know I have .

For interest, let’s reverse the situation – what if you were hanging by your fingernails from a cliff, but you knew a life of eternal bliss was waiting for you after death?  Why hold on?  Though I do not expect you will actually answer this question, and I will get yet another straw man.