Genital Mutilation Is Proof of God's Infinite Love

     Game over!!! Send the competitors home, it’s all over except for the crying.  I just heard the greatest single argument for God ever!

     Was it some beautifully articulated version of the ontological argument?  No, I still insist that the greatest of all bunny rabbits is probably a myth.

     Was it that the cosmological argument finally overwhelmed me?  No again, for some reason “everything has to have a cause, therefore God has no cause,” still seems somehow flawed.

     Did the teleological argument finally convince me that I’m a watch?  No, despite one or two awesome acid trips where I was a watch being worn by the greatest of all bunny rabbits, I still think bottom up design (evolution) is a better explanation than top down design (God).

     “So Rhaco, Wtf was it?”

     Before I tell you all, I’m going to need to make sure that those with heart conditions have left the room.  Are they gone? Ok, good.  The argument that I heard today that “proves” the existence of God is.  “God must exist, because he told Abraham to lop off his foreskin in the middle of the desert with no anesthesia.”  

     That’s fucking right, I dare you to come up with a boilerplate atheist answer to that one, go ahead, Google it . . . I’ll wait.

     The argument was actually slightly more complicated than that, so in fairness let me back up.  The whole argument actually goes something like:

P₁ AIDS is becoming a huge problem in Africa and in the US among “certain communities” (code for the gays . . . it’s always their fault, even when it was the blacks I knew it was the gays).

P₂ Recent studies have shown that circumcision may reduce the chance of transmitting HIV during sex (only if you’re male, and exclusively a top, but I’m going to let that go for now).

P₃ There is no way a bunch of dessert dwelling, sheep fucking, camel jockeys could have preconceived HIV and AIDS, much less a treatment for it. (Colorful language – mine, on a side note, I love when arguments start by denigrating the knowledge of the people who wrote your holy book “these people were a bunch of clods, no way they wrote this all by themselves, God must have helped”)

P₄ Because of the reasons in P₃ they must have received this knowledge from some outside source.

P₅ The only possible outside source for said information is God.

\ God must exist.

     I know I have one or two philosophers (by philosopher, I mean the type with the degree in philosophy, not the Tommy Chong “their called fingers but I’ve never seen ‘em fing,” type of philosopher) who read my blog, so they should let me know if I laid that out right.

     Despite the colorful specifics, this is actually a really common argument for the existence of God, claiming that a holy book claims anachronistic knowledge, so God must have been involved.  For the sake of conciseness I’ll only be dealing with the circumcision claim today.

     First off, if this is really Gods way of showing his existence, why not foretell the internal combustion engine, or have a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem on the dedication page of the bible?  I guarantee you, if you show me a bible with the formulas governing quantum tunneling somewhere in it, I’ll convert tomorrow.  But, lucking into one set of instructions that might help solve a social crisis 6000 years later . . . I’m not sure that constitutes “proof.”

     Secondly, according to the CDC, God’s form of “prevention” of transmission of HIV reduces transmission rates from women to men by about 40-60% depending on your study, and by 0% from men to women.  Meaning, God’s plan spans the range between half as good to completely useless in comparison with a latex condom depending on your gender.  What an all powerful deity he must be. 

     Third, this argument requires there be no other conceivable reason for a desert dwelling (i.e. lack of water, i.e. hard to clean yourself) people to promote circumcision.  I’m going to let you all do the math on that one.

     Fourth, God has supposedly been asking us to “nip the tip,” for 6000ish years.  Surely, he could have sent a registered letter in the 1970’s to Studio 54 and saved a lot of turtle necks over the years (Bonus points to any of my readers who are willing to do a back of the envelope calculation on the number/ tonnage of foreskins that would have represented).

     Fifth, even if we stipulate that this is a piece of scientific knowledge the bible got right, it gets a huge number of things wrong.  For instance, illumination of the moon, the processes governing photosynthesis, the lack of evolution, claiming that all animals started out as herbivores, and I’m not even going for the low hanging fruit of the ark.  This is known as shot-gunning, if you say enough BS, some of it is bound to be right. It is way more consistent with a group of people lacking scientific knowledge trying to explain their world, than with an omniscient deity being consistently vague and incorrect.

     Sixth, we have to assume a God who sees HIV coming thousands of years before the first human case, and instead of stopping it, or warning humans, he goes on a penile mutilating rampage.  Clearly if the man exists he isn’t a natural born problem solver.  (God Is a Twelve Year Old Boy with Asperger's)  And, just as an aside, I’m sick of people giving god credit for saving us from natural disasters that (if he exists) he is responsible for.  If I went on a shooting spree and decided not to kill a few specific people, I’m not a good guy for sparing a few innocent people; I’m a dick for leaving the house.

     Seventh, if I were a creationist, I would keep HIV out of all of my arguments.  One of the biggest reasons it has been so difficult to come up with an effective vaccine against HIV is because it mutates, regularly adapting to anything we throw at it.  That sure as hell sounds like evolution based on selective pressures to me.

     Eighth, HIV is only a problem if one assumes that people are violating that whole “no sex before marriage, and don’t screw around on your spouse,” system he has in place.  This form of prevention would exclusively benefit those who weren’t following God’s laws . . . interesting seeing how many conservatives think that HIV is God’s punishment for being gay (or black).

     There are other problems with this argument, but I just felt like highlighting a few problems with a not so average “claim to scientific knowledge” argument for God, plus I gotta take the Newf on a walk before it’s 80 out.  If anyone wants to take a swing at one of the problems that I missed you are more than welcome.  Or, if you want to rip me a new one for my lack of faith that genital mutilation proves God’s existence DO IT IN THE FREAKING COMMENTS SECTION.