I made a new acquaintance today and during the course of our discussions, he spoke of his brother who’s suffering from cerebral palsy. He went on to say how he wasn’t ready for marriage yet because all his plans revolved around giving his brother a comfortable life. All very heartwarming, really. Then he gave the reasons behind his decisions and that set my mind running in different directions. He said that his brother was a gift from god…

…And what a crappy gift that was. Did he get damaged during freight? Did the courier drop him while unloading him from the truck? If your god is so powerful and good, why would he do that to the guy? Is it punishment for something he did before birth? Did he get it worse than the rest of us for Adam and Eve’s apple incident? Is it punishment for your parents? Why take it out on your brother? Is it punishment for you? Is it a sublime curse that you’d be in your late thirties and still be unmarried because of a brother with cerebral palsy? Oh… that’s right… it’s a “test of faith.” Same questions, what did you guys do to deserve this test?

It makes me shudder to think what would happen to the poor man if his family awaken to reason and realize that there really is no god. Would they then abandon him since he’s instead a gift of genetics? Would he be left to fend for himself because there’s no god that will be offended by the rejection of said gift?

It makes me wonder if his views on his brother would change had god not been part of the picture. From what I gather from his personality, it probably wouldn’t change a thing. So why bring god into it at all?

I think that aside from his obvious catholic upbringing, he was trying to provide me with the textbook Catholic comment to try and win me over. I doubt he would have mentioned the G-word had he known I was an atheist. Religion didn’t figure into our conversation at all outside of that, so I’m pretty sure he’s not a fundamentalist wacko.

The Philippine culture at work, I guess. He may even have been taken aback when I didn’t respond to his statement with an equally Catholic retort.

What drives people to take a perfectly rational conversation and completely ruin it by throwing god into the mix?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 12:09 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.