CREATIONISM DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T EAT PORK

Christians have framed the religious argument as one of creationism versus science. They point to the increasing confusion in science and the weirdness of quantum theory, as opposed to the clear observation that this complex universe couldn’t have created itself.

So for the sake of argument, let’s accept that the universe was created.

First question, by whom or by what? Christians assume that God is not only human, but also a white male, and that He lives in the sky. He is old and has a white beard. (Old? Like billions of years old?) That by no means follows from the acceptance of creationism itself. The universe might have been created by a committee. If by one entity, I prefer to call God ‘It’.

Why does God have a white beard and long hair, and why must ‘He’ wear a robe?

Second assumption: God must have had a purpose in creating the universe. That doesn’t follow, either. Maybe It was only playing around, or maybe It had created thousands of other universes, of which our own was just a flawed model to be abandoned for a better model.

Third assumption: humans hold a special place in God’s plan. That doesn’t follow. We have language, but all sorts of critters have special abilities. Octopuses and dolphins and other oceanic creatures that we know little about have some amazing powers. Even bees can see wavelengths of light that we cannot sense. To say that God gave Man “dominion over the beasts” is arrogant in the extreme.

Fourth assumption: Man can know and understand God’s plan. Man (or at least some men, like priests or prophets) can communicate with God and receive instructions as to what Man is supposed to do, such as declare war on other countries who worship the wrong gods, or enslave peoples with dark skin.
 

Fifth assumption: God is good. God has a moral dimension. That does not follow. Maybe God is evil and Its plan is to create as much pain and suffering as possible. After witnessing pain, cruelty, and suffering, we might think that an evil God is a pretty reasonable assumption. “Why did He lose…six million Jews?”
 

Sixth assumption: God intervenes in Its creation. It creates earthquakes and tsunamis that kill thousands of people. In fact, people can even ask God to intervene, to the point where two opposing football teams each have a ‘team prayer’ asking God to help them annihilate the other team. But as the Doors once said, “You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.”

And finally, God has told some people not to eat ‘unclean’ pork (Did God create pigs?), while to others It has said not to eat beef, or hundreds of other taboos that vary widely from religion to religion. All these petty rules are believed to stem from the original observation that the universe is an amazing thing, and peoples have leapt to conclusion after conclusion after conclusion — all non sequiturs — that have nothing to do with the original creationism. How could this happen?