God's guilt.

My new obsession is reading Ray Comfort's blog, because I am addicted to watching train wrecks of logic. But I found myself agreeing with Ray on one point. God is not guilty of murder.

I would not find God guilty of murder in the case of Noah's flood. According to the Bible, God kills everyone in a giant flood, knowing full well in advance that it would not rid the world of wickedness. Women, children and old men all drowned. But God isn't guilt, because the flood never happened. There is no evidence of the crime.

Also God isn't guilty of killing all of the first born in all of Egypt, when nearly all of the first borns came from families that had no authority to release the Israelites, because there is no proof that it happened.

And in Leviticus 10:1-6, when God kills Aaron's two sons, and then commands Aaron not to morn or else 'Yahweh's wrath will come upon the whole community.' Again, there is no proof that any of these people are real.

Or when in Joshua 7:24 when the Israelites stone Achan's sons and daughters because their father had contraband. God can not be found at fault, because we don't have hard evidence that He ordered the hit.

Or the countless genocides God seems to order in the old testament should not be held against Him. I could say that the boogey-man made me kill all of those people, but would that make the boogey-man guilty of murder?

Or the countless people who have been executed in the name of God for reasons as varied as not being a virgin, to being a witch, to disobeying a man, and to simply having a slightly different notion of who Jesus was. God's followers are guilty and not God himself.

God's innocence rests solely on His non-existence. To call God a murderer is as inane as calling Jason from the Friday the 13th movies series a murderer.

But if He is real, then He has a lot to answer for. For every starving child, He could poof a loaf of bread into existence. For every gun fired in anger, He could turn the bullet into a butterfly. He could quell earthquakes and dispatch hurricanes with a single thought. But He doesn't. It may not be murder, but it is surely negligent homicide.