I Get E-mail

Image credit: See NOTE 1

I received this bit of silliness in e-mail the other day:

From: Weston Rogers
To: undisclosed-recipients@null, null@null
Subject: God loves you.
Date: May 7, 2011 2:45 AM

Hello,
A very important message for you.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only SON. So that anyone that believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16

For more details about how to find salvation in God, kindly reply.
God bless.

Erickson

Since I wrote about this idea awhile back, it amazes me that anyone would think that I'd be persuaded by it to write to someone who believed such nonsense. At least, I would be amazed by such a presumption if this e-mail wasn't so obviously part of a giant spam e-mail. The entity that supposedly created the universe and all the things in it couldn't figure out how to save the humans from wickedness, etc., except by sending its son here to be murdered by sadists?

Think about that one for a moment. The intelligence that parted the Red Sea and created an astonishingly specific plague to help Moses and Co. escape from Egypt couldn't just whip up something that would make us better? Couldn't have made the world a less Darwinian place so we all could be nicer to each other without having to compete for resources? He had to send someone here to explain it all to us, and then be murdered in a horrible manner so that we'd take what he said seriously, or something like that.

Oh, no, we had to choose freely so that we could all keep him company up there in wherever. Otherwise, we wouldn't be worthy, or some such.

Of course, if he didn't send his kids out to be murdered by sociopaths, he might not be so lonely.

Are you buying any of that idea, Jessie?

Yeah, me neither.

Any adult who believes something this crazy isn't likely to explain anything to me. I love the optimism in this quote from P.Z. Myers the other day, trying to explain how pointing out that taking some religious beliefs literally is obviously foolish can be a good thing:

At the very least, I hope that a few of them will realize, even if they don't change their mind about the god nonsense, that quoting the Bible at me has no effect, and maybe some years down the road I won't be hearing as many idiots telling me "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" as if they've made a profound point.

We aren't angry, we're effective, which is even scarier

Good luck with that.


NOTE 1 These screenshots of the Mr. Deity episode "The Really Big Favor" were taken by Cujo359. Mr. Deity is a copyrighted work of Brian Keith Dalton and Lazy Eye Pictures, who are in no way responsible for this article, nor did they approve this article. It's funny. Check it out.