Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Scripture and Ways of Controlling Illness

Well, I've been suffering through a flu for the past few days.

It calls to mind what I consider one of the strongest pieces of evidence that religious scriptures are the work of mortal and ignorant humans, and not the word of a loving and all-knowing God.

A simple set of commandments that would have prevented huge amounts of unnecessary suffering.

Thou shalt boil a container of water for 30 minutes before drinking there from.

Thou shalt wash thy hands before preparing foods or when leaving or entering into the presence of somebody who suffers from disease.

Thou shalt thoroughly clean thy dishes and the locations on which thou prepares thy food with water that has been as hot as thou can stand.

Ah, but all of these have to do with the killing of bacteria . . . which, though an all-knowing and all-loving God may have created, no human could have known about unless the all-knowing God were to tell him about such things.

Yet, the Gods seemed to be as ignorant of these things as the people were. Perhaps, this is because a person who authors fiction cannot, in fact, create a character that is smarter than himself.

6 comments:

NAL said...

Thou shalt cover thy nose and mouth when sneezing or coughing.

Alonzo Fyfe said...

NAL

Yep, I thought of that after I had posted and gone back to work. I was going to edit it in.

But, yeah, if we are looking for a theory that best explains the available evidence, then that theory says that the authors of scripture knew nothing about bacteria and disease. That's the theory I'm going with.

dbonfitto said...

Just think of what a forward-thinking deity could have done by salting a few "Thou Shalts" into those classy rhyming condom slogans.

"Thou shalt not be a fool, thou shalt wrap thy tool."

How about that in 15' high letters on the side of a mountain? In a smaller font on a foothill: "Sorry about making the clap in the first place, folks."

curious cuber said...

Thou shalt not use hand sanitizer so as to create more resilient bacteria that I must banish-ed.

Morgan said...

Well, that's not entirely true. An author can create a fictional character smarter than himself, just not more knowledgeable.

Which doesn't detract from your actual point at all, I'm just a massive pedant.

Anonymous said...

For all the helpful health advice that Yahweh could have given, he chose to tell us to chop the tip of our dicks off.

He was having a joke, I think.