Another God-Bothering Imbecile

In front of a rapt audience, Rep. Shimkus offers his thoughts on elective cosmology. Image credit: screenshot of YouTube by Cujo359

Once upon a time, Mark Twain told this joke:

Suppose I'm an idiot. Now, suppose I'm a member of Congress. But then, I repeat myself.

These days, he could have substituted "God-bothering imbecile" for "idiot", I suppose. Here's a case in point:

Some people like to think that fundamentalist goofballitude is limited to southern states, which is unfair and untrue. For proof, I present one Illinois Congresscritter named John Shimkus. In a recent hearing, he claimed that man cannot destroy the Earth, only God can do that. Here’s the video[.]

Only God can destroy the Earth? Phew!

Rep. Shimkus believes that there's no use worrying about all that climate change stuff, since his god will protect us. Or at least, his god will protect him and the people he likes, one supposes.

This is what passes for reasoning in some dark corners of the planet, like Congress. It's hard to argue with something so batshit insane, and yet somehow I feel the need. Perhaps I hope to dissuade people who aren't batshit insane, but nevertheless think that there might be something to that argument.

So, here goes:

For the sake of argument, let's suppose that there are such things as gods.

Let's further suppose that there is one god.

Then lets suppose that this god is an entity with a personality - the sort of personality that leads him to prefer one group of humans out of all the others, help them escape from another group of people, and then help them slaughter all of their neighbors so they can have a place all their own.

It seems to me that with billions of galaxies in the universe, all of which have billions of solar systems, that this god just might be pretty busy. What do you suppose a busy, somewhat wrathful god would do for people who are always wasting his time with requests for stuff they could do on their own? [whiny voice] "Please help us get out of Egypt. Please watch over our friends and relatives, because we don't have time. Please don't let our planet burn up, because we don't want to stop emitting greenhouse gases."

Don't you think that, with perhaps millions of intelligent species to deal with, such a god might not decide that this planet needs a makeover?

Of all the suppositions I made in that argument, the one in the last paragraph is by far the least implausible.

I suppose the bottom line is that you can either assume that a book that was written two thousand years ago by people who didn't even know what carbon dioxide was, much less what its effect on themselves and their world might be, would somehow be right when people who spend all their lives studying something are wrong, or you can figure out that this book is just guidance when you don't have anything better to go by.

(h/t Blue Gal)