The Unchosen People

by Ian Gallimore, part of The Argument from Locality

Imagine Moses coming down from the mountain following his first conversation with God:

Moses: “O Israel, I have received the word of God, and the Chosen People have been revealed unto me!”

The People: “Tell us what God has decreed in His wisdom!”

Moses: “Erm, well, actually…”

The People: “Go on…”

Moses: ” …it’s the Philistines. I know, I know, but God is that He is, and He says the Philistines are his chosen people. What can you do?”

The People: “So what does this mean for us?”

Moses: “Ah. Thought you’d ask that one. Since we are not God’s chosen, and in fact rank rather far down His divine scale, it means that we have to give all our land and possessions over to the Philistines, even unto our women, yea, even unto our goats, and we must devote our lives to the glory of God and His chosen people, basically by becoming their slaves through all eternity. So says the Lord.”

The People: “Sod that, we’re converting to Egyptian Polytheism.”

The absurdity of this scenario is obvious and common sense alone would indicate that a religion based on such a message will not get very far. But that in itself is, of course, instructive on the nature of religion. Supposing God does have a chosen people (as many theists do), why then would he never ever tell anybody else about it but they themselves? Surely it would be to the advantage of his chosen if he made it plain to all other races just who the good guys were? Yet this has never happened.

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