Aimee Copeland and Flesh-Eating Disease

 

Aimee Copeland is a beautiful college co-ed who has developed a rare condition called necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating disease in which the bacteria emit toxins that destroy muscle, fat, and skin tissue. She got it as a result of falling off a zip-line into a small river in Georgia and suffering a gash in her leg. The disease has ravaged her body. She has been battling kidney failure and other organ damage. So far, the doctors have had to amputate one leg and both hands. If the disease continues to spread, she could die. She has shown great bravery while faced with this horrible affliction.

Today her father reported that Aimee is able to breathe without the aid of a ventilator. He said, “I believe God is going to take care of the future." He went on to say, "I just thank God my daughter is alive." When he went to the bank he wound-up hugging everybody at the bank. He said, "Aimee has always been a hugging person, and in a really odd way, I believe that God is sharing Aimee's spirit through me. That's one of the things that has really kept me going."

There is still the possibility the Aimee will die of this unspeakably terrible disease. I wonder whether her father will be able to maintain his optimistic attitude if she does. She is now terribly disabled, missing one leg and two hands, but things could get worse. I hope she gets better.

I suppose that it is natural to thank God for any improvements in Aimee’s condition and to pray to God for to let her live. Belief in God provides a great amount of comfort for people like Mr. Copeland facing catastrophic tragedy. Yet, to me, it is sad that someone like Mr. Copeland goes on worshipping this mythical being called God even though God has allowed this heartbreaking misfortune to destroy the body, and perhaps the life of his daughter Aimee. Does God get credit for every good thing that happens to Aimee, but no blame for the bad things?

If there was a God, an omnipotent creator of the universe, he could not be good. The God worshipped by western religions is supposed to be infinitely good and loving. But any God that would permit a young, innocent girl to suffer with the horrors of necrotizing fasciitis disease, or one of the many other horrible afflictions, would have to be a monster of infinite sadism.

God cannot have it both ways. If he created all things, and if we are to thank him for every improvement in Aimee’s condition, we must condemn him for the horror she has already undergone. If we are to thank God for saving us from fires and tornadoes, we must condemn him for allowing human lives to be destroyed in such catastrophes. If we are to thank him for our daily bread, we must condemn him for world hunger and starvation. If God gets the credit, he also deserves the blame.

What if God does not do bad things? What if they are done by the Devil? It makes no difference. If God is the creator of Heaven, Hell, and all things, he is the creator of Satan. If he is omnipotent and omniscient, but lets the Devil have free reign (See the Book of Job), he is as guilty as Satan. If God can answer Mr. Copeland’s prayer and let Aimee live, he can also prevent Aimee’s disease from happening. If there was a God, and he stood by and let this sweet innocent young woman suffer this torture, he would be unworthy of our worship. He would be a cruel monster.

God does not exist. He is a psychological crutch we use to help us in times of great sorrow. We never think rationally when we rely on God in times of trouble. If he really existed, and if he actually became involved in human life, we would never have the kind of tragedy being suffered by Aimee.

Good Friday--Celebrating A Human Sacrifice

Today is Good Friday, 2012. On this day Christians around the world commemorate the "sacrifice" of a man named Jesus. It is said that the Romans tortured him with whips, made him carry a heavy cross to the hill of Golgotha, and then nailed him to the cross and let him hang there until he died.

The central belief of Christianity is that Jesus was a human sacrifice for mankind. Somehow, Christians have accepted this teaching from an ancient, barbaric time, and still believe it today. They believe that Man committed something called “Original Sin” and that the only way he could achieve salvation from original and other sins was by means of a human sacrifice. They believe that the almighty and eternal God, who is a merciful, loving, and forgiving God, could be appeased only by this hideous bloody and grisly torture and lynching of a human being. Because an ordinary human sacrifice would not be sufficient, the Son of God had to come down to Earth to be the sacrificial victim. He had to be scourged, driven to Golgatha under the weight of the cross, nailed to the cross, pierced with a spear, and slowly suffocated until he bled to death. Crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised. Yet Christians believe that it must have been pleasing to God.

Human sacrifice was an integral part of much early worship of the gods. Today many religions still use an altar, but the first altars were used to sacrifice human and animal victims. References in literature to the sacrifice of human individuals harks back to the days when this was a routine and deeply reverent practice. In the story of the Trojan War, Agamemnon tells his wife to prepare his daughter for her marriage. He then takes her to the shore and sacrifices her to the gods in order to obtain favorable winds for his trip to Troy. You can be sure that the story is not pure whimsy. Human sacrifice was well known in ancient Greece, as it was in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Canaan, and Israel. At the time of Jesus, human sacrifice was a recent memory.

It is clear that back in the early history of the Israelites, human sacrifice was customary. Consider the stories of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22:1-19, Japhthah and his daughter in Judges 11:30-31, King Ahaz and his son in 2 Chronicles 28:3, and King Manasseh and his son in 2 Chronicles 33:6. Later in their history, the Israelites turned away from human sacrifice and declared it an abomination.
Nevertheless, the New Testament repeatedly refers to the idea that Jesus was a sacrifice for Mankind. For example, John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the World;” John 2:2, “He is propitiation for the sins of the world;” Matthew 20, “Á ransom for many;” Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins;” Hebrews 9:23-28,“Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many;” (See also Philippians 2:17, 4:18; Romans 12:1, 15:16; 1Peter 1:18-19, 2:5; Ephesians 1:7; and Titus 2:14).

The dogma that Jesus was crucified as a form of atonement for Man’s sins did not become established as a doctrine of the very early Church until the fourth century AD. Saint Augustine (354-430), who laid down many of the Church's doctrines, including the doctrine of atonement, said that man was doomed to Hell until Jesus redeemed him. He regarded Jesus’ sacrifice “Not as payment of a debt due to God, but as an act of justice to the Devil in discharge of his fair and lawful claims.”

Like many other aspects of Christianity, the idea of propitiating god with a human sacrifice, and even having the god himself be the sacrificial victim, was not new when the Church dreamed up this explanation of Jesus’ crucifixion. It was borrowed from old pagan myths. I have mentioned the human sacrifices carried out by early Israelites. The Canaanites sacrificed to the gods, and the prophets inveighed against the sacrificing of Canaanite children to Moloch (See Samuel 17:17; Jeremiah 7:31; Ezekiel 16:20, 20:26).

In Egypt, the priests performed human sacrifice when the Pharaoh died. The Pharaoh was believed to be a god. His family and servants were buried alive with him. Eventually the priests started substituting animals, dolls and other forms of art for living victims. In ancient Mesopotamia archeologists have found the tombs of kings with entire households that were buried alive when the king was interred.

In India, it was the custom to perform human sacrifice in order to guarantee a good harvest and appease the gods. The victim was believed to be the god sacrificing himself, in the form of a man, to himself as a god. The ancient Khonds of India believed that their sacrificial victim died for all mankind and became a god.

The ancient Greeks sacrificed a criminal at Rhodes after putting him in royal robes. They did this in memory of the sacrifice by Kronos of his “Only begotten Son.” Themistocles sacrificed Persian youths to Dionysus.

Now here we are in the 21st Century, still believing in gods and still believing that this almighty being we call God could be appeased only by this inhuman sacrifice of Jesus. We are supposed to worship this God because by this sacrifice he enabled us to be saved from the punishment we are due on account of a sin committed--not by us--but by our earliest ancestors. We are supposed to believe in this God because he performed the circus trick of rising from the dead. We are supposed to love this god because he cured a few sick people while letting the great mass of men go on suffering throughout history. We are supposed to adore this god even though he allowed the unimaginable holocaust of World War II, even though he allows millions of humans to die each year of horrible diseases, even though he allows millions of people each year to suffer and die in tornados, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Well, thanks God. Thanks for nothing.