Here's a mind bender for ya.

[SoCalDem]

The rightwingers who profess to be devout Christians, and who are also anti-immigrant, probably have not thought about this.

If God created the world and all the people in it, did he also create the arbitrary "borders" of all the nations? If he did, why did some of them not "work out", and have to be re-made dozens of times?

Would not "all God's people" be equal citizens of the world?...Free to move about at will?
Mexican Christians may feel the need to travel north. Would the same god who created them deny them the right to travel his world?

Why would god have created a "nice" place for some christians, and a horrible existence for other "children"?

If God only created Christians, and deemed them to be the ONLY ones worthy of salvation, where did all those other BILLIONS of people come from? Who "created" them?

If God did indeed create them as well, why would he create them to NOT believe in him?

It's stuff like this that used to get me all the dirty looks from the priests who showed up occasionally at catechism classes :evilgrin:..(and why I am no longer catholic).

[Mythsaje]

1. Religion requires more mind-bendery than I'm capable of

the first place. This is just one example of it.

[SoCalDem]

2. I know what you mean.. When I was a kid , I asked a priest

what would happen to all the people in Africa when they died. he said that if they died without "knowing Jesus" they would all go to hell.

I asked why that was fair , if they did not have the opportunity to "know Jesus".. his snarky reply:

The church has been saving souls for a long time, but some willl be missed..and life is not fair :eyes:

[Mythsaje]

4. I have never been able to figure out

exactly WHY I should assume they, or their bible, is any more "correct" than any other primitive view of the world.

I've noticed that the particularly religious don't seem to like the word "Why" very much at all.

[Kutjara]

3. The stock answer is "free will."

God apparently gave us free will so that we can choose between right and wrong. Early Christian philosophers debated about this long and hard. The prevailing view was that, if we didn't have free will, then we could be neither good nor evil, because we had no choice over our actions. Without free will, we are merely automatons enacting a script.

So borders and inequality and all the rest of the world's ills are something that mankind's sinful nature has brought into the world freely.

As for why God created so many people and then only "chose" some of them as His people, fundies would tell you that, again, everyone has the choice to believe in God so, if they don't believe in him, it's their own fault and they deserve everything they get. Part of the missionary colonization of so many parts of the world was driven by the need to bring God's Word to the Heathens. Missionaries were quite concerned that many humans would go to hell simply because they hadn't heard of God, so the missionaries made it their business to tell everyone they could reach. If the heathens still didn't listen, then, again, they had only themselves to blame.

Hypocracy works in mysterious ways, it's wonders to perform.

[ClintonTyree]

8. That and, "we can't presume to know god's plan".

You see, god has this master plan with countless intricacies that the mere human mind couldn't begin to understand. So we just have to have faith in god's wonderful, mysterious plan and leave it at that.

They are stock answers and they can explain anything away (or at least the think they can) with them. It's circular logic at it's best and all it takes is "belief". Not facts, belief. George Bush believes we're going to win the war in Iraq. Every fact points to the opposite but his "belief" trumps all of those pesky facts. In my opinion belief is the same as self delusion.

[Kutjara]

9. Oh yes, I forgot that one.

The old "God's Plan" card that explains every injustice, war, disease, famine, dead baby and inconvenient truth. God has it all mapped out, it'll all work out in the end, just sit back and enjoy the ride.

God's Plan and Free Will: the twin pillers that support the whole edifice of bullshit.

[GreenZoneLT]

5. Uhhhh, did you go to Sunday School ever?

Those aren't even good questions, like "Why are there two Genesis stories back-to-back" and "How did Noah get every critter alive today into an ark whose dimensions we know couldn't possibly encompass them?" Who said God created only Christians? The fundies think people were around for 4,000 years before Jesus. The benighted heathens just had the bad luck not to hear the good news, and they've got no excuse now, because Jesus is on TV everywhere. It's alleged free will.

Borders is an easy answer, too. Render unto Caesar, etc. God don't care where you live, or how well, he just wants you down on your knees feeling guilty.

[SoCalDem]

6. Sunday School ?? surely you jest. I had to do penance

for going to a baptist service on base with my friend. (I guess they decided that excommunication for an 8 yr old was too harsh )

[I_Make_Mistakes]

7. Touched by an Angel did a really good show on this, it was

about Tienemen Square, please I know the spelling is incorrect but, it's not a place that I have ever referred to.

In the opening dialog the Angel's talked about the borders and that when you look down on Earth from Heaven there are no borders, they are man-made not God made. The reference was explicitly of the Great Wall of China, but if you watched you got it. This particular show was so amazing, that I actually kept the tape.

I have to agree you completely on the take that if God is the Creator (I believe that) then ALL things are HIS creation. If you see the God in all things, then you must treat all things as you would treat God himself. It's a concept that is highly missing from the RW perspective, not mine.

I remember a comment I saw somewhere referring to the Afghanistan bombing compared to a football game, and people cheering as the bombs dropped, and I realized that during Gulf War I, I was a cheerleader.

When we bombed Afghanistan, I prayed for days on end (that's all I as an individual could do) that God would protect all the innocents that were subjected to the brutality of the bombs, because the oppressive regimes in that country had the audacity to support Bin Ladin.

These poor people, like the Iraqi's had been subjugated to the brutalist forms of punishment and here we were, adding more brutality to their lives.

In the 2000 + years of my religious icons reign, not much has changed, we still kill each other indiscriminately, perhaps the brutality has become lessened, but the end result the same.

It is sad that we have accomplished so little relative to the time it took to accomplish it.

[lectrobyte]

10. You need to drop in on one of those "abundant living" feel-good

megachurches. God wants you to have that new car!

[12string]

11. Religion

If we could get "the Christians" to act in a
Christian manner instead of saying,"God bless the
U.S.A.or England or France,etc.We could ask that God Bless the
whole world and maybe it would begin to end the madness.

[deepthought42]

12. Stop making sense, they won't get it...lol n/t

[kentuck]

13. Imagine...

by John Lennon

[mikelewis]

14. All "people" are created equal...

...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If you hear someone describing God as some giant intergalactic prick who favors one person... one club... or one race over all the rest... their "God" is what many religious people refer to as Satan. Satan is the "God" crafted by the ego of man for the benefit of a few. Satan is the "spirit" that they pray to when they beseech God for the deaths of other humans... Satan is the "spirit" that they worship when they ask God to completely rework the entire universe for their personal benefit... Satan is the being that they have crafted when they try and re-create the world in their image. These fools ignorantly worship a Book about God and manipulate the words of a particular Book to suit their own interests... they are the walking Dead and should be ignored. This really applies to all religions... not just Christianity... though the hypocrisy is even more evident in Christianity because Christ, as he is described, devoted quite a bit of time defining these hypocrites.

[Virginia Dare]

15. According to Michael Savage...

it is the birthright of white hetero christian men to decide these things. Even though Jesus himself wasn't a white man or a christian, but I realize that's just a technicality.

[SoCalDem]

16. Michael Savage-Weiner is a piece of work.

and not too many years ago, HE would have been barred from inclusion in many places his pals own and operate.

Irony.. It ain't just what they make bridge-ys out of.