Why Christianity is good for the world

[Photo of the Rev. Douglas Wilson]


This from WEBBlog by CBN News Anchor, Lee Webb.


The Rev. Douglas Wilson, in a new book titled Why Christianity is Good for the World, gives what Mr. Webb calls "sublime evidence for the existence of God."

"Sublime?"

But first, who is Douglas Wilson, you ask? Mr. Wilson lives in Moscow, Idaho. He is pastor of Christ Church in that city. He founded something called Logos School, and he's a Fellow of Philosophy at New St. Andrews College, also in Moscow (Idaho).

Mr. Wilson's "evidence" for the existence of God goes thusly:

"God knew that we were going to need to pick up dimes, and so He gave us fingernails. He knew that twilights [sic] displayed in blue, apricot, and battle gray would be entirely astonishing and beyond us, and so He gave us eyes that can see in color. He could have made all food quite nourishing, but which tasted like wadded up newspaper soaked in machine oil. Instead He gave us the tastes of watermelon, pecans, oatmeal stout, buttered corn, apples, fresh bread, grilled sirloin, and 25-year-old scotch. And He of course knew that we were going to need to thank Him and so He gave us hearts and minds."


Now that is not sublime. It is simply stupid. But he goes on:

"The issue of thanksgiving is really central to the whole debate about the existence of God. On the one hand, if there is no God, there is no need to thank anyone. We are here as the result of a long chain of impersonal processes, grinding their way down to our brief moment in time. If there is a God, then every breath, every moment, every sight and sound, is a sheer unadulterated gift. And, as our mothers taught us, when someone gives you presents like this, the only appropriate response is to thank them."


First off, if I'm going to thank a god for fingernails to pick up a dime, then I'm also going to refuse to thank him for sending neuroblastoma to an 8-year old girl. I'm not going to thank him for that tornado that wiped out 200 homes and 30 lives. I'm not going to thank him for the hurricane that destroyed New Orleans. I'm not going to thank him for the stroke that took my father's life, or the senility that destroyed my mother way before her time. I'm not going to thank him for the assholes who call on his name and work to extend their theocratic rule over me and my country. I'm not going to thank him for sending us a faux cowboy to play at being a war president and arranging for a million or more people to die to satisfy his fantasy. I'm sure as hell not going to thank him for allowing Hitler and his minions to kill 11 million people in a racial assault on humanity itself!

Sorry, Mr. Wilson, if you're going to thank your god for the good things in life, or what you perceive to be the good things in life, you're must, at the least, acknowledge his complicity and culpability in the bad things humans experience!

And that puts your "sublimity" in another light!


Furthermore, all of this intense thankfulness is too much. Life may be a gift, but it does not follow logically that there must be a giver. Some gifts simply happen, like a rainbow. We know, scientifically, why there is a rainbow, and thus there's no longer a need for a rainbow maker. But we can still be thankful for a rainbow. In fact, we can live thankfully for many things, including our hearts and minds, without positing they come from some divinity "out there."

The problem with Mr. Wilson and others of his ilk is that they transfer their own peculiar prejudices and theologies upon those who believe differently than they do. They set up straw people and then try to knock them down. It simply isn't true that people who do not believe in Wilson's divine creature cannot live thankful lives. If he'd open his eyes and look around, he'd see that quite clearly. But then, his thesis would fall apart.

The "truth" of course would set him free. It might also destroy him. Long live the fantasy!

Furthermore, I thought "real" Christians didn't drink at all, much less 25-year-old scotch!

Happy Thanksgiving!