GOD GIVES ME MY LIFE?  THE GIFT OF LIFE HOAX

The believers in God insist that life is a gift from God.  They hold that life can be considered to be a gift in itself and as life is not enough it needs other gifts from God such as decent food etc.  To be glad to get gifts from God is allowed as along as you make it about pleasing God by accepting them and it is not about the gifts in themselves.  Your child for example is to be loved for God's sake and as a reflection of God's love and generosity and beauty.  The child is not an end but loved because of God and for God.

 

The idea of life being a gift implies that suicide is only immoral for it is ingratitude and not because it is giving away your life.  Even then suicide is not a sin if is just you exercising  your right to return a gift.

 

That implies that life is not a right but a gift.

 

A gift that God dictates you how to use is not a gift at all.  You can do what you want with a gift.  Life if it was a gift from God was a gift but is not a gift any more.  It is was.

 

Parents talk about giving the gift of life - but this is really poetic flowery language.  Rather than give the gift of life they let nature's roulette do the work.  They cannot chose how exactly or when to get pregnant or with whom.

 

The gift idea is fundamental to what a proper God, one you have a relationship with, is about.  It proves that this God is incoherent.  It is a proof for atheism.

 

ANALYSIS

 

The Christian faith says that life is a gift from God not a right.  So you have no right to life after all and just a gift!  Yet the same people when confronted with abortion and euthanasia will say that life is a right!!  You may say getting life is not a right but a gift but once you get it nobody has the right to take it from you.  You get a right to life.  The logic is you cannot have a right to exist if you don't exist.  There is nobody there to have the right.  But none of that makes life a gift!!  If there is no you before you exist then you cannot receive life as a gift any more than you receive it as a right.

 

God cannot create possible persons.  He only creates real actual persons.  For you to get life as a gift you would have to be a possible person getting the gift which turns you into a real person.  That is silly beyond words.  You cannot give a birthday present to a possible son but only to one who is really there.

 

Coming into existence then is not a gift or a right.  It is beyond all that. 

 

What is life when you get it?  If life is not a right or a gift then God looking after you to keep you alive may be a right or a gift.  To suggest that God keeping  you alive is a gift is to suggest that killing you does not violate a right to life.  It only takes away a gift and a gift by definition is not based on rights.

 

Getting life as a gift amounts for nothing for sustaining it is more important.  It is more important to live for a year than for a millisecond. 

 

The doctrine of creation of all things by God from nothing is about making life out to be a gift but it is riddled with moral absurdities and nonsense.

The Church says that if you see a person as a machine or conscious object then you will have little respect for human life. It advises seeing the person as a creation from a God of infinite love who loves the person totally and unlimitedly as if she or he were the only thing ever made.

 

How can you see life as a real gift if you have to see it as a gift to avoid such a stark analysis?

Anyway the Church teaching does not work. It does not change the fact that the universe treats you and what you do as unimportant. You are so unimaginably tiny in the midst of it all. The idea makes you feel good until you get a dose of reality.
 
We do not want to be loved just to be loved. We want the benefits of love. Telling people who are in a terrible state and always have been that they are infinitely loved is only degrading them. And our smallness is a terrible thing.
 
The believers are only trying to make God out to smell of roses even if everybody is in the mud.

A gift is given to you without any conditions. You get it out of generosity and there are no rules about what you are to do with it for it is yours and the responsibility that comes with it is yours.
 
Anything with conditions attached is not a gift.

God owns us and our children. Christians reason that he has the right to kill us and our children because we are his. If so then our life is not his gift to us but his gift to himself. God cannot give you the gift of life for you and take it back for a gift will be yours not his.

God is perfect goodness and we are not so all he does is for his own honour and wellbeing. Jesus told us to love God not as ourselves but totally. And to love him as Lord or the one we are to submit to! Our life is given to us so that we might give it all back to God.

Does the thought then of having this gift of life charm you anymore? Knowing the truth puts you off God!

Many think that life is a gift so you can do with it as you please. They say something is not a gift if you are forbidden to do whatever you want with it. For example, a vase would not be a gift if the giver encourages you to smash it. God giving us the gift of life means we cannot do what we like with it. If you buy the Mona Lisa or receive it as a gift that doesn't entitle or allow you to use it for firewood.

The notion of God giving life as a gift means:

X has a terrible life. His life is a gift in itself but in its quality it is a poor gift.

Y has a wonderful life. Her life is a gift in itself and its quality is a gift too.

Nobody gets an equally good gift. It is not nice or helpful to tell X that he has received the gift of life.

Everybody agrees that suicide is wrong when it is based on the notion of your life being of no real worth. They say that we are never in a position to know if our lives are useless and always will be.

If life is intrinsically valuable it does not mean that all lives are equally valuable.

Does our dignity and the rights we have as human beings come from our ability to control our lives? We might control our lives limitedly! There is no such thing as a person who can do exactly whatever they want whenever they want! Christians say that if you are paralysed and dependent on everybody else to do everything for you, you still have your human dignity and your rights to respect. They say this proves that your dignity does not come from your power to choose.

For people who deny life after death, you need a functioning brain, body and nervous system to be alive. When your body and brain and nervous system perish you are gone. There is no life apart from physical life.

Suppose this materialistic view is true. Is it right to look at somebody who has just died and say that somehow they are still alive?

No. It is cruel. It is refusing to recognise the full evil of what has happened to them.

Principles are principles and are to be followed no matter how they make you feel. The principle requires that you recognise that the person has gone.

Another advantage of recognising that life is over when you take your last breath is that if you think a person somehow survives death you risk encouraging people to do less to preserve life. Human nature is so sneaky and twisted that you can be sure that many would do less than they could for others. The good is so often the enemy of the best that you would need to get inside their heads to know.

 

Christians like to tell you that you are absolutely unique.  Your biology and your mind and your personality and your opportunities are totally unique.  Even identical twins are radically different from each other though that is not obvious.  They then say, "It is too much for you have appeared by chance when you consider all the causes that existed - countless causes - and made you what you are.  It is clearly God's huge and massive and infinite plan!" Is that argument logical?  No.  Even if you were a robot not even knowing you were alive the same thing would be true.  A countless series and countless accidents made you.  God is not even relevant.  Creation supposedly broke with God at the fall so the complex production process may not be God's plan.  And if God creates randomness then by definition we don't know if randomness had more to do with us being here than God.  Randomness that is contained and controlled is not randomness at all.  The argument that I am too unique so God must have made me is pure pride and arrogance.  It is an argument from feelings not logic.

 

One way religion motivates people to see life as a gift is that it seems humble to think that your cash in the bank, your health, your beauty, your loving spouse and your incredible children are all gifts.  But getting something undeserved does not mean you really think and feel you don't deserve it.  You can think you don't deserve x for anything you have done but you can think you deserve it for just being a person.  You see it as your due for you are so special that what you do or don't do is irrelevant.  So it is possible to feel you deserve a gift for you are so good in your actions and also to feel that you deserve it for you are amazing anyway.  Plus you may feel that even if there is no evidence that you deserve the gift you may have done something God knows you have done to deserve it.  You may have forgotten.  Or you may feel you are being rewarded for something in advance.  Protesting that you don't deserve something may in fact be a way of making out you do deserve it for you are so humble!  Or it may be that virtually all the time!

 

If life is a gift from God, then you have the right to choose to return the gift or refuse it. You don’t even have to give a reason. A gift is not a gift if you do. Morality is pointless if it cannot tell us why we should tell a person not to commit suicide if they decide to.  It clearly cannot and the gift of life doctrine is the reason why.  Morality is pointless if it cannot tell us we must not kill ourselves. Suicide is so important that nothing else compares.

 

If God in a sense is morality or the chief reason to be moral then God is useless from the moral perspective. The contradictions about the gift of life show that for morality is supposed to be about life and seeing the importance of life.  God is not only irrelevant if you have moral worries. God opposes your worries and your desire for a valid morality. We have a duty to find God offensive if morality is real.

 

Prayer to a morally irrelevant God and/or one who undermines it is inherently evil. It may reflect how we tend to prefer good that has a bad side. A terrorist culture will get better treatment among pro-immigrant activist that one that is not.  That is that preference at work.

 

A morality, especially one that is sanctioned or confirmed by God - which only makes it worse if it is bad! - cannot safeguard against war and will destroy us soon.

 

God is said to be a gift. He is his gift to us. All that he gives us is gift. God and gift go together. Gift is passive aggressive manipulation. It comes with rules and conditions so it is not really a gift.  God is the gift for which he gives us the gift of life.  So we live so he can be the gift we accept in life.  Believers say they invite him as the gift into their hearts.  Others say that even those who don't he manages to be a gift to them by doing good things for them even if he cannot indwell them for they don't want him.  Jesus said God sends the sun to shine on the wicked too.

 

If God gives life and only God should take it meaning abortion and euthanasia and so on are banned then you cannot say God is giving you life as a gift. He is only giving you a loan.   By the way, the notion that your power to choose is a gift from God is also confused.  It is a loan too.  Why thank a God like that?  Why care what he thinks?

The doctrine that life is a gift is only whitewash. Get into the mud and risk the despair that may come from seeing people die and help.

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