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Logic does not add up

Ah yes, the “he said, he said” thing (shes really didn’t get much of a say at the time). Well, I can play that for just a moment. Let’s stick with the author of the U.S. Constitution, which, again, lacks any mention of god, bible, Jesus or Christianity in a Preamble, 7 Articles or 27 Amendments and is our founding document. James Madison wrote, “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect …” to William Bradford on April 1, 1771. Madison also wrote, “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. …”

But enough of that. We could go through every member of the founding generation and their prolific writings and argue back and forth for years what these predominately Deist (belief in an aloof god who set things in motion and essentially walked away) were trying to wrestle with in forming a democratic republic free of the rule of the British monarch.

I find it interesting that Mr. Kessinger says he does not “trust the government” enough to wish a Christian Theocracy yet places his trust in a deity created by primitive societies from the Middle and Near East. Mr. Kessinger asks us to believe that this supposedly omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being was simply passing righteous judgment, his alleged right as creator, when he had slaughtered the firstborn of Egypt for the acts of a Pharaoh over which they had no control. This same being apparently displayed this creator authority when he flooded the world (a rudimentary understanding of geological history shows this never happened), wiping clean his supposedly inerrant slate to start anew with a select few. And we are to worship and adore this? The Bible’s endless calls to worship and adore this indicate a quite narcissistic being.

I end this letter with a quote that often ends such discussions. Epicurus, the ancient Greek Philosopher, famously wrote, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Post note: We at Mid-Ohio Valley Atheists and Humanists do not ask for blind adherence orthodoxy laid down by comparatively ignorant, amoral and unethical societies (i.e. patriarchal slave-holding societies). We welcome all without asking you to justify your intrinsic characteristics like sexual orientation and gender identity, for example.

Eric Engle

Parkersburg

VP of Records and Comms for MOV Atheists and Humanists, and Assistant State Director of American Atheists for WV

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