Well, My Gosh. I Am Certainly Convinced!

Oh, my darlings, I have been so wrong. Sooo so wrong. All this time running around thinking God doesn’t exist, and yet there are these convincing arguments which I have never ever heard before. Checkmate atheists, indeed!

Image shows a baby. Caption says, If evolution is real and adults come from babies, how come babies still exist? Checkmate, atheists!"

There were two signs this week that I was totes wrong about the existence of God. See, there was this one dude with his “7 Things that Prove God is Real,” and lemme tell ya, they’re doozies. They are:

1. Babies. Yep, absolutely, babies. I have never ever looked at a baby, but now that you mention it, they are complicated, and so I went to have a look at one personally, and by gosh, now I can’t deny the reality of God! It’s amazing! And slightly smelly. And cries a lot.

2. Thunderstorms. (Why didn’t our BJU and A Beka textbooks say so??? I’d have been a believer by the end of the weather chapters!)

3. Flowers.

And you know, this one was so amazing, I feel the need to quote it in full:

There are more than 400,000 species of flowers in the world, and most of them are not edible. Their job is to simply make the world beautiful. Did they just haphazardly evolve over time, or did a loving God create each individual shape and color scheme for our enjoyment? People who choose to deny God don’t spend enough time looking at tulips, snapdragons, orchids, lilies, lotuses or magnolias. This is why it’s really important to stop and smell the roses!

Wow. I mean, seriously, if they’re not edible, what good are they? Things that aren’t edible aren’t useful, QED. And it’s not like they need to be brightly colored or smell good to attract pollinators or anything. And how could all those flowers which were carefully cultivated over centuries by human beings exist if God didn’t create them?

4. The Bible. You know, no one has ever told me the Bible proves God exists! It’s so obvious once you realize hundreds of millions of Bibles have been sold, but only two million or so God Delusion books. But there’s more – we’ll get to it later. I’m so excited I can barely contain myself! Praise the (edible) Baby Jesus!

5. The Global Spread of Christianity. Okay, Islam’s catching up, but Christianity came first, so neener!

6. Jesus. Yep, Jesus shore prooves God is real, all right. Never knew that! But wow, I mean, how can anyone doubt it, amirite?

Image shows a girl rolling her eyes and sticking out her tongue. Caption reads, "God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. TOTALLY BELIEVABLE."

7. My personal friendship with God. And you know, having heard from one of God’s own buddies, I’m pretty well convinced, there. Everybody knows grownups don’t have imaginary friends. So if this dude says God’s his friend, well, his friend must exist!

But here’s the handshake on the deal, okay? You’d better sit down, because this is so absolutely convincing that you’ll become an instant believer just like I did. Ready? Here is the ultimate proof, with emphasis added to the proofiest parts:

The evidence for the Bible is more compelling than any other historical fact! There are over 300,000 parts of the OT and entire books that date back to 100 BC. I’m sure you don’t doubt the Homer wrote the Illiad, but there are only 86 copies of it dating to 1000 AD (he wrote it in 100 BC; so how do we really know what is in it?

We have parts of the NT from 125 AD and whole copies of the Bible from around 325 AD. The lack of whole copies of the Bible before that are because of a Nazi-like strategy of the Roman empire to burn them! How typical! But we have 50,000 complete copies of the NT dating from 1000 BC. That evidence blows everything else out of the water. If you believe anything at all, it has thousands of times less evidence than the Bible. And that is a scientific observable fact!

Mind. Blown. God totally wrote the New Testament a thousand years before he appeared on earth as Jesus! He sent Paul back to 1,000 BC to write letters to churches that wouldn’t exist for another thousand years and change! And we know this because some random creationist guy on the internet who may or may not be a troll said so. It must be true!!!!

So yeah. That’s like amazing. I’m so glad I bought all those Christianist textbooks, because I’ll need them to help poorly explain why creationism is really true although all of science proves it’s completely silly. I’ll also be calling around to local neurologists to see how many and what kind of brain cells need to be killed off so that I can keep the Young Earth Creationist faith. I hope you’ll all contribute to my Kickstarter campaign for the surgery!

And if you’re as convinced God is real as I am, you’ll want to join me in destroying the knowledgeable bits of your brain, so you can protect your immortal soul from eternal torment in the hell God will send you to if you doubt his existence, because he loves you and wants you to believe in him, and created a place where we’ll be tortured forever if we fuck up because he really wants us to have a personal relationship with him.

Isn’t this amazing? I never thought there’d be convincing proof, but this is just mind-blowing. I’d better head out to find some ways to justify all the genocide in the Bible now. Bye!

Image shows a strip of red-and-white striped sedimentary rock, and a person pointing to it. Caption says, "Bacon rock. Checkmate, atheists!"

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Well, My Gosh. I Am Certainly Convinced!
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32 thoughts on “Well, My Gosh. I Am Certainly Convinced!

  1. 2

    WRT your first piccky:

    But my wife had babies (with a little help from me) I remember them.

    They evolved into adults (more-or less, and the youngest is now 20… Waaaa!)

    Those babies no longer exist.

    So….

  2. rq
    4

    Welll, I dunno about you, but god came over last night to watch Gravity and to laugh at how he could have saved everyone with a wave of his hand. He had a bit too much beer, but it was a lot of fun – so yeah, my personal friendship with god is going great. Johnny Depp showed up, too, but he couldn’t stay for too long.
    Are you convinced yet?

    Also, if anyone wants proof that god does not exist, I give you – babies. The whole process of babies, starting with giving birth to one. There’s way too much hard labour and stink involved for that to be a True Gift From a Loving God (he certainly ain’t loving). I’d expect butterfly farts and bell-like giggles until a self-sufficient age at the very least, not to mention survival only on tapwater and a few slices of apple each week.

    And thunderstorms. I guess I’ll have to stop enjoying them as a truly awesome manifestation of the power of nature and smallness of humans, and just see them as yet another tantrum from god (yeah, I don’t always invite him over for movies, I guess he takes it badly).

    By the way, the bit about flowers just shows how anthropocentric (and egocentric – that bit about coffee – ew!) this guy’s thinking is: if it ain’t useful for humans, it must still somehow be useful for humans! If it ain’t practical, it can at least be aesthetic, right? Because all those pollinators you speak of, Dana, they weren’t told BY GOD to be stewards of the earth, so obviously nothing is about them.

    Anyway. How’s about a few more of them pretty flower pictures to make us believe in god, Dana? :) Something should be blooming over there.

  3. 6

    I thought having babies was a curse that Yahweh placed on women over eating some fruit.

    I’ll have to talk with a snake to get the truth.

  4. 7

    I’m sure you don’t doubt the Homer wrote the Illiad

    As a matter of fact we do doubt that “Homer” wrote the Iliad, Sparky. Nobody knows who “Homer” was. We’re not sure the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by that person, or that they were both written by the same person. We’re not at all sure there was an ancient poet named “Homer.”

    It can be really hard to figure out the authorship of ancient books. Like the Iliad. And the books of the Bible.

    The lack of whole copies of the Bible before that are because of a Nazi-like strategy of the Roman empire to burn them! How typical!

    Those meany bobeanies!

    I don’t know whether the Roman empire burned many Christian books. I do know that Christians themselves destroyed lots of books by non-Christians and by authors belonging to rival Christian sects.

  5. 8

    But we have 50,000 complete copies of the NT dating from 1000 BC.

    Even if we assume that it’s a typo and he really meant OT, it’s still a strange claim. Much of the OT wasn’t even written in 1,000 BC. And 50,000 copies? Complete copies? He’s dreaming.

    Granted, fundies often have strange ideas about history, but this is weird, even for the lunatic fringe.

  6. 9

    RQ, don’t you know the smelly and painful bits of the baby process are punishments from God for being a sinful lady (the only kind of lady there is, except for the Virgin Mary)?

    Also most grasses don’t have pretty flowers and aren’t useful to humans. Satan must have sent them.

  7. 11

    That makes a bit more sense. I’m still not sure if it’s true and I would have to wonder what his point is (the question was about original copies, after all), but at least it’s not quite as obviously ludicrous.

  8. 13

    And, even should modern scholars figure out the authorship of the Illiad, that still doesn’t mean that the fantastical events described within actually happened, even if some of the places or people existed at that time.

    Just like even though there’s a place called the Grand Canyon, there may have been (but most likely not) a lumberjack named Paul Bunyan, and gigantism is a condition which happens, that doesn’t mean that everything we know about the formation of the Grand Canyon is moot and that it was in fact carved by a giant named Mr. Bunyan dragging his axe behind him, or that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett– real people who actually did exist– gifted him a blue ox named Babe.

  9. 14

    Bull cookies! Pecos Bill dug in with his spurs when he was lost in the desert and needed water.

    You can’t pull this phony history on me.

  10. 15

    Once you start looking into the textual history of the NT things become (I would guess) really disappointing for a fundie. For example there are several luxury copies from the C4-5 that (because of their writing style) are called the Great Uncials. There are literally (I mean literally literally) thousands of differences among them. Most aren’t important, but…

    Then consider, for example, the absence of such an important thing as the Pericope Adulterae* from the earliest texts of John, and you start to wonder if anything at all of the NT goes back to NT times!

     
     
    ________________
    * You know the one with the “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” and every one going away, one by one, beginning with the elders until there was just one woman left among the accusers and, as she is just about to heave her rock, Jesus looks up again and says “Oh Jesus Bloody Christ Mother! I did not mean you…”

  11. 16

    Bull cookies happen to make excellent firewood in a pinch. Just don’t try to burn the fresh ones.

    Lol, seriously, though, I think sometimes that the history of the bible can be fairly accurately examined through the lens of more modern fish stories. Some actual places, some actual events, some actual people, made fantastical through the embellishments of storytellers, repeatedly tailored to suit whatever politicking was taking place in any given era. Give it a few millennia and I imagine we’ll have wars fought over the tall tales of the late 19th to early 20th century, whole departments of higher education dedicated to promoting the literal historicity of the characters and events from what we currently consider folklore: highly exaggerated and often outright made up morality tales.

  12. rq
    17

    So god’s just an evil dude. That’s not comforting at all!! No wonder he’s a man and perfectly fine with believing in god. :P Has he asked his poor wife about it???

  13. rq
    19

    50 000 seems like a lot of copies. 50 000 fragments, maybe, but 50 000 entire, full-length copies? :/ Did that many books even exist back then?
    (Considering this is a bit in advance of the printing press and copying occurred painstakingly and time-consumingly by hand… I guess if you have 50 000 monks with 50 000 quills and a constant supply of ink and paper… What was that about monkeys?)

  14. rq
    20

    Uh, shouldn’t that be

    Oh Jesus Me Bloody Christ Me Mother

    ? Just asking!
    (Alternatively, maybe Jesus wanted to throw all the stones himself – isn’t he supposed to be without sin, too?)

  15. 21

    There’s a role-playing game called ‘Diana, Warrior Princess’. Basic idea: Princess Diana Spencer and much of the 20th century treated with all the attention to historical accuracy of the TV show ‘Xena, Warrior Princess’. (In other words, not much.)

  16. 27

    @rq:

    Paul Bunyan as Goliath, Johnny Appleseed as young David. It will be a true story of Truthiness called The Tree Planter and the Lumberjack.

  17. 29

    There are more than 400,000 species of flowers in the world, and most of them are not edible.

    There are thousands of holy books and NONE of them are edible! Checkmate, beliebers!

  18. 32

    I don’t think he quite gets what he wants out of the Iliad comparison.

    Has no one told him that the Iliad is fiction, a fable, a myth, a made up story??

    ….just like his bible.

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