One of the aspects of Christianity (at least the more fundamentalist version thereof) that has long puzzled me, is the way it claims that the human race, is both the pinnacle of God’s creation, worthy of God’s love and total devotion, and the vilest thing to have ever walk the face of the Earth, the lowest of the low, worthy only of the cruelest of fates and eternal damnation.

I am not alone in noticing this paradox.  As Christopher Hitchens says, at the beginning of chapter six of his book “God Is Not Great,”

There is a central paradox at the core of religion. The three great monotheisms teach people to think abjectly of themselves, as miserable and guilty sinners prostrate before an angry and jealous god who, according to discrepant accounts, fashioned them either out of dust and clay or a clot of blood. [...] On the other hand, and as if by way of compensation, religion teaches people to be extremely self-centered and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind.

Of course, religion’s paradoxical view of humankind’s position in the universe is extremely useful to its adherents. It allows them to assume the aura of extreme abasement and modesty when claiming to be doing things in “God’s name,” while simultaneously allowing them to attack naturalism and atheism as concepts which reduce human beings to nothing better than unthinking farmyard animals.

Since, as unsaved human beings, non-Christians are supposedly deserving to a fate far worse than the one the lowliest of farmyard animals will suffer, it’s hard no to laugh when non-believers are attacked in this manner. I guess using their twisted logic, a special place in Hell is a step up in importance from simple oblivion… somehow.