Let's talk about fairy stories!

Left: "Adam and Eve" - a colorful fable for elementary school children, but should grown men and women be believing these things? Maybe they need to go back to kindergarten!



Okay, by "fairy stories" I mean any accounts, purported revelations, passages in books (including Grimm's Fairy Tales, or Mother Goose) that leave one pop-eyed in incredulity as they weave narratives that only a psycho or dumb child would buy. Most intelligent people, for example, when they read Grimm's Fairy Tales, interpret them as metaphors or simple morality tales - not literal accounts!

Yet Bible beaters seem to believe because their favorite fairy tales appear in some book that has been endowed with special dispensations.....their "HOLE-Y Bible" - that it must be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

Now, don't get me wrong here! When I was a young, impressionable (and gullible) child in Sister Vivena' first grade at St. Leo School in Milwaukee, I was definitely fascinated by the tall tales weaved by the delirious ancient Jews - mainly in the Old Testament. "Adam and Eve" was a favorite, because it always seemed to explain why the world was not so good now: why vaccinations hurt like hell, why Sister gave so much homework, why mom and dad sometimes fought, why you every now and then skinned your knee falling off a bike, or why your little 8-year old cousin had to die horribly from Leukemia.

Whenever I contemplated these large and small arrows of misfortune, I hearkened back to that damned Adam and Eve - eating that blasted apple because a talking snake (errr....serpent) conned them into it. WHY oh WHY did those two dumb asses have to ruin it for the rest of us? WHY couldn't they just have said 'NO!'

Then, two years later, by the time I took my first IQ test at St. Sebastian school, I realized those were all just tall tales, embellished fairy stories that in no way could have been real. Why? Because there never was any "perfect" place or "Garden of Eden" on Earth, nor talking snakes! Snakes have never talked - none of the 15o or so I've ever handled or caught (including boas and pythons), and they aren't about to be possessed by any spirits...."Satan" or any others.

In the first year of high school, my new found insights were confirmed as we studied ancient history. Going all the way back to cave man era and beyond, there were only wars, outrages and vicissitudes, never any harmony. But the ancient Jews babbling in Genesis probably found some old Babylonian account of a "first couple" and just copied it - then added to it - because it sounded cool. But I'll bet even they didn't expect 21st century humans to take their fables seriously!

There's a reason the primitive-minded, reason and logic deficient believers grasp these old stories: because it relieves them of having to account for the absence of any positive (intercessionary) action of their god in the world. If they can fob it off on ol' Adam and Eve, they can wash their hands by blaming humanity for a fictional "fall" - forgetting that humanity have always been a form of risen apes, not fallen higher beings or near angels.

It is amazing the fundagelicals still abide by and teach this crap, where at least the Catholics have the good sense to inform their charges (in Catechism classes) it is all metaphor, not to be taken literally.

Will fundies ever deliver on theodicy? No, it's easier to either dredge up Genesis tales or blame atheists for being too "proud" to accept the existence of a god they can't even begin to explain. Fundies are so hapless, pathetic and clueless that they even refuse to take responsibility for the basic Leibniz ontological question: WHY is there something rather than nothing? (They try to foist this onto atheists, despite the fact THEY are the ones claiming a "creator" and hence ought to be able to reason as to why It started the whole show off instead of leaving things by itself)

But intelligent minds are left pondering the Leibniz conundrum of: WHY must there be something as opposed to nothing?

If "nothing" be the simpler state, in which an invisible deity could still exist as "spirit" then why "create" a universe? Especially one which would be fraught with violence, despair, "sin" and all the rest. Also one which an ominiscient deity would have to know (IF it was judgmental) that it would have to condemn billions before he even created them. This itself makes the act of creation an act of violence against those created- who would not be able (for whatever reason, including where born) to live up to its standards.)

Thus, we would have to question on an a fortiori basis any judgmental deity that created the cosmos. It could not have good will at its core, since it would know its act would condemn billions it would have to know about before it even began. Hence, it would be a pre-meditative sadist!

Leibniz himself used two premises:

1) the principle of sufficient reason, and

2) an a priori argument from simplicity

for the presupposition that - spontaneously - the universe feature nothing contingent at all, because the Null universe (nothingness) is the most natural of all.

As he put it:

"the great principle of sufficient reason holds that nothing takes place without sufficient reason...a reason (or condition) to determine why it is thus and not otherwise"

Thus, the principle having been laid down the first question one must ask is: Why is there something rather than nothing? (For `nothing' is simpler, easier and less problematic than something. NO need for pain, sacrifice, crucifixions, saviors, death, sin, horrors etc. so why create something that in effect destroys an already PERFECT world and Being? And note - it is the primordial state of nothingness that is the REAL "Eden" here - because in it - with only potential humanity - no one would have to die, go to Hell, suffer etc) Let us also bear in mind that if an all perfect Being already existed, it would have no need to create at all. It would be complete, perfect, self-sufficient and non-contingent.

In effect, by creating it really adds something (universe) to itself - so it cannot be "infinite" in the true sense, unless it and the universe are one and the same. Worse, it adds imperfection to itself so it is no longer perfect. (If one argues the universe is a separate creation from the deity, then one is saying the deity is not infinite)

Why perform an act of creation that renders it imperfect?(Since if "omniscient" or assigned such attribute, it would have had to know before all time that it would create those it would later have to destroy (assuming the afterlife construct of "Hell"). This very foreknowledge of its own future act of massive destruction - via "Hell" - shows it is a monster, not to be trusted. It committed pre-meditated and cruel violence by creating a universe in which it already knew exactly who it would damn!

And who gets the rap? Why poor little humanity via the fictional fable of "Adam and Eve"! Blame the humans, who had neither the power nor opportunity to create, construct, initiate or confect a vicious and violent world in which evil - both natural and human - reigned from the start!

Leibniz solved his conundrum by reverting to the Null hypothesis: that there ought to be nothing rather than something. But the external evidence points to something, and hence this 'something' is unexpected from the Principle of sufficient reason. Therefore, the actual existence of this something cries out for an explanation. NOT from atheists, but from believers - since THEY posit the CREATOR!

Hence, it is the job of the deity believer to explain why there is this putative product - designed and manufactured by his "designer - Creator" God. This also underscores his principle of sufficient reason to account for why we have something rather than nothing. Or to put it another way:Why wasn't `nothing' (no creation- or an ab initio perfect "Being") good enough for the creative force or deity?

Will we get serious answers? If the past is anything to go by, not bloody likely.

More probably we'll see more appeals to more fairy tales, or - when that exhausts- fundies blaming and scolding atheists for their own deficiency of mind. Evangelistas ought to get down on their knees and kiss the shoes of atheists every time they pass by. Without them, who would they have as their favorite scapegoats? Oh wait, they'd demonize some other group of fellow believers (e.g. Muslims, Catholics, Eckists) or project "Satan" onto them! But never, ever can we expect them to assume the intellectual responsibilities of adults! Why would they if they're so grounded in children's fairy tales? Heck, they can't even do a basic logic test, far less pass it!