Dear God

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XTC - Dear God (1986)

Dear God, hope you get the letter and
I pray you can make it better down here
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving on their feet
Cause they don't get enough to eat from God
I can't believe in you

Dear God, sorry to disturb you but
I feel that I should be heard loud and clear
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image
See them fighting in the street
Cause they can't make opinions meet about God
I can't believe in you
Did you make disease and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!

Dear God don't know if you noticed but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain't, and so do you
I can't believe in
I don't believe
I won't believe in heaven or hell
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well
No pearly gates, no thorny crown
You're always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it's the same the whole world round
The hurt I see helps to compound
The Father, son and holy ghost
Is just somebody's unholy hoax
And if you're up there you'll perceive
That my heart's here upon my sleeve
If there's one thing I don't believe in
It's you

[Radio stations in the U.S. received bomb threats for playing this record.]

@fmf said
XTC - Dear God (1986)

Actually, the sentiment expressed in this song does not have much to do with my loss of faith and my 'arrival' at agnostic atheism [or implicit atheism]; it's expressing a point of view more akin to Ghost of a Duke's explicit atheism. Having said that, it's a great song and its lyrics are well-crafted and thought-provoking.

@fmf said
Radio stations in the U.S. received bomb threats for playing this record.

What's the 'Christian psychology' underpinning this behaviour?

@fmf said
my implicit atheism; Ghost of a Duke's explicit atheism.

Do theists perceive implicit atheism and explicit atheism differently?

@fmf said
Dear god don't know if you noticed but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain't, and so do you

This part of the lyric could almost be interpreted as being deist.

@fmf said
What's the 'Christian psychology' underpinning this behaviour?

I'm gonna guess you meant 'Christian' psychology.

Because that behavior might be from those who claim to be Christian without actually demonstrating Christian principles.

I know it doesn't make any difference to you, but it does to me.

@suzianne said
Because that behavior might be from those who claim to be Christian without actually demonstrating Christian principles.

There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians burnt other people who claimed to be Christians at the stake.

There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians had slaves.

There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians condoned the execution of homosexuals and atheists.

A lot of this was rooted firmly in the Bible and was, whether your C21st self likes it or not, rooted in Biblical principle. And it went on for centuries.

So if one is going to wave a hand and dismiss all these countless people over generations as being merely people "who claim to be Christian", then isn't that little more than a No True Scotsman logical fallacy writ large?

If God real, why bad thing happen? Lol

@philokalia said
If God real, why bad thing happen? Lol

Yes. It's not an atheistic 'objection' that I subscribe to.

@philokalia said
If God real, why bad thing happen? Lol

OK, but it's just as lame ["Lol" as you put it] as 'God is real because all the good things are proof of Him triumphing over Satan'.

@fmf said
There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians burnt other people who claimed to be Christians at the stake.

There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians had slaves.

There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians condoned the execution of homosexuals and atheists.

A lot of this was rooted firmly in the Bible and was, whether your C21 ...[text shortened]... im to be Christian", then isn't that little more than a No True Scotsman logical fallacy writ large?

No. As I've said in the past, Jesus himself differentiated between those who say and those who do.

Those who only say, yet do not do, have no refuge in "Biblical Principle". What these modern-day pharisees claim is "Biblical Principle" is not the principles of Jesus.

@suzianne said
As I've said in the past, Jesus himself differentiated between those who say and those who do.

And yet you spend a lot of your time here declaring who is and who isn't a Christian. Republican voters mostly cannot be Christians, according to you, while practising homosexuals and abortionists apparently can be. Why is that?

Now, be mindful of the fact I am not critiquing your political views here.

@suzianne said
What these modern-day pharisees claim is "Biblical Principle" is not the principles of Jesus.

Talking of the "modern day", do you think that people who identified as Christians down through the centuries mostly were not really Christians because their principles had not yet 'evolved' enough for them to hold similar political views to the ones you hold now in the C21st?

@fmf said
There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians burnt other people who claimed to be Christians at the stake.

There was a time when people who claimed to be Christians had slaves.

Suzianne,

According to your definition, did a genuine Christian ever burn alive a person who claimed to be Christian?

According to your definition, did a genuine Christian ever own a slave as chattel in, say, the C17th, C18th or C19th?

Poor God. It used to be so easy for him. If he kept the tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis away, people accepted that as proof that he loved them.

Now they surged from 1 to 7 billion people in a mere 100 years; they conquered most of the plagues that used to kill large swaths of them, and they're still not happy. Now, it is that no one must suffer, period. Imagine having to manage all that!

7 billion people, with a talent for fixating on all of the drawbacks that life has to offer, and he's supposed to make it all better, all the time, for all of them.

Can even omnipotence manage such a hopeless task?