Daily Kos :: The First Diary of a Stark Raving Atheist Liberal:
"The story of Abraham taught a deeper lesson then the one commonly portrayed. God's absurd command that Abraham commit infanticide flies in the face of human instinct and basic goodness. Submitting to God's celestial law in defiance of reason, out of a dread of damnation, Abraham botched the test. If God's choosing alone renders an action good, then what is there to impede God from choosing torture and massacre? Has he not already set the standard in myriad Old Testament stories of gratuitous slaughter and genocide?
By rights, we should be dismissing such wanton hypocrisy out of turn, relegating these ideological zealots to society's fringes, where snake handlers and Apocalypse junkies rightfully belong. Yet, their numbers are legion, becoming increasingly emboldened as their ideological leaders beat the Moral Drums of War in an unholy circle-jerk with their neo-conservative puppet masters. Given free reign, this crazed, National-Supremacist juggernaut would gleefully raze the social progress of decades, leaving corpses, orphans, totalitarianism and desolation in its wake. Eerily, such collusion between the Christian Right and the neo-con Warlord-Thugs parallels the relationship between the German Protestant Church and the Nazi machine.
Taking this parallel the next logical step, will our democratic experiment withstand the Horde's rage once their feckless illusions of Corporate Christian conquest crash down around their combat boots? Does history not forewarn that their inevitable humiliation will result in a wild-eyed and fascist turning inward? Will the last thing we atheists, intellectuals, liberals, progressives, socialists, Muslims, Jews, artists and faggots see be their brown shirts and pitchforks undulating through the flames of our executions? Perhaps. But would the pain of being burnt alive not pale in comparison to the anguish felt by a young, blood-spattered Iraqi child, whose life and family has been inexorably smashed by the chaos of empire, and whose reddened arms will forever reach out and ask us to answer the simplest question, "Why?"Would not such pain be deserved, if we failed to demand the answers on her behalf?
This is no dream. Our leaders have unleashed our martial might upon the world under the crimson banner of Yahweh...the very same God whose sight, love and power are ostensibly boundless. If he is blind to our imperial exploits, if he sanctions our belligerence, and if he is incapable of intervening on behalf of those we conquer, then he has none of these qualities. Blind-faith may reconcile this disparity, but a moral person would not seek such a squaring-off of fact and faith. It is impossible to claim the moral high ground while simultaneously professing a faith in this God.
Although I abhor the plague of fundamentalism sweeping through our country, this atheist has become convinced of two things. First, that the end is truly nigh; and second, that evil does exist.... "
