That old favourite of Christians, and probably the page of the Bible which is most lovingly fingered by them, is John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

So where do I start with that little pearl of wisdom, or should I say 'nugget of nonsense'? First, let me express my total incredulity and bewilderment that this passage could in any way be taken as an act of love for anyone. Ever. Yes, in one single way could this be seen as 'good': allowing one person to be killed, so that more than one person would be spared the same fate, would be 'a good thing', but (and it's a big one) only if there was no other option.

The fact that God supposedly allowed his only son to die implies exactly that - that there was no other option available, that Jesus could not have been spared a painful death while at the same time allowing everyone else to be 'saved' as well. Pardon? Isn't this God we're talking about? God the mighty, God the omnipotent, God the 'made the universe in 6 days and can do abso-fucking-lutey anything he wants to, just like that?' This is the same God, right?

And yet he can't think of any way of saving mankind other than by allowing his son to be tortured and then nailed up to a cross to die? I'd say that was at best wholly unimaginative of him, and at worst downright negligent and unnecessarily sadistic.

I can personally think of quite a few ways mankind could be given the same message of love and deliverance, and in fact far better and more humane ways:

1. Just before the first nail was driven home, God could have reached down, plucked Jesus out of harm's way and said, "Behold, I have saved my son, and if you believe in me I will save you too." A huge hand coming out of the sky would deliver the message fairly convincingly, I sense.

2. If he was going to kill anyone, why not kill the Roman with the hammer and nails, or the one who put the spear into Jesus' side? The message this time? "Trust in me and I will keep you safe from harm."

3. Or put an impenetrable force field around Jesus while he spoke about God. Now he'd be saying, "I am God and I authorise this message, and this is my son - the force field is with him."

4. While we're heading in that direction, why did the son of God have to die at all? Imagine how many more believers in Jesus there would be if the immortal man himself were walking around for thousands of years, still preaching, not aging, surrounded by an impenetrable shield and proving to a sceptical world that the water-into-wine thing was no party trick.

It really does seem to me that if 'God so loved the world' he would lower the bar for entry to enlightenment as far as possible, so that it would be so much easier to believe in him. Fair enough, punish the ones who were bad despite all the warnings. But come on, if God was really out there and so unbelievably obvious that you could say 'look, there he is' and point to his beardy face hovering above you, would anyone be so stupid as to do something even remotely naughty? And don't give me that 'free will' bullshit - either God wants you to behave or he doesn't, so why give us the ability to do bad things at all?

And why go through this complicated rigmarole of having to learn about some dead man from the Middle East, from an old book of dubious origin? Like Martini, God can appear anytime, anyplace, anywhere, so couldn't he just send out 'thou shalt believe in God' messages to everyone? Can't we just have the belief thing implanted into us at birth? I mean, we've supposedly had the knowledge of good and evil in us since Adam bit the apple, so a little sprinkling of faith built into the human genome wouldn't go amiss, and it would hardly be a big job for someone clever enough to invent DNA, as well as cancer, HIV and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Why does God make it so difficult anyway? If he 'so loved the world' wouldn't he want to make it as easy as possible for us to believe?

I'm sorry, but a God with unlimited power also has unlimited options, so to choose one of the options where his son actually dies, is quite obviously the action of a sadist. And by the way, Christians, don't go all pro-life on me when talking about women having abortions - if God can choose to let his son die, why shouldn't women have the same choice? But I digress...

If your son was drowning and you could swim out to save him, but in doing so a million other people would die, what would you do? Actually, perhaps that's not a black and white choice because a lot of people would in fact let the million die to save their child. So let's assume the choice is simple: allow one (unknown) person to die or allow a million to die? Of course the answer is that you should save the million - the 'greater good' wins out. But this is not the choice faced by God. It's not one or the other at all. God could save his son and the rest of the world if he wanted to. If he wanted to. But he didn't want to. Instead he allowed his son to die, simply to prove a point in the crudest and bloodiest way imaginable. Out of all the available options God chose torture, pain and blood sacrifice.

So if your son was drowning and you had all these options, which would you choose?

1. Save your son but allow a million people to die
2. Allow your son to die but save a million people
3. Save your son and save a million people

Now the answer becomes obvious. Only option 3 makes sense, unless you are uncaring, unfeeling and have no regard for human life. But then, this is God we are talking about, and as the rest of the Bible proves many times, God can and does kill as many people as he feels like, whenever he wants, even when there are far better, kinder, more loving alternatives.

---

Footnote:
Remember at all times that my descriptions of God actually doing things are hypothetical. I don't for one second believe that Jesus was the son of God or indeed that there is a God at all. But in these types of arguments the case has to be put in terms of 'if God existed, and acted in the ways described by Christians, then x, y and z would be the realities of the situation.' Atheists should probably endeavour to explain that every now and again, because we are constantly told that we do actually believe in God but are denying him. No, we don't believe. We are pointing out what nonsense these teachings really are.