I’m afraid I must decline your invitation to exhibit the insincere expression of remorse you request.

The problem, I hope you understand, is that I respect you as a human being too much for me to respect your God. I have a hard time understanding why you respect this God yourself if you have any sense of dignity for yourself or, perhaps more importantly, for the human race in general.

To illustrate — Explain this: Why would anyone who has a heart for humanity worship a God who supposedly drowned most of the humanity He had made (with all their associated five sensory experiences and emotions) in a worldwide flood simply because He thought they weren’t respecting Him? How on earth is drowning the world — complete with men, women, and children –a way to treat humanity that deserves respect?

My own answer is that I fail to see how that act deserves anything but the harshest insults. Even if this God were real, I prefer to think I’d not give Him creedence as I saw men, women, and children choking in the rain and waves. Could you imagine what the sight would have been like? I mean, have you ever nearly drowned? It is actually, if you are unaware, a thoroughly horrifying experience. Having nearly drowned before myself, I can tell you that the most noble thing I could have possibly done in that situation if I had the least bit of empathy is not praise your God, but curse Him with all the poetic vulgarity I could muster. A “Goddamn” would be fairly mild compared to the insults such wholesale slaughter would deserve, in my humble estimation. With all due respect, it would be somewhat difficult to honor the stance of someone who not only refused to insult this being, but decided to praise Him, as you claim to do. It is difficult to imagine being heartless enough to serve such cruelty. What does it feel like, I wonder? What does it do to your heart?

I certainly do not think I would have followed this God’s code for war conduct either. Had Moses, Joshua, Saul, or David presented me with a battle plan from God to slaughter a city of men, women, children and infants, I would have cursed their God and, most likely, the men of God who perpetuated the blood-torn brutality due to blind allegiance and, possibly, bloodlust. To be frank, I consider an insult in such a situation the least respect human lives are due. I would not lace my sandals and slash open pregnant women’s bellies like a so-called soldiers of God. I would not bury my sword in children or any civilian. Even if this God did exist, I would like to think that I would hold fast and deny, even to the point of perishing myself, that this God remotely deserved anything other than the most insulting epithets one could muster. Saying to this God “Goddamn” would almost feel, honestly, as if it were not quite insulting enough.

I realize you may be thinking, “Oh, but that’s the Old Testament.” But this is the same God, supposedly, that you demand I show respect to. I have some trouble determining why this God would be worth any praise or respect whatsoever. A God who has commanded genocide and stands by that position is not anyone I would ever want to worship, regardless of which pages of your book He happens to be mentioned in. Neither do I think a God who would insult the beautiful intimate relationship two men can share with stoning. I would also not respect a God who remotely thought that a woman who was raped should probably marry her rapist, regardless of the surrounding cultural opinion on the subject.

Honestly, the very notion of your request that I take back my “Goddamn” because it supposedly insults God seems a bit out of propriety’s place. It is I who should feel insulted on behalf of humanity for any semblance of respect you give such an abysmal excuse for a supposed deity.

And no, the fact that you claim these things are the fault of human sin does nothing to absolve God of the issue. God made the whole mess, however you decide to slice and dice the creation story(ies) in the first few chapters of Genesis, from the ground up. And please, none of this nonsense about free will. We both know that God created free will so, like the gambler when he flips a coin, I see Him as responsible for the results of that creation just like He’s responsible for everything else. All the bellowing demands that I worship Him as set apart from His creation are nonsense to my ears. It was all His doing, if He existed, so it would be fully His fault.

At any rate, my objections only become more grave when we turn to the New Testament. At least in the Old Testament, this God had some rules to be followed. In the New Testament, whether or not you are cast forever in its new innovation of hell depends not on what you do right or wrong in your life, so much as it depends on your ability to believe a rather ridiculous fact. According to most of its proponents, to avoid going to hell for eternity — which is everlasting torment — I would have to believe that the entirety of humanity was fundamentally sinful. That none of us deserve to be in the presence of your God. That none of us deserve to really live. And in order for us to remotely breath the earth’s air with any semblance of dignity, we have to give up the precious, valuable lives we were born with and give them away to your concept of God.

And during the inquisitions, although I am unsure of my own fortitude, in lapses into my most optimistic frame of mind I tend to think that the neither the rack, nor the stake, nor any torture device known to man would have ended my respectable determination to curse this supposed God who was then, supposedly, in favor of it and countless other atrocities. I would respect anyone who did the same, I believe.

I suppose I could continue, but suffice it to say that I insistently decline to erase my insult to any God that would demand I declare humanity morally bankrupt. It is baffling, furthermore, if you think that, somehow, the fact that this God supposedly gives me grace after He has declared that I am unfit for anything except for an eternity in torment is a feature of your theology that I should respect. No, I do not respect any theology that declares humanity is fundamentally morally bankrupt insofar as it fails to give the entirety of its vitality to a dead phantom.

I should say something further. I am somewhat appalled and profoundly insulted myself, and on behalf of the humanity my heart values, that you think a God who is of the opinion that myself and my fellow human primates deserve eternity in hell deserves the remotest semblance of deference, let alone worship. And it deeply concerns me, sincerely, to see you praise this being with a smile on your face. It is somewhat appalling, to put it mildly.

So, that said, I hope you understand when I say that I think the most fitting courtesy I could give to the sadistic imaginary friend of you have is the same courtesy your book, and you, indicate that He will give me if I refuse to agree with His deeply disturbing interaction and position on the humanity that He himself supposedly made. According to the book of Revelation, and most Christians, as an atheist who insults this perverted deity as regularly as he can manage, I will end up being damned to hell.

I extend the same courtesy to your God that He extended to me by reciprocating this assessment of appropriate judgment with a “goddamn.” To be honest, I tend to think something a tad stronger is most likely more fitting, but at the moment I was feeling a tad cordial; I may have a more suitable reaction in the near future. I hope you understand if that’s the best I can muster at the moment.

So, for the sake of your own dignity, and mine, and that of humanity, I hope you understand my decision to indulge in a reprise of my insult towards this instigator of humanity’s falsely percieved subservience….

Goddamn.