I’m the crazy one? Hardly. Anyone who claims that a moving tree is less plausible than Christianity is a fool, a liar, or a Christian. No honest, well informed atheist would say that. In fact, very few Christians would say that either. By and large, only someone being flippantly contrarian or a Christian apologist would say such a thing. Christianity is full of hundreds of ordinarily implausible events, such as contradictions with historical events, extremely implausible events, such as contradictions to basic scientific facts, outright claims of miraculous deeds by saints, messengers, messiahs, and prophets alike, and is crowned with a logically impossible sky king. Moving trees are only a single unlikely and bizarre event. Christianity is a litany of the unlikely, the bizarre, the freakish, the impossible, and the appallingly horrific.
Was there a Roman census that required Joseph to travel back to his place of birth during the reign of King Herod? No. King Herod’s reign had ended six years before the alleged census, and there is no record of ever requiring people to travel dozens or even hundreds of miles back to their birthplaces simply to be counted. Did King Herod slay all the male infants in Bethlehem? Oddly, the historical record is strangely silent on this mass infanticide by a wildly unpopular monarch with no shortage of bold critics. Did Mary become pregnant while a virgin, a belief that is the cornerstone of the goddess-in-all-but-name “the Virgin Mary?” No. This entire belief is based on an unfortunate mistranslation. Was Jesus born in the winter, an event we celebrate annually on the 25th of December? No. Among other things, Israeli and Palestinian shepherds, to this day, do not keep their flocks outdoors during the winter. These are just a few of the ordinary historical inaccuracies that compose Christian belief, but granted they are less implausible than moving trees, which defy science.
Science, however, is not kind to the miracles that compose Christian belief. Is there any way for the sun to have stopped in the sky to prolong yet another pointless battle between barbarous tribes? No. Either the Earth would have had to abruptly stop rotating, and then suddenly restarted, or the sun would have had to move from its position and rotate about the Earth, which would be even more disastrous for the rest of the solar system. Was the world ever flooded all over during human history for a period of over one year, a time period given two mutually contradictory numbers? No. Ask any geologist, biologist, chemist, physicist or sane human being about this and they could point out numerous reasons why this is impossible, not the least of which are the continued existence of fresh and salt water fish, the mystery of the appearance and disappearance of all that water, and the continued existence of several fragile and ancient trees over 10,000 years old. Did Jesus resurrect Lazarus, a man who had been so long that he reeked of decay? Body tissues decayed in a hot environment for three days are useless even to modern medical technicians for the comparatively simply purposes of implantation, and no one has ever been resurrected from such advanced mortification. Did Jesus miraculously float away to Heaven after bodily resurrecting himself and walking out of his tomb? Again, no. However, considering the four approved gospels each tell amazingly different tales of the events of that particular weekend, the onus is on Christians to at least tell a consistent story before we examine it on its merits.
Above all of the confusing, impossible and irrational claims of Christianity is the god who is as savage and vain as he is impossible. He is omnipotent, until we ask why he will not cure amputees or raise up the unjustly slain. He is omniscient, until he goes looking for Adam and Eve, or judges us based on our choices which were in doubt. He is good, until we consider that he punishes people forever for the small crimes of their short lives and allows all manner of horrible atrocities, both of omission and commission to be perpetrated in his creation. As it is inarguable that evil exists, god cannot possibly be good, omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet he is the very raison d'etre of Christianity, a revolutionary Jewish splinter sect. He slaughtered his only son, who was also himself, to force his omniscient self to forgive only some of us for crimes committed by ancestors who themselves were deceived. He allows evil, it is argued, because either he cannot make a world with free will absent of evil, a curious restriction on the power of an omnipotent being, or he allows it because it makes us better, again ignoring that he might have done a better job. Every impossible event and amoral act in the Bible is there because, allegedly, god caused it or allowed it through inaction. This monstrous creature is allegedly loving and wants us all be happy. This impossible figment is invoked at every opportunity by the faithful to prop up their beliefs.
Perhaps you, “TheAtheist,” Ceo, Dath Rotor and others, find the constancy of invoking an impossible god, with all his scriptural and dogmatic accouterments more plausible than the unlikely and rumored event of an ambulant tree? Shifting soil, hoaxsters, pranksters, or a strong wind could move a tree. Even if the entire moving tree story is a lie, only an idiot, a liar or a Christian would claim that is less implausible than all of Christianity. Believers in Christianity wear their belief in these unlikely and impossible events as a badge of pride, claiming that their virtuous faith derives from being so childish as to accept wild stories at face value. Or, Christians arbitrarily choose to believe in the impossible god and a few other select tenets, and discard the rest without rhyme or reason. The Resurrection? Plausible! The flood? Balderdash! There is no massive doctrine or scripture built around the walking tree. By weight of strangeness and impossibility alone, Christianity dwarfs rumors of flying pigs and invisible unicorns. Only liars, fools and believers can claim otherwise.
