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 Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 10:36 pm
rmcdra brainnsoup And it made me think, can a mortal become a god simply because he calls himself one? Speaking from my understanding we all are gods. So yes and no simply because that requirement is dependent on fully realizing that we are. Quote: Which made me think, what makes a person a god? Realization of that freedom we have. Edit: It also depends on the culture, people of a culture/religion, and the individual in question. Quote: Does a god need to be able to perform miracles? No but it helps the case. People like "sparkles" Quote: Does a god need to be a person? A certain gender? No and No Quote: What exactly is the difference between mortal and god? Edit: Depends on what a culture/religion defines as what distinguishes between divinity and mortality. Quote: Can a person become a god? And if so, who decides who is a god and who isn't? Yes. The answer depends on the god and what one expects of a god. Quote: Note, I'm not asking what god(s) you believe in, just what criteria a being would need to meet for you to consider them a god. No worship involved. I get what you mean. No worries. I hope what I have posted makes sense and that I don't come off as more of a nutter than I already do. Edited: Corrected thoughtless comments.
Is there something a person must do to become a god? I mean, does a person need to acknowledge himself as a god to be a god?
Also, if we are all gods, isn't that basically the same as none of us are?
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 12:55 am
xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx The proof is in that we can explain what those gods were supposed to do, and some of them were from tales about the earth existing on the back of a turtle, or other things like that. Sure, but He also acts above them. He still loves us, even though it probably would've been easier for Him to just start over and forget about us. He also uses the most unexpected things and people to get His point across. God reated everything, but satan twisted some things. Anything that involves the absence of God, or that was twisted by satan is bad. That's the only kind of God I'd worship, and through what He's done for man, that's the type of God He's proven Himself to be. Just take a look at nature and say that comes form an evil or indifferent god. Or at man- we mess up, but I doubt there's anyone who strives to be evil. Instead, most strive to be good and decent people, so clearly if we were created, it was by a good Creator.
Were the ancient pagan gods not superior to humans? Even when they were sometimes neglectful or vengeful, they still controlled people's fates.
Didn't He just start over and forget about the first batch of humans with the flood?
And what is the proof that He is behind those unexpected things?
If God created everything, did He also create disease, death, Satan?
This isn't related to the thread at all, I've just always wondered, if Satan is evil and God is all-powerful, why doesn't He just get rid of Satan?
Haha, I think whoever created nature has a pretty dark sense of humor. There's pretty animals that we can eat... And pretty animals that can eat us. You can be lost at sea and dying of thirst, surrounded by water, but if you drink it it will kill you. Same with poison berries, poison mushrooms, and any other poison plants Bear Grylls has warned me about.
Same with people, we're unbelievably complicated and incredible, but we also keep breaking all the time. Broken bones, organ failure, mental illness, and that death thing.
Not that there aren't amazing things in the world, but it's far from perfection. If somebody did create this world and us on purpose, it definitely wasn't on the intention of giving us paradise.
Either some mistakes were made, or somebody wanted us to suffer a little bit.My God does. :3 Yes, but they weren't all-powerful. Zeus could be thown into Tarturus. All you have to do is read the Percy Jackson series to see how much those gods fail. They were evil. Considering how early it was in our history, wicked men then could've meant so much more pain, evil and suffering now. Plus he didn't destroy our entire race-Noah was saved. Because if you pray for somethng, and the miracle you needed occurs, that's proof for Him. If you have a revelation of Him, that's proof ofHim. If you study the books and find it makes sense, then that's proof enough for Him. Even the odds against everything coming together the way they did is proof of some higher power. The way I see it is if there's no higher power andyou spend your whole life seeking it, and worshipping it, no harm because when everything ends in oblivion, everything's a waste. If the higher power's evil, then bad stuff will most likely happen to you no matter what you do, so again, no harm done. If the higher power's neglectful then it's a lot like if the higher power didn't exist in the first place, and if the higher power's good then all your seeking, worship and reverence is the most important thing you could be doing. Logically it's the only way you can win. Of course it really helps when you love the higher power in question more then anything, and no matter what logic said would still die a thousand deaths for that higher power. But having the logic to back it up is nice too. He created satan, who corrupted himself. Our disobedience meant death entered the world, because deah is the abscence of God, and satan corrupted some things on this earth because when we sinned he got control of it. Technically he's god of this world right now. >.< If He gets rid of all evil and satan, we die too (including Christians) because He'd destroy anything with any evil in it's nature. That's why satan's destuction is gonna have to wait until the end of the world. There are some battles being fought right now in the heart's of man. Sure satan twisted some things, but beauty's what you see the majority of the time. A sunset, snow on a branch, the first crocuses of the spring, a backlit sycamore... Or how about the animals? A cat's strength and grace, a hawk flying overhead, a pod of dolphins playing...even the ugliest or most common creatures can have a purpose. Poisenous plants can heal, dandelions actually smell good, and taste pretty great in a salad to, seagulls are great fun when you have a loaf of bread to spare (Seagull baseball xd ), the smell of the air after it rains, and the power of a storm all point to an amazing Creator. You can find something good to almost all of creation, no matter how twisted it's become. I hate the desert, but Georgia O'Keefe painted amazing scenes from it. Plus just because it can kill you doesn't mean it's not beautiful. I've got this picture hanging up of a lion killing a wildebeest because I happen to really like it. Technically it's sad, but it's also beautiful and powerful too (and I kinda hate wildebeest XD). That's the price mankind paid when we walked away from God. Some mistakes were made. Our mistake, because we ate the dang fruit and chose to try and be like Him rather then staying close to Him, and satan's fault too, for tempting us. That's why he's going burn, but that's unfortuantely why some people are gonna burn too. cry
Ancient gods were not evil. They were arrogant and petty, but not evil. And occasionally one of them would kill or torture some people, but so has YHWH.
Saving one family doesn't justify killing everybody else, even if He created them. If I had ten children and nine were loud, disobedient brats and one was good by comparison, is it alright to kill the other nine? I didn't kill one of them.
If I pray that the sun will rise the next morning, and it does, is it because God answered my prayer? If I pray that somebody dies, and he does, is it because God killed him for me?
If I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I pull through a normally fatal illness, and I do, is it because the Flying Spaghetti Monster saved me?
If I pray to YHWH that I pull through, and I don't, does that disprove him? If not, why do unanswered prayers not disprove His existence but answered prayers prove it?
And that logic only works if even a little part of you believes that such a God could exist. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that no just god would decide my fate for eternity based on how well I worshiped Him in my comparatively unbelievably small lifespan. If there is, I don't think I would want to spend an eternity with Him.
But if God is truly all-powerful and can do anything, why can't He just work around that? Or if He is all-knowing, did He not see this coming before he created man? Or why does he not then just start a new batch of humans? He has before. If He can't simply destroy Satan, then He is not all-powerful.
I'm not denying that parts of nature are beautiful. But I see nature as a reason why it's hard to believe that an intelligent, loving creator put us here for a purpose. It seems that the only reason we even survived for so long is because we can adapt.
And it was not our mistake. Eve ate the fruit. Adam ate the fruit. We didn't do anything. We weren't alive. That would mean billions of people suffering for what two people did. If a father commits a murder, do you punish his son?
And if God created us, then He is the one who made us flawed. He shouldn't punish us for it. If you put a chair together and it falls apart because you didn't build it right, is it the chair's fault?Nope, I did question a lot, but I've found a lot of answers that were to my satisfaction, and the others I trust Gd for. H'e more important to me then my unanswered questons. That's news to me. >< I think satan posessed a lot of people (like say, Hitler) and encouraged a lot of people to harm their fellow man. I also think he twisted viruses and parasites and other unpleasent things to suit his purposes. Count up all those killed by disease and fighting, and those I hold satan partly responsible for. Then there's death itself, which he ncouraged us to do as we did so it would be introduced to the world, so in that case he could be held partly responsible for all the deaths of the world. :3 Doesn't for our sake. And changed the nature of creation, which was a gift from them. It's kinda like they were responsible for the earth and the children, so like if a king and queen made a bad decision, everyone paid the price. Plus you're forgetting that babies aren't held accountably for their actions, and their sin nature so hey go to Heaven. It's only once we act on temptation that we need Him to Save us. Then why do some people become Christians. There's gotta be a reason it's held steady with a third of the world's population following it. They were like arrogant kings and queens with superpowers. For a world so well-organized, it's hard to believe those buffoons are responsible for running it. What if those nine would grow up to cause intense pain and poverty to the human race, and they were teenagers so past the point of you reaching them? Or they were gonna start a nuclear war, or do some other thing that would make you regret ever having them? Or let's make them monkeys who were extremey violent and destructive, but you had hand-raised. It's some kinda mixture between thoise two scenarios. That helped, if you meant the prayer. Maybe...probably. Nope, unless it was sincere. Then maybe te Lord intervened. Nope, because it just says He'll answer. It doesn't say the answer can't be no. Some answered prayers prove Him. Revlations can prove that He exists too, and so can seeing sense through the whole thing. Why do you get to judge God? If He's the Creator, then why shouldn't He be the judge of you? Maybe the Tribulation's His way of doing that. He probably did, though it's possible that choice means that He can't predict which way we'll decide. He promised not to, thus the rainbow (you know, the flood's the first time rain is mentioned in the Bible. There's a theory going around that before the flood, it didn't rain, which is why the first rainbow didn't appear until after the flood). He can. It's a war though, and there's hostages-us. And He dealt a nasty blow through Jesus. If everyone on this earth came to Christ, I think He's finaly destroy satan, and we could all live happily. Who do you do think put that desire to survive in us? If a mother drinks and smokes while she's pregnant, why is the baby retarded? Those two changed human nature. Plus, nobody's damned until they sinned, so technically it is our fault, even if it is in our nature. He made them perfect, but He gave Adam and Eve choice. They chose wrong. That left a mark on us. Then we get a choice. Unfortunately, the rest of us always choose wrong too. So then we need Jesus. None of us are an inanimate object, or even an animal. We're people with the choice of whether to act on our flawed design. When we sin, it's our fault.
Most likely those answers aren't going to satisfy someone who was raised in a different culture or someone who thinks logically. I'm not saying that Christianity is illogical, but there are some things, if you take the bible literally at least, that don't make logical sense.
Is there a reason to pin those things on Satan? Does it actually say that in the bible? How many people does he actually kill in the bible?
And maybe Satan is partially responsible for getting us kicked out of Eden, but God's the one who actually kicked us out.
Is it remotely fair that everyone pay the price though? The fact that a country would pay the price for its leaders' irresponsibility, isn't that wrong and unjust?
If God is truly all-powerful and did create us, He could have created us without that flaw.
And having a lot of people believe in something doesn't necessarily make it right. There are many Hindus and Muslims as well, but one of you has to be wrong, right?
They were probably arrogant because they were gods. XD
I don't care if all nine of them were thirty-four! It's never too late to reach someone. Even if it was, There would still be many solutions on my list before killing them and starting over. And they should have never gotten to that point. If I took on the responsibility of having children, it is my responsibility to parent them. Just as it is God's responsibility to keep his creations safe if He decides to create them.
The monkeys, I would still try to train them. I have a very disobedient doggie. I have yet to kick her out of the house. And I am a flawed mortal. If I raised the monkeys correctly, they wouldn't be that misbehaved. I make mistakes, but then again, I am not God.
And Adam and Eve weren't violent and destructive. They were ignorant. They made a mistake.
The sun rises and sets on its own every 24 hours, but if I pray for it to happen, it is because God made it happen? If I pray every night for the sun to rise for a year and it happens every morning, then I suddenly stop, will the sun stop rising?
If I pray that a church blows up and the next day somebody blows up a church, did God send that person? If I have been praying for a year that a church blows up and it blew up only one day, was that because God said no all year but decided to answer that prayer on my last day?
How is that not just coincidence?
And I could be completely sincere while praying to the FSM. I did one time, while making cupcakes, pop them into the oven, thinking that they would turn out ugly and mushy, pray to the FSM that they come out delicious and fluffy. And they did! That was very unlikely. Does it prove his existence?
How can you say then with absolute certainty that your god is the one taking pity on people praying to their gods and answering their prayers anyway? Many Eastern religions have lots of gods. How do you know your answered prayers isn't one of them taking pity on you?
And saying that unanswered prayers are just God's way of saying "no" is another example of confirmation bias. It doesn't logically make sense that He would so randomly entertain silly requests but let thousands of people suffer and die on purpose.
EDIT: I'm re-reading through this next part and realizing that it's very blunt. So I decided to leave it in, but it's up to you whether or not you want to read it.
I'm so critical of Him because it's paradoxes like those that make it absolutely impossible for that god to exist. It's dangerous logic like that that lead me to my ultimate conclusion that the god described by the bible can not exist.
I might one day believe that there is a higher power, but there is not one god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and full of infinite love that would so callously kill and torture.
He is only superior to me if He exists.
I mean why can He not destroy Satan without harming people?
No one can make the claim that He can do anything if He can't do that.
If He really wants us to survive, why does he allow there to be dangerous, addictive, and mind altering drugs? Why does He allow babies to be born unhealthy?
It is not our own fault. If He created us then He made it our nature. If He created us, every one or our flaws is because of how He made us. If not, He didn't create us.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:36 am
brainnsoup I think I know what you mean by "we are all gods", but I'm confused on some things. Is there something a person must do to become a god? I mean, does a person need to acknowledge himself as a god to be a god? Depends on the culture/religion in question for what is considered a god but the requirements can't be too high if Prem Rawat is considered "Lord of the Universe" by his devotees. Quote: Also, if we are all gods, isn't that basically the same as none of us are? No it's not. This is going to sound cheesy but this is the best example coming to mind. In Matrix Revolutions, Agent Smith wants to know why Neo fights considering that everything we value is a construct of our minds. Neo's answer is that he fights because he chooses to fight. It is that ability to choose that makes us gods. Most of us are ignorant of the fact that we have that freedom of choice and thus are unaware that they too are gods.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:38 pm
Quote: Does a god need to be able to perform miracles? Does a god need to be a person? A certain gender? What exactly is the difference between mortal and god? Can a person become a god? And if so, who decides who is a god and who isn't? Note, I'm not asking what god(s) you believe in, just what criteria a being would need to meet for you to consider them a god. No worship involved. Back on track. I would say a god is dependent on who is the devotee. A baby to young child would see it's parent as a god as they have control, and knowledge that suprises them. So, basically, ignorance, naivety would be ingredients to help make a god. Many cults have a guy stating they are god, and they get followers. A real god, to me, would be knowledgeable, information seeking and powerful. The number one requirement would be involvement. A god should be involved with their people. Let's say a guy wants to rape a 2 year old. A god would not only stop that from happening, but remove the urge from the guy to prevent him from wanting to do it in the future. Prevents future problems. Keeps their people safe. Also they would be able to touch the minds of all of their people at a young age to let them know they are there. Clears up problems of wasting time worshiping "gods" that aren't there. And since they are knowledgeable, they know they are a powerful god and don't need anyone telling them that all the time. They would be comfortable with who they are. Best gender: Hermaphrodite. Second best: No gender. Or switches between the two. A person with godlike powers I would not consider a god, if a petulant 12 year old got ahold of some powers, and went raging on people, that would not make him a god. It would just make him someone who needs to be put down.
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 11:31 pm
for me, god is G-O-D! lol
My friend, "God doesn't create men, Men create God"
My junior in college, "God must be the only one"
A senior peer (Accounting graduated), "God is an auditor"
Another friend, "God is an astronaut"
Another friend, "God supposed to be handsome and almighty"
Another peer, "Does not limited by time and room dimension."
Classmate, "God is . . .."
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 12:23 am
Shelann Quote: Does a god need to be able to perform miracles? Does a god need to be a person? A certain gender? What exactly is the difference between mortal and god? Can a person become a god? And if so, who decides who is a god and who isn't? Note, I'm not asking what god(s) you believe in, just what criteria a being would need to meet for you to consider them a god. No worship involved. Back on track. I would say a god is dependent on who is the devotee. A baby to young child would see it's parent as a god as they have control, and knowledge that suprises them. So, basically, ignorance, naivety would be ingredients to help make a god. Many cults have a guy stating they are god, and they get followers. A real god, to me, would be knowledgeable, information seeking and powerful. The number one requirement would be involvement. A god should be involved with their people. Let's say a guy wants to rape a 2 year old. A god would not only stop that from happening, but remove the urge from the guy to prevent him from wanting to do it in the future. Prevents future problems. Keeps their people safe. Also they would be able to touch the minds of all of their people at a young age to let them know they are there. Clears up problems of wasting time worshiping "gods" that aren't there. And since they are knowledgeable, they know they are a powerful god and don't need anyone telling them that all the time. They would be comfortable with who they are. Best gender: Hermaphrodite. Second best: No gender. Or switches between the two. A person with godlike powers I would not consider a god, if a petulant 12 year old got ahold of some powers, and went raging on people, that would not make him a god. It would just make him someone who needs to be put down.
Or what if a higher power created us and watches us, but does not want to interfere? Or does occasionally interfere but does not want to be recognized or worshiped? Would it be a god?
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:28 am
brainnsoup Shelann Quote: Does a god need to be able to perform miracles? Does a god need to be a person? A certain gender? What exactly is the difference between mortal and god? Can a person become a god? And if so, who decides who is a god and who isn't? Note, I'm not asking what god(s) you believe in, just what criteria a being would need to meet for you to consider them a god. No worship involved. Back on track. I would say a god is dependent on who is the devotee. A baby to young child would see it's parent as a god as they have control, and knowledge that suprises them. So, basically, ignorance, naivety would be ingredients to help make a god. Many cults have a guy stating they are god, and they get followers. A real god, to me, would be knowledgeable, information seeking and powerful. The number one requirement would be involvement. A god should be involved with their people. Let's say a guy wants to rape a 2 year old. A god would not only stop that from happening, but remove the urge from the guy to prevent him from wanting to do it in the future. Prevents future problems. Keeps their people safe. Also they would be able to touch the minds of all of their people at a young age to let them know they are there. Clears up problems of wasting time worshiping "gods" that aren't there. And since they are knowledgeable, they know they are a powerful god and don't need anyone telling them that all the time. They would be comfortable with who they are. Best gender: Hermaphrodite. Second best: No gender. Or switches between the two. A person with godlike powers I would not consider a god, if a petulant 12 year old got ahold of some powers, and went raging on people, that would not make him a god. It would just make him someone who needs to be put down.
Or what if a higher power created us and watches us, but does not want to interfere? Or does occasionally interfere but does not want to be recognized or worshiped? Would it be a god?Also, does a god have to have a plan for us? Why not a god who just created us in the way that we create characters in a story? o_O What if thats all we are is the ravings of some insane person??!!!
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 1:41 pm
brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup But you can't prove that those gods never existed. You can prove that the sun is not Apollo riding around the earth in a golden chariot, but you can't prove that he never existed, that he wasn't a god, that he wasn't the son of Zeus. It doesn't logically make sense, but then again, what god does?
Were the ancient pagan gods not superior to humans? Even when they were sometimes neglectful or vengeful, they still controlled people's fates.
Didn't He just start over and forget about the first batch of humans with the flood?
And what is the proof that He is behind those unexpected things?
If God created everything, did He also create disease, death, Satan?
This isn't related to the thread at all, I've just always wondered, if Satan is evil and God is all-powerful, why doesn't He just get rid of Satan?
Haha, I think whoever created nature has a pretty dark sense of humor. There's pretty animals that we can eat... And pretty animals that can eat us. You can be lost at sea and dying of thirst, surrounded by water, but if you drink it it will kill you. Same with poison berries, poison mushrooms, and any other poison plants Bear Grylls has warned me about.
Same with people, we're unbelievably complicated and incredible, but we also keep breaking all the time. Broken bones, organ failure, mental illness, and that death thing.
Not that there aren't amazing things in the world, but it's far from perfection. If somebody did create this world and us on purpose, it definitely wasn't on the intention of giving us paradise.
Either some mistakes were made, or somebody wanted us to suffer a little bit. My God does. :3 Yes, but they weren't all-powerful. Zeus could be thown into Tarturus. All you have to do is read the Percy Jackson series to see how much those gods fail. They were evil. Considering how early it was in our history, wicked men then could've meant so much more pain, evil and suffering now. Plus he didn't destroy our entire race-Noah was saved. Because if you pray for somethng, and the miracle you needed occurs, that's proof for Him. If you have a revelation of Him, that's proof ofHim. If you study the books and find it makes sense, then that's proof enough for Him. Even the odds against everything coming together the way they did is proof of some higher power. The way I see it is if there's no higher power andyou spend your whole life seeking it, and worshipping it, no harm because when everything ends in oblivion, everything's a waste. If the higher power's evil, then bad stuff will most likely happen to you no matter what you do, so again, no harm done. If the higher power's neglectful then it's a lot like if the higher power didn't exist in the first place, and if the higher power's good then all your seeking, worship and reverence is the most important thing you could be doing. Logically it's the only way you can win. Of course it really helps when you love the higher power in question more then anything, and no matter what logic said would still die a thousand deaths for that higher power. But having the logic to back it up is nice too. He created satan, who corrupted himself. Our disobedience meant death entered the world, because deah is the abscence of God, and satan corrupted some things on this earth because when we sinned he got control of it. Technically he's god of this world right now. >.< If He gets rid of all evil and satan, we die too (including Christians) because He'd destroy anything with any evil in it's nature. That's why satan's destuction is gonna have to wait until the end of the world. There are some battles being fought right now in the heart's of man. Sure satan twisted some things, but beauty's what you see the majority of the time. A sunset, snow on a branch, the first crocuses of the spring, a backlit sycamore... Or how about the animals? A cat's strength and grace, a hawk flying overhead, a pod of dolphins playing...even the ugliest or most common creatures can have a purpose. Poisenous plants can heal, dandelions actually smell good, and taste pretty great in a salad to, seagulls are great fun when you have a loaf of bread to spare (Seagull baseball xd ), the smell of the air after it rains, and the power of a storm all point to an amazing Creator. You can find something good to almost all of creation, no matter how twisted it's become. I hate the desert, but Georgia O'Keefe painted amazing scenes from it. Plus just because it can kill you doesn't mean it's not beautiful. I've got this picture hanging up of a lion killing a wildebeest because I happen to really like it. Technically it's sad, but it's also beautiful and powerful too (and I kinda hate wildebeest XD). That's the price mankind paid when we walked away from God. Some mistakes were made. Our mistake, because we ate the dang fruit and chose to try and be like Him rather then staying close to Him, and satan's fault too, for tempting us. That's why he's going burn, but that's unfortuantely why some people are gonna burn too. cry
Ancient gods were not evil. They were arrogant and petty, but not evil. And occasionally one of them would kill or torture some people, but so has YHWH.
Saving one family doesn't justify killing everybody else, even if He created them. If I had ten children and nine were loud, disobedient brats and one was good by comparison, is it alright to kill the other nine? I didn't kill one of them.
If I pray that the sun will rise the next morning, and it does, is it because God answered my prayer? If I pray that somebody dies, and he does, is it because God killed him for me?
If I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I pull through a normally fatal illness, and I do, is it because the Flying Spaghetti Monster saved me?
If I pray to YHWH that I pull through, and I don't, does that disprove him? If not, why do unanswered prayers not disprove His existence but answered prayers prove it?
And that logic only works if even a little part of you believes that such a God could exist. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that no just god would decide my fate for eternity based on how well I worshiped Him in my comparatively unbelievably small lifespan. If there is, I don't think I would want to spend an eternity with Him.
But if God is truly all-powerful and can do anything, why can't He just work around that? Or if He is all-knowing, did He not see this coming before he created man? Or why does he not then just start a new batch of humans? He has before. If He can't simply destroy Satan, then He is not all-powerful.
I'm not denying that parts of nature are beautiful. But I see nature as a reason why it's hard to believe that an intelligent, loving creator put us here for a purpose. It seems that the only reason we even survived for so long is because we can adapt.
And it was not our mistake. Eve ate the fruit. Adam ate the fruit. We didn't do anything. We weren't alive. That would mean billions of people suffering for what two people did. If a father commits a murder, do you punish his son?
And if God created us, then He is the one who made us flawed. He shouldn't punish us for it. If you put a chair together and it falls apart because you didn't build it right, is it the chair's fault?Nope, I did question a lot, but I've found a lot of answers that were to my satisfaction, and the others I trust Gd for. H'e more important to me then my unanswered questons. That's news to me. >< I think satan posessed a lot of people (like say, Hitler) and encouraged a lot of people to harm their fellow man. I also think he twisted viruses and parasites and other unpleasent things to suit his purposes. Count up all those killed by disease and fighting, and those I hold satan partly responsible for. Then there's death itself, which he ncouraged us to do as we did so it would be introduced to the world, so in that case he could be held partly responsible for all the deaths of the world. :3 Doesn't for our sake. And changed the nature of creation, which was a gift from them. It's kinda like they were responsible for the earth and the children, so like if a king and queen made a bad decision, everyone paid the price. Plus you're forgetting that babies aren't held accountably for their actions, and their sin nature so hey go to Heaven. It's only once we act on temptation that we need Him to Save us. Then why do some people become Christians. There's gotta be a reason it's held steady with a third of the world's population following it. They were like arrogant kings and queens with superpowers. For a world so well-organized, it's hard to believe those buffoons are responsible for running it. What if those nine would grow up to cause intense pain and poverty to the human race, and they were teenagers so past the point of you reaching them? Or they were gonna start a nuclear war, or do some other thing that would make you regret ever having them? Or let's make them monkeys who were extremey violent and destructive, but you had hand-raised. It's some kinda mixture between thoise two scenarios. That helped, if you meant the prayer. Maybe...probably. Nope, unless it was sincere. Then maybe te Lord intervened. Nope, because it just says He'll answer. It doesn't say the answer can't be no. Some answered prayers prove Him. Revlations can prove that He exists too, and so can seeing sense through the whole thing. Why do you get to judge God? If He's the Creator, then why shouldn't He be the judge of you? Maybe the Tribulation's His way of doing that. He probably did, though it's possible that choice means that He can't predict which way we'll decide. He promised not to, thus the rainbow (you know, the flood's the first time rain is mentioned in the Bible. There's a theory going around that before the flood, it didn't rain, which is why the first rainbow didn't appear until after the flood). He can. It's a war though, and there's hostages-us. And He dealt a nasty blow through Jesus. If everyone on this earth came to Christ, I think He's finaly destroy satan, and we could all live happily. Who do you do think put that desire to survive in us? If a mother drinks and smokes while she's pregnant, why is the baby retarded? Those two changed human nature. Plus, nobody's damned until they sinned, so technically it is our fault, even if it is in our nature. He made them perfect, but He gave Adam and Eve choice. They chose wrong. That left a mark on us. Then we get a choice. Unfortunately, the rest of us always choose wrong too. So then we need Jesus. None of us are an inanimate object, or even an animal. We're people with the choice of whether to act on our flawed design. When we sin, it's our fault.
Most likely those answers aren't going to satisfy someone who was raised in a different culture or someone who thinks logically. I'm not saying that Christianity is illogical, but there are some things, if you take the bible literally at least, that don't make logical sense.
Is there a reason to pin those things on Satan? Does it actually say that in the bible? How many people does he actually kill in the bible?
And maybe Satan is partially responsible for getting us kicked out of Eden, but God's the one who actually kicked us out.
Is it remotely fair that everyone pay the price though? The fact that a country would pay the price for its leaders' irresponsibility, isn't that wrong and unjust?
If God is truly all-powerful and did create us, He could have created us without that flaw.
And having a lot of people believe in something doesn't necessarily make it right. There are many Hindus and Muslims as well, but one of you has to be wrong, right?
They were probably arrogant because they were gods. XD
I don't care if all nine of them were thirty-four! It's never too late to reach someone. Even if it was, There would still be many solutions on my list before killing them and starting over. And they should have never gotten to that point. If I took on the responsibility of having children, it is my responsibility to parent them. Just as it is God's responsibility to keep his creations safe if He decides to create them.
The monkeys, I would still try to train them. I have a very disobedient doggie. I have yet to kick her out of the house. And I am a flawed mortal. If I raised the monkeys correctly, they wouldn't be that misbehaved. I make mistakes, but then again, I am not God.
And Adam and Eve weren't violent and destructive. They were ignorant. They made a mistake.
The sun rises and sets on its own every 24 hours, but if I pray for it to happen, it is because God made it happen? If I pray every night for the sun to rise for a year and it happens every morning, then I suddenly stop, will the sun stop rising?
If I pray that a church blows up and the next day somebody blows up a church, did God send that person? If I have been praying for a year that a church blows up and it blew up only one day, was that because God said no all year but decided to answer that prayer on my last day?
How is that not just coincidence?
And I could be completely sincere while praying to the FSM. I did one time, while making cupcakes, pop them into the oven, thinking that they would turn out ugly and mushy, pray to the FSM that they come out delicious and fluffy. And they did! That was very unlikely. Does it prove his existence?
How can you say then with absolute certainty that your god is the one taking pity on people praying to their gods and answering their prayers anyway? Many Eastern religions have lots of gods. How do you know your answered prayers isn't one of them taking pity on you?
And saying that unanswered prayers are just God's way of saying "no" is another example of confirmation bias. It doesn't logically make sense that He would so randomly entertain silly requests but let thousands of people suffer and die on purpose.
EDIT: I'm re-reading through this next part and realizing that it's very blunt. So I decided to leave it in, but it's up to you whether or not you want to read it.
I'm so critical of Him because it's paradoxes like those that make it absolutely impossible for that god to exist. It's dangerous logic like that that lead me to my ultimate conclusion that the god described by the bible can not exist.
I might one day believe that there is a higher power, but there is not one god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and full of infinite love that would so callously kill and torture.
He is only superior to me if He exists.
I mean why can He not destroy Satan without harming people?
No one can make the claim that He can do anything if He can't do that.
If He really wants us to survive, why does he allow there to be dangerous, addictive, and mind altering drugs? Why does He allow babies to be born unhealthy?
It is not our own fault. If He created us then He made it our nature. If He created us, every one or our flaws is because of how He made us. If not, He didn't create us.What am I supposed to do about that? If I could become a Christian convert instead of one raised in the faith, I would, but as it is unless I seek another religion for a while (which would really kill me) I'm stuck. And yeah, if I picked out the other arguments instead, wouldn't that be kinda foolish? Who defines logic? I think my logic is sound, but someone else could probably tear it apart. I know people who seem to have very little logic, and I know others who have better logic then I do. The people I know with the greatest logic tend to be either Christian writers like CS Lewis, or Christian converts who have it all puzzled out better then I do. Quote: Rev7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth- -Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. Leading people to their death? And satan's called the Father of Lies. He wants to lead people away from the Lord, because that would mean spiritual death. God said He would. If He wnet back on it, He would've been lying, and God makes a point of not lying. For the metaphor, yes because they could always throw the leader's out of office. For the actual topic, it still depends on when the individual sins. Being human doesn't mean we're automatically damned, it's our actions that do it. Quote: According to Jesus, there is no greater demonstration of love than self sacrifice to the point of death. Since God is love (1 John 4:16) and there is none greater than He, I conclude that God can and will be the one who demonstrates the greatest act of love. I cannot see God allowing a mere creation to demonstrate this in a better way than He. It would be a necessary outcome of His own nature and a necessary manifestation in any universe He created that the two greatest commandments referenced by Jesus to love God and love your neighbor would be supremely demonstrated by none other than God Himself. Jesus was God in flesh who loved the Father perfectly and He loved us completely by laying down His life for us. This is the greatest and most perfect act of love according to Jesus. If this is true, then it just might be that God had to create the universe so that the fall would be included in His plan for the very purpose of demonstrating and manifesting His perfect character: Love! To demonstrate the very greatest part of His nature of love, He would have to die for someone else. This could not be done if there was no one for whom to die and no reason to die for them. There could be no reason to die if there were no need for an atonement. There would be no need for an atonement if there were no sin. If there was no fall, there would be no sin. http://www.carm.org/questions/about-god/why-did-god-create-us-sin-world Quote: This means we are moral creatures. We care about justice and what is right. We spend millions of dollars to catch a criminal, because of this trait. Animals don't set up court systems, or even know they have a appointment with death. God has written His moral Law on our hearts and put it in our conscience. Our conscience tells us when we have done wrong. Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; God didn't make us into robots, He gave us free choice. He could have made us so we all worshiped and praised Him, but He wanted us to do it willingly. Sure, but a lot of them are born into it. Something I hear a lot in the church is that every generation has to come to God. You're not supposed to be Christian because you're family is, but because you believe and you want a relationship with God. Their arrogant because they're imperfect fictional creations. They're what their creators imagined god would be like. Those wicked men had free will, choice, and the ability to push God out of the picture. Quote: Genesis tells us that during this time: * Men’s hearts were wicked and all they thought of was evil all the time (Genesis 6:5) * The Earth was corrupt and full of violence (Genesis 6:11) * The holiness of people were gone and completely corrupted (Genesis 6:12) * The Earth was so evil it made God’s heart grieve in pain that He made them (Genesis 6:6-7) We could only imagine how vile and wicked the Earth was, to the point where God was heart-broken. Remember, since God is all-knowing, He knew that mankind was headed towards eventual self-destruction unless He intervened. But through his mercy He gave us hope by starting all over again and wiping the Earth of all evil except the righteous. So what about the babies? This is probably one of the most difficult ones to answer. We must understand that God is the sovereign creator of life and as the creator, He has every right to take life because it belongs to Him. I do not have the right to take your life because I do not own it. Furthermore, if God did not put a stop to all this evil, mankind would surely perish and you probably wouldn’t be reading this as we speak. We know that before God flooded the Earth, innocent babies were already dying from the evil and warfare. If they didn’t die young, the chances are that they probably would grow up to be evil and thus continue on with the endless cycle of mass evil. http://herculescummings.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/why-did-god-kill-innocent-babies-during-the-flood/ And I think other necessary changes to the earth were made with the Flood. We were discussing Noah, I thought? Yes, but He wuld regardless of your prayer. I'm sure it'd make Him glad to know a believer was thankful for the sun rising though. Besides just because the prayer's silly doesn't mean God doesn't make sense. Quote: Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. C. S. Lewis Satan might've answered it, or it could be a coicidence, unless the church was evil. And God can always answer a prayer later (kinda like the kid who asks 'are we there yet' until you get there. XD ) Could be. Just because a prayer or two could be coincidentle doesn't mean God doesn't answer prayers. No, but it could be satan, God or coincidence. It depends on the long-term effects of the cupcakes. Because those ones tend to be as silly and illogical as the Greek ones, and you need an evil power to be the one doing the false miracles. Who knows the long term effects on such things though? I prayed for a butterfly once, and I saw mor that summer then I ever had before, including on that day. Was it a silly prayer? Yes, but it also helped to cement my faith. I can't explain all unanswered and answered prayers, because I don't oversee all of creation. I can trust God too though. And as for confimation bias, most people do that. Like I love my little sister, but I could easily look for proof that she's an evil person, or weigh her bad actions against her good and find her wanting. Instead I weigh the things we have in common and how much I enjoy spending time with her more then I do our fights and her occasional shallowness. I do it with God because I've got an emotional investment in Him. Sure that means I'm not entirely neutral, but I really value a life with Him more then a life without Him. Thanks for the warning. ^_^ You see paradoxes, and I see reasons to trust Him and reasons for those paradoxes. I wouldn't call it callous. He has grieved, and He has suffered for our race. Plus love is only one part of His nature. Quote: Some may argue that God is supposed to be all love. Yes that is true but God is also all just. God cannot be more love than He is just. It is perfectly balanced. He must punish those that sin and he detest sin because it interrupts peace and harmony. Also, it wouldn’t make sense for God to be a judge and be unrighteous Himself. His perfection is the standard and reference to our judgment. But if He does, no matter what kinda God He is, you're at His mercy. Any proof that He's less then what you desire in a God still doesn't make Him less real. So if you were to believe, you might as well believe Him good. Quote: Although this can't be directly proven from Scripture, I believe reasonable deductions from the Biblical evidence can be made on this subject. By allowing evil to exist, God isn't merely trying to prove something to mankind, but also to all the created beings of the universe. Since people, or even the angels, won't necessarily take God's word for it on faith that some other way of life besides His works, He has allowed people to live and experience other ways of life. Here, this becomes a type of self-inflicted misery, but then people feel like blaming God for the evils their free choices brought upon them. For example, God says not to have sex before or outside of marriage relationship. But if people insist on doing so, and suffer consequences such as unwanted pregnancies, abortions, diseases, emotional upset and torment, unpleasant memories, etc., from committing adultery, fornication, etc., then whose fault is it? If God denied us freedom to sin, people would complain about not having the freedom to find out if some other way besides God's way would work. Presumably, a similar issue came up among the angels. Satan attacked God's character, and got one-third of the angels (Revelation 12:9) to side with him against God. These angels, like many of us humans, didn't trust God or have faith in God's revealed will as being loving and unselfish. God is presently allowing these spirit beings (the demons) to learn along with humanity that disobeying God's law isn't a successful or happy way to live. God may also be allowing Satan to operate in order to help us develop holy righteous character more quickly, since Christians have to learn to resist against Satan's influence. Here the analogy would be with weight-training and the concept of resistance, only there's a spiritual principle being applied here: We develop the habits of obeying by our own free choice more solidly and permanently if we have to resist more in order to develop them. God could have done away with not only Satan, but Adam and Eve also after they sinned. But He decided in advance that if they (the humans) did sin, He would pay the price personally for their sin. Always remember, in Christianity, God in the Person of Jesus chose to suffer like humans from the consequences of sin and living in a world cut off from God. He didn't live an easy, sheltered life in the lap of luxury. Instead, He chose to die a horribly pain and humiliating death for people (in most cases) who didn't know what He did or who actively consented to His death. Therefore, we should have faith in God that He knows what He is doing when He allows sin temporarily to exist in the universe as a temporary, unwelcome visitor. God is in the process of making beings like Himself that have 100% free will (like He does) yet will also obey His holy righteous law of love 100% of the time (like He does also) (compare Matthew 5:4 cool . This would be the main reason God allows evil to exist by deduction from the Biblical evidence. Fundamentally, we're always faced with the bottom-line of the principle as found in Isaiah 55:6-11 : "Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.' "'For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.' " (Isaiah 55:6-11, NKJV) We aren't in a position to judge God and His actions, as Job did. (Someone perplexed by this issue should consider reading Job in a modern translation). We don't know enough nor do we have His power. So let's be humble, and faithfully and patiently await the day He'll abolish all sin and Satan himself. For medication. A lot of those drugs have medicinal uses as well. Because of the parents choices, to show the world a miracle, so he child will be stonger for his or her hardship as he or she grows older, because it'll be the babies time...etc. When we're damned, it's because of a sin of ours (otherwise our sin nature would damn us). He also created us with an inherent sense of right and wrong to help guide us. Sin nature just mean we're predisposed to it, but we don't HAVE to sin. We choose to. Then we've walked away from God and we need Jesus. And sorry for the wall of text. sweatdrop
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:15 am
xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx My God does. :3 Yes, but they weren't all-powerful. Zeus could be thown into Tarturus. All you have to do is read the Percy Jackson series to see how much those gods fail. They were evil. Considering how early it was in our history, wicked men then could've meant so much more pain, evil and suffering now. Plus he didn't destroy our entire race-Noah was saved. Because if you pray for somethng, and the miracle you needed occurs, that's proof for Him. If you have a revelation of Him, that's proof ofHim. If you study the books and find it makes sense, then that's proof enough for Him. Even the odds against everything coming together the way they did is proof of some higher power. The way I see it is if there's no higher power andyou spend your whole life seeking it, and worshipping it, no harm because when everything ends in oblivion, everything's a waste. If the higher power's evil, then bad stuff will most likely happen to you no matter what you do, so again, no harm done. If the higher power's neglectful then it's a lot like if the higher power didn't exist in the first place, and if the higher power's good then all your seeking, worship and reverence is the most important thing you could be doing. Logically it's the only way you can win. Of course it really helps when you love the higher power in question more then anything, and no matter what logic said would still die a thousand deaths for that higher power. But having the logic to back it up is nice too. He created satan, who corrupted himself. Our disobedience meant death entered the world, because deah is the abscence of God, and satan corrupted some things on this earth because when we sinned he got control of it. Technically he's god of this world right now. >.< If He gets rid of all evil and satan, we die too (including Christians) because He'd destroy anything with any evil in it's nature. That's why satan's destuction is gonna have to wait until the end of the world. There are some battles being fought right now in the heart's of man. Sure satan twisted some things, but beauty's what you see the majority of the time. A sunset, snow on a branch, the first crocuses of the spring, a backlit sycamore... Or how about the animals? A cat's strength and grace, a hawk flying overhead, a pod of dolphins playing...even the ugliest or most common creatures can have a purpose. Poisenous plants can heal, dandelions actually smell good, and taste pretty great in a salad to, seagulls are great fun when you have a loaf of bread to spare (Seagull baseball xd ), the smell of the air after it rains, and the power of a storm all point to an amazing Creator. You can find something good to almost all of creation, no matter how twisted it's become. I hate the desert, but Georgia O'Keefe painted amazing scenes from it. Plus just because it can kill you doesn't mean it's not beautiful. I've got this picture hanging up of a lion killing a wildebeest because I happen to really like it. Technically it's sad, but it's also beautiful and powerful too (and I kinda hate wildebeest XD). That's the price mankind paid when we walked away from God. Some mistakes were made. Our mistake, because we ate the dang fruit and chose to try and be like Him rather then staying close to Him, and satan's fault too, for tempting us. That's why he's going burn, but that's unfortuantely why some people are gonna burn too. cry
Ancient gods were not evil. They were arrogant and petty, but not evil. And occasionally one of them would kill or torture some people, but so has YHWH.
Saving one family doesn't justify killing everybody else, even if He created them. If I had ten children and nine were loud, disobedient brats and one was good by comparison, is it alright to kill the other nine? I didn't kill one of them.
If I pray that the sun will rise the next morning, and it does, is it because God answered my prayer? If I pray that somebody dies, and he does, is it because God killed him for me?
If I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I pull through a normally fatal illness, and I do, is it because the Flying Spaghetti Monster saved me?
If I pray to YHWH that I pull through, and I don't, does that disprove him? If not, why do unanswered prayers not disprove His existence but answered prayers prove it?
And that logic only works if even a little part of you believes that such a God could exist. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that no just god would decide my fate for eternity based on how well I worshiped Him in my comparatively unbelievably small lifespan. If there is, I don't think I would want to spend an eternity with Him.
But if God is truly all-powerful and can do anything, why can't He just work around that? Or if He is all-knowing, did He not see this coming before he created man? Or why does he not then just start a new batch of humans? He has before. If He can't simply destroy Satan, then He is not all-powerful.
I'm not denying that parts of nature are beautiful. But I see nature as a reason why it's hard to believe that an intelligent, loving creator put us here for a purpose. It seems that the only reason we even survived for so long is because we can adapt.
And it was not our mistake. Eve ate the fruit. Adam ate the fruit. We didn't do anything. We weren't alive. That would mean billions of people suffering for what two people did. If a father commits a murder, do you punish his son?
And if God created us, then He is the one who made us flawed. He shouldn't punish us for it. If you put a chair together and it falls apart because you didn't build it right, is it the chair's fault?Nope, I did question a lot, but I've found a lot of answers that were to my satisfaction, and the others I trust Gd for. H'e more important to me then my unanswered questons. That's news to me. >< I think satan posessed a lot of people (like say, Hitler) and encouraged a lot of people to harm their fellow man. I also think he twisted viruses and parasites and other unpleasent things to suit his purposes. Count up all those killed by disease and fighting, and those I hold satan partly responsible for. Then there's death itself, which he ncouraged us to do as we did so it would be introduced to the world, so in that case he could be held partly responsible for all the deaths of the world. :3 Doesn't for our sake. And changed the nature of creation, which was a gift from them. It's kinda like they were responsible for the earth and the children, so like if a king and queen made a bad decision, everyone paid the price. Plus you're forgetting that babies aren't held accountably for their actions, and their sin nature so hey go to Heaven. It's only once we act on temptation that we need Him to Save us. Then why do some people become Christians. There's gotta be a reason it's held steady with a third of the world's population following it. They were like arrogant kings and queens with superpowers. For a world so well-organized, it's hard to believe those buffoons are responsible for running it. What if those nine would grow up to cause intense pain and poverty to the human race, and they were teenagers so past the point of you reaching them? Or they were gonna start a nuclear war, or do some other thing that would make you regret ever having them? Or let's make them monkeys who were extremey violent and destructive, but you had hand-raised. It's some kinda mixture between thoise two scenarios. That helped, if you meant the prayer. Maybe...probably. Nope, unless it was sincere. Then maybe te Lord intervened. Nope, because it just says He'll answer. It doesn't say the answer can't be no. Some answered prayers prove Him. Revlations can prove that He exists too, and so can seeing sense through the whole thing. Why do you get to judge God? If He's the Creator, then why shouldn't He be the judge of you? Maybe the Tribulation's His way of doing that. He probably did, though it's possible that choice means that He can't predict which way we'll decide. He promised not to, thus the rainbow (you know, the flood's the first time rain is mentioned in the Bible. There's a theory going around that before the flood, it didn't rain, which is why the first rainbow didn't appear until after the flood). He can. It's a war though, and there's hostages-us. And He dealt a nasty blow through Jesus. If everyone on this earth came to Christ, I think He's finaly destroy satan, and we could all live happily. Who do you do think put that desire to survive in us? If a mother drinks and smokes while she's pregnant, why is the baby retarded? Those two changed human nature. Plus, nobody's damned until they sinned, so technically it is our fault, even if it is in our nature. He made them perfect, but He gave Adam and Eve choice. They chose wrong. That left a mark on us. Then we get a choice. Unfortunately, the rest of us always choose wrong too. So then we need Jesus. None of us are an inanimate object, or even an animal. We're people with the choice of whether to act on our flawed design. When we sin, it's our fault.
Most likely those answers aren't going to satisfy someone who was raised in a different culture or someone who thinks logically. I'm not saying that Christianity is illogical, but there are some things, if you take the bible literally at least, that don't make logical sense.
Is there a reason to pin those things on Satan? Does it actually say that in the bible? How many people does he actually kill in the bible?
And maybe Satan is partially responsible for getting us kicked out of Eden, but God's the one who actually kicked us out.
Is it remotely fair that everyone pay the price though? The fact that a country would pay the price for its leaders' irresponsibility, isn't that wrong and unjust?
If God is truly all-powerful and did create us, He could have created us without that flaw.
And having a lot of people believe in something doesn't necessarily make it right. There are many Hindus and Muslims as well, but one of you has to be wrong, right?
They were probably arrogant because they were gods. XD
I don't care if all nine of them were thirty-four! It's never too late to reach someone. Even if it was, There would still be many solutions on my list before killing them and starting over. And they should have never gotten to that point. If I took on the responsibility of having children, it is my responsibility to parent them. Just as it is God's responsibility to keep his creations safe if He decides to create them.
The monkeys, I would still try to train them. I have a very disobedient doggie. I have yet to kick her out of the house. And I am a flawed mortal. If I raised the monkeys correctly, they wouldn't be that misbehaved. I make mistakes, but then again, I am not God.
And Adam and Eve weren't violent and destructive. They were ignorant. They made a mistake.
The sun rises and sets on its own every 24 hours, but if I pray for it to happen, it is because God made it happen? If I pray every night for the sun to rise for a year and it happens every morning, then I suddenly stop, will the sun stop rising?
If I pray that a church blows up and the next day somebody blows up a church, did God send that person? If I have been praying for a year that a church blows up and it blew up only one day, was that because God said no all year but decided to answer that prayer on my last day?
How is that not just coincidence?
And I could be completely sincere while praying to the FSM. I did one time, while making cupcakes, pop them into the oven, thinking that they would turn out ugly and mushy, pray to the FSM that they come out delicious and fluffy. And they did! That was very unlikely. Does it prove his existence?
How can you say then with absolute certainty that your god is the one taking pity on people praying to their gods and answering their prayers anyway? Many Eastern religions have lots of gods. How do you know your answered prayers isn't one of them taking pity on you?
And saying that unanswered prayers are just God's way of saying "no" is another example of confirmation bias. It doesn't logically make sense that He would so randomly entertain silly requests but let thousands of people suffer and die on purpose.
EDIT: I'm re-reading through this next part and realizing that it's very blunt. So I decided to leave it in, but it's up to you whether or not you want to read it.
I'm so critical of Him because it's paradoxes like those that make it absolutely impossible for that god to exist. It's dangerous logic like that that lead me to my ultimate conclusion that the god described by the bible can not exist.
I might one day believe that there is a higher power, but there is not one god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and full of infinite love that would so callously kill and torture.
He is only superior to me if He exists.
I mean why can He not destroy Satan without harming people?
No one can make the claim that He can do anything if He can't do that.
If He really wants us to survive, why does he allow there to be dangerous, addictive, and mind altering drugs? Why does He allow babies to be born unhealthy?
It is not our own fault. If He created us then He made it our nature. If He created us, every one or our flaws is because of how He made us. If not, He didn't create us.What am I supposed to do about that? If I could become a Christian convert instead of one raised in the faith, I would, but as it is unless I seek another religion for a while (which would really kill me) I'm stuck. And yeah, if I picked out the other arguments instead, wouldn't that be kinda foolish? Who defines logic? I think my logic is sound, but someone else could probably tear it apart. I know people who seem to have very little logic, and I know others who have better logic then I do. The people I know with the greatest logic tend to be either Christian writers like CS Lewis, or Christian converts who have it all puzzled out better then I do. Quote: Rev7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth- -Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. Leading people to their death? And satan's called the Father of Lies. He wants to lead people away from the Lord, because that would mean spiritual death. God said He would. If He wnet back on it, He would've been lying, and God makes a point of not lying. For the metaphor, yes because they could always throw the leader's out of office. For the actual topic, it still depends on when the individual sins. Being human doesn't mean we're automatically damned, it's our actions that do it. Quote: According to Jesus, there is no greater demonstration of love than self sacrifice to the point of death. Since God is love (1 John 4:16) and there is none greater than He, I conclude that God can and will be the one who demonstrates the greatest act of love. I cannot see God allowing a mere creation to demonstrate this in a better way than He. It would be a necessary outcome of His own nature and a necessary manifestation in any universe He created that the two greatest commandments referenced by Jesus to love God and love your neighbor would be supremely demonstrated by none other than God Himself. Jesus was God in flesh who loved the Father perfectly and He loved us completely by laying down His life for us. This is the greatest and most perfect act of love according to Jesus. If this is true, then it just might be that God had to create the universe so that the fall would be included in His plan for the very purpose of demonstrating and manifesting His perfect character: Love! To demonstrate the very greatest part of His nature of love, He would have to die for someone else. This could not be done if there was no one for whom to die and no reason to die for them. There could be no reason to die if there were no need for an atonement. There would be no need for an atonement if there were no sin. If there was no fall, there would be no sin. http://www.carm.org/questions/about-god/why-did-god-create-us-sin-world Quote: This means we are moral creatures. We care about justice and what is right. We spend millions of dollars to catch a criminal, because of this trait. Animals don't set up court systems, or even know they have a appointment with death. God has written His moral Law on our hearts and put it in our conscience. Our conscience tells us when we have done wrong. Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; God didn't make us into robots, He gave us free choice. He could have made us so we all worshiped and praised Him, but He wanted us to do it willingly. Sure, but a lot of them are born into it. Something I hear a lot in the church is that every generation has to come to God. You're not supposed to be Christian because you're family is, but because you believe and you want a relationship with God. Their arrogant because they're imperfect fictional creations. They're what their creators imagined god would be like. Those wicked men had free will, choice, and the ability to push God out of the picture. Quote: Genesis tells us that during this time: * Men’s hearts were wicked and all they thought of was evil all the time (Genesis 6:5) * The Earth was corrupt and full of violence (Genesis 6:11) * The holiness of people were gone and completely corrupted (Genesis 6:12) * The Earth was so evil it made God’s heart grieve in pain that He made them (Genesis 6:6-7) We could only imagine how vile and wicked the Earth was, to the point where God was heart-broken. Remember, since God is all-knowing, He knew that mankind was headed towards eventual self-destruction unless He intervened. But through his mercy He gave us hope by starting all over again and wiping the Earth of all evil except the righteous. So what about the babies? This is probably one of the most difficult ones to answer. We must understand that God is the sovereign creator of life and as the creator, He has every right to take life because it belongs to Him. I do not have the right to take your life because I do not own it. Furthermore, if God did not put a stop to all this evil, mankind would surely perish and you probably wouldn’t be reading this as we speak. We know that before God flooded the Earth, innocent babies were already dying from the evil and warfare. If they didn’t die young, the chances are that they probably would grow up to be evil and thus continue on with the endless cycle of mass evil. http://herculescummings.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/why-did-god-kill-innocent-babies-during-the-flood/ And I think other necessary changes to the earth were made with the Flood. We were discussing Noah, I thought? Yes, but He wuld regardless of your prayer. I'm sure it'd make Him glad to know a believer was thankful for the sun rising though. Besides just because the prayer's silly doesn't mean God doesn't make sense. Quote: Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. C. S. Lewis Satan might've answered it, or it could be a coicidence, unless the church was evil. And God can always answer a prayer later (kinda like the kid who asks 'are we there yet' until you get there. XD ) Could be. Just because a prayer or two could be coincidentle doesn't mean God doesn't answer prayers. No, but it could be satan, God or coincidence. It depends on the long-term effects of the cupcakes. Because those ones tend to be as silly and illogical as the Greek ones, and you need an evil power to be the one doing the false miracles. Who knows the long term effects on such things though? I prayed for a butterfly once, and I saw mor that summer then I ever had before, including on that day. Was it a silly prayer? Yes, but it also helped to cement my faith. I can't explain all unanswered and answered prayers, because I don't oversee all of creation. I can trust God too though. And as for confimation bias, most people do that. Like I love my little sister, but I could easily look for proof that she's an evil person, or weigh her bad actions against her good and find her wanting. Instead I weigh the things we have in common and how much I enjoy spending time with her more then I do our fights and her occasional shallowness. I do it with God because I've got an emotional investment in Him. Sure that means I'm not entirely neutral, but I really value a life with Him more then a life without Him. Thanks for the warning. ^_^ You see paradoxes, and I see reasons to trust Him and reasons for those paradoxes. I wouldn't call it callous. He has grieved, and He has suffered for our race. Plus love is only one part of His nature. Quote: Some may argue that God is supposed to be all love. Yes that is true but God is also all just. God cannot be more love than He is just. It is perfectly balanced. He must punish those that sin and he detest sin because it interrupts peace and harmony. Also, it wouldn’t make sense for God to be a judge and be unrighteous Himself. His perfection is the standard and reference to our judgment. But if He does, no matter what kinda God He is, you're at His mercy. Any proof that He's less then what you desire in a God still doesn't make Him less real. So if you were to believe, you might as well believe Him good. Quote: Although this can't be directly proven from Scripture, I believe reasonable deductions from the Biblical evidence can be made on this subject. By allowing evil to exist, God isn't merely trying to prove something to mankind, but also to all the created beings of the universe. Since people, or even the angels, won't necessarily take God's word for it on faith that some other way of life besides His works, He has allowed people to live and experience other ways of life. Here, this becomes a type of self-inflicted misery, but then people feel like blaming God for the evils their free choices brought upon them. For example, God says not to have sex before or outside of marriage relationship. But if people insist on doing so, and suffer consequences such as unwanted pregnancies, abortions, diseases, emotional upset and torment, unpleasant memories, etc., from committing adultery, fornication, etc., then whose fault is it? If God denied us freedom to sin, people would complain about not having the freedom to find out if some other way besides God's way would work. Presumably, a similar issue came up among the angels. Satan attacked God's character, and got one-third of the angels (Revelation 12:9) to side with him against God. These angels, like many of us humans, didn't trust God or have faith in God's revealed will as being loving and unselfish. God is presently allowing these spirit beings (the demons) to learn along with humanity that disobeying God's law isn't a successful or happy way to live. God may also be allowing Satan to operate in order to help us develop holy righteous character more quickly, since Christians have to learn to resist against Satan's influence. Here the analogy would be with weight-training and the concept of resistance, only there's a spiritual principle being applied here: We develop the habits of obeying by our own free choice more solidly and permanently if we have to resist more in order to develop them. God could have done away with not only Satan, but Adam and Eve also after they sinned. But He decided in advance that if they (the humans) did sin, He would pay the price personally for their sin. Always remember, in Christianity, God in the Person of Jesus chose to suffer like humans from the consequences of sin and living in a world cut off from God. He didn't live an easy, sheltered life in the lap of luxury. Instead, He chose to die a horribly pain and humiliating death for people (in most cases) who didn't know what He did or who actively consented to His death. Therefore, we should have faith in God that He knows what He is doing when He allows sin temporarily to exist in the universe as a temporary, unwelcome visitor. God is in the process of making beings like Himself that have 100% free will (like He does) yet will also obey His holy righteous law of love 100% of the time (like He does also) (compare Matthew 5:4 cool . This would be the main reason God allows evil to exist by deduction from the Biblical evidence. Fundamentally, we're always faced with the bottom-line of the principle as found in Isaiah 55:6-11 : "Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.' "'For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.' " (Isaiah 55:6-11, NKJV) We aren't in a position to judge God and His actions, as Job did. (Someone perplexed by this issue should consider reading Job in a modern translation). We don't know enough nor do we have His power. So let's be humble, and faithfully and patiently await the day He'll abolish all sin and Satan himself. For medication. A lot of those drugs have medicinal uses as well. Because of the parents choices, to show the world a miracle, so he child will be stonger for his or her hardship as he or she grows older, because it'll be the babies time...etc. When we're damned, it's because of a sin of ours (otherwise our sin nature would damn us). He also created us with an inherent sense of right and wrong to help guide us. Sin nature just mean we're predisposed to it, but we don't HAVE to sin. We choose to. Then we've walked away from God and we need Jesus. And sorry for the wall of text. sweatdrop
And what's the point of considering the other side of the debate? Well for persuading purposes, if you understand the other side, you can debate your point on many different levels. If you approach points opposing your view from a neutral perspective and come to the conclusion that it's wrong based on logic rather than bias, you can point out exactly what is wrong with that reasoning.
And though obviously neither of us is going to change our minds anytime soon on this subject, if you stay completely open-minded, you could change your mind.
Paradoxes like the ones I listed earlier don't make logical sense. That and if you take some of the stories literally, they couldn't possibly happen. Take Noah's Ark. First of all, Noah had to round up two of every animal. There are lots of animals. A quick search on google tells me that there are over 300,000 species of beetles alone. On top of that, not only would there be many species that he couldn't possibly know about or retrieve but some that hadn't even been discovered yet. That, and we now know that all of the earth's water travels in a cycle. Water doesn't just appear. It rains, the water evaporates from the earth, it turns into clouds, it rains again. So enough rain to flood the earth wouldn't just appear. So with what we know today, the story is scientifically impossible.
Even if you did argue that God doesn't have to obey science, why would he so easily bend its rules in such huge displays of power way back when but suddenly stop before there was a way to actually record these miracles? Why is he so silent and relies so heavily on blind faith today?
Basically, it's a story to display God's power, teach a lesson, etc. But if you take it literally, it's impossible and illogical.
Satan's intentions seem pretty subjective and up to interpretation. He seems to me mischievous at worst. Meanwhile God is actually killing people. And He's the good guy!
Perhaps He should have never threatened Adam and Eve in the first place. He's all-knowing, didn't He see that coming?
If our actions that damn us, why doesn't He make it clear what we're supposed to do? He leaves it up to preachers and Christians to tell people, yes? But from a neutral perspective, why should I listen to them over any other religious group? Because the Christians threaten me with Hell if I don't join them?
Your morals/conscience comes from society. They are far from universal.
Free will seems like a cop out to me. God punishes those who disobey Him for eternity, right? So He clearly wants people to have unquestioning obedience to Him.
Most civilizations have created some kind of god or gods. People become Christians because they have been exposed to it. People with no exposure to Christianity will not come to those same conclusions on their own. Many people have a relationship with god. Just not your god.
So you're saying that man created those gods as what they thought God should be like? Why is the same thing untrue about your own God?
If He is both all-knowing and merciful, why did He not stop the whole mess at the start? Why did He not just remove the tree?
Haha, we may have started talking about Noah, but if it's not clear yet, I have serious issues with God's parenting style.
Well, why does a good answered prayer support God's existence, but unanswered prayers, evil prayers, or prayers to other gods are either coincidence or Satan?
How do you know that your answered prayers aren't the result of confirmation bias, benevolent gods of another religion, or evil gods of another religion trying to lead you away from those gods?
Seeing more butterflies is another example of confirmation bias. Say a person goes to a psychic and is a true believer in her powers. The psychic tells him that he will have good luck that day. It could be the same as any other day, but every person who holds the door for him, every penny he finds on the floor, every red light he avoids confirms that the psychic truly saw his future.
I cut some of the stuff at the end because it's 2:00am here and it's mostly stuff we've covered before. But if there's something specifically that you want a reply to, by all means, post it.
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:37 am
I have a friend that says that God is a sadist, creating us with flaws that he knows will eventually destroy us, and he just wants to sit back, watch, and laugh.
A "god" is a symbol, something non-existent. No being can become a "god" by simply acknowledging their freedom. All "gods" in all religions, I believe, are non-existent. Now, I don't believe there isn't a greater power beyond us, I just believe that we can observe this greater force.
Nature.
Nature is the closest thing to a "god" I can think of. It keeps itself balanced, without bias or mercy. Nature itself is the greatest justice-bringer ever. Karma is a part of nature. I know I have odd views, but I would rather no one said they were stupid...
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:31 am
XxBroken_And_ShatteredxX I have a friend that says that God is a sadist, creating us with flaws that he knows will eventually destroy us, and he just wants to sit back, watch, and laugh. A "god" is a symbol, something non-existent. No being can become a "god" by simply acknowledging their freedom. All "gods" in all religions, I believe, are non-existent. Now, I don't believe there isn't a greater power beyond us, I just believe that we can observe this greater force. Nature. Nature is the closest thing to a "god" I can think of. It keeps itself balanced, without bias or mercy. Nature itself is the greatest justice-bringer ever. Karma is a part of nature. I know I have odd views, but I would rather no one said they were stupid...
It's like, have you ever played the original Sims? Making a family is fun, for a while, but there's only so much you can do with them. And after a while, you start sending them to cook with no skill points, encouraging them to set off fireworks in the living room, putting them in the pool and removing the ladders...
It's hard to resist torturing those little virtual people! The makers of the Pocket God app for the iPod obviously noticed this and made big bucks!
Aaaaanyway, if God is anything like me, than that explains a lot of things...
Also, we're in trouble.
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 5:36 pm
brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup xxEternallyBluexx brainnsoup Your god makes sense to you because you because you were raised to believe in Him, obediently and unquestioning. Christianity is full of paradoxes. God is love. Satan is evil. Yet God has killed far more people than Satan. God is all-powerful and loving, but he either can't stop the evil in the world or chooses not to. God is forgiving and merciful, but He damned humankind to an existence of suffering and sin because two of his creations disobeyed him once. The explanations to these only make sense to people who already believe and are not logical solutions.
Ancient gods were not evil. They were arrogant and petty, but not evil. And occasionally one of them would kill or torture some people, but so has YHWH.
Saving one family doesn't justify killing everybody else, even if He created them. If I had ten children and nine were loud, disobedient brats and one was good by comparison, is it alright to kill the other nine? I didn't kill one of them.
If I pray that the sun will rise the next morning, and it does, is it because God answered my prayer? If I pray that somebody dies, and he does, is it because God killed him for me?
If I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I pull through a normally fatal illness, and I do, is it because the Flying Spaghetti Monster saved me?
If I pray to YHWH that I pull through, and I don't, does that disprove him? If not, why do unanswered prayers not disprove His existence but answered prayers prove it?
And that logic only works if even a little part of you believes that such a God could exist. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that no just god would decide my fate for eternity based on how well I worshiped Him in my comparatively unbelievably small lifespan. If there is, I don't think I would want to spend an eternity with Him.
But if God is truly all-powerful and can do anything, why can't He just work around that? Or if He is all-knowing, did He not see this coming before he created man? Or why does he not then just start a new batch of humans? He has before. If He can't simply destroy Satan, then He is not all-powerful.
I'm not denying that parts of nature are beautiful. But I see nature as a reason why it's hard to believe that an intelligent, loving creator put us here for a purpose. It seems that the only reason we even survived for so long is because we can adapt.
And it was not our mistake. Eve ate the fruit. Adam ate the fruit. We didn't do anything. We weren't alive. That would mean billions of people suffering for what two people did. If a father commits a murder, do you punish his son?
And if God created us, then He is the one who made us flawed. He shouldn't punish us for it. If you put a chair together and it falls apart because you didn't build it right, is it the chair's fault? Nope, I did question a lot, but I've found a lot of answers that were to my satisfaction, and the others I trust Gd for. H'e more important to me then my unanswered questons. That's news to me. >< I think satan posessed a lot of people (like say, Hitler) and encouraged a lot of people to harm their fellow man. I also think he twisted viruses and parasites and other unpleasent things to suit his purposes. Count up all those killed by disease and fighting, and those I hold satan partly responsible for. Then there's death itself, which he ncouraged us to do as we did so it would be introduced to the world, so in that case he could be held partly responsible for all the deaths of the world. :3 Doesn't for our sake. And changed the nature of creation, which was a gift from them. It's kinda like they were responsible for the earth and the children, so like if a king and queen made a bad decision, everyone paid the price. Plus you're forgetting that babies aren't held accountably for their actions, and their sin nature so hey go to Heaven. It's only once we act on temptation that we need Him to Save us. Then why do some people become Christians. There's gotta be a reason it's held steady with a third of the world's population following it. They were like arrogant kings and queens with superpowers. For a world so well-organized, it's hard to believe those buffoons are responsible for running it. What if those nine would grow up to cause intense pain and poverty to the human race, and they were teenagers so past the point of you reaching them? Or they were gonna start a nuclear war, or do some other thing that would make you regret ever having them? Or let's make them monkeys who were extremey violent and destructive, but you had hand-raised. It's some kinda mixture between thoise two scenarios. That helped, if you meant the prayer. Maybe...probably. Nope, unless it was sincere. Then maybe te Lord intervened. Nope, because it just says He'll answer. It doesn't say the answer can't be no. Some answered prayers prove Him. Revlations can prove that He exists too, and so can seeing sense through the whole thing. Why do you get to judge God? If He's the Creator, then why shouldn't He be the judge of you? Maybe the Tribulation's His way of doing that. He probably did, though it's possible that choice means that He can't predict which way we'll decide. He promised not to, thus the rainbow (you know, the flood's the first time rain is mentioned in the Bible. There's a theory going around that before the flood, it didn't rain, which is why the first rainbow didn't appear until after the flood). He can. It's a war though, and there's hostages-us. And He dealt a nasty blow through Jesus. If everyone on this earth came to Christ, I think He's finaly destroy satan, and we could all live happily. Who do you do think put that desire to survive in us? If a mother drinks and smokes while she's pregnant, why is the baby retarded? Those two changed human nature. Plus, nobody's damned until they sinned, so technically it is our fault, even if it is in our nature. He made them perfect, but He gave Adam and Eve choice. They chose wrong. That left a mark on us. Then we get a choice. Unfortunately, the rest of us always choose wrong too. So then we need Jesus. None of us are an inanimate object, or even an animal. We're people with the choice of whether to act on our flawed design. When we sin, it's our fault.
Most likely those answers aren't going to satisfy someone who was raised in a different culture or someone who thinks logically. I'm not saying that Christianity is illogical, but there are some things, if you take the bible literally at least, that don't make logical sense.
Is there a reason to pin those things on Satan? Does it actually say that in the bible? How many people does he actually kill in the bible?
And maybe Satan is partially responsible for getting us kicked out of Eden, but God's the one who actually kicked us out.
Is it remotely fair that everyone pay the price though? The fact that a country would pay the price for its leaders' irresponsibility, isn't that wrong and unjust?
If God is truly all-powerful and did create us, He could have created us without that flaw.
And having a lot of people believe in something doesn't necessarily make it right. There are many Hindus and Muslims as well, but one of you has to be wrong, right?
They were probably arrogant because they were gods. XD
I don't care if all nine of them were thirty-four! It's never too late to reach someone. Even if it was, There would still be many solutions on my list before killing them and starting over. And they should have never gotten to that point. If I took on the responsibility of having children, it is my responsibility to parent them. Just as it is God's responsibility to keep his creations safe if He decides to create them.
The monkeys, I would still try to train them. I have a very disobedient doggie. I have yet to kick her out of the house. And I am a flawed mortal. If I raised the monkeys correctly, they wouldn't be that misbehaved. I make mistakes, but then again, I am not God.
And Adam and Eve weren't violent and destructive. They were ignorant. They made a mistake.
The sun rises and sets on its own every 24 hours, but if I pray for it to happen, it is because God made it happen? If I pray every night for the sun to rise for a year and it happens every morning, then I suddenly stop, will the sun stop rising?
If I pray that a church blows up and the next day somebody blows up a church, did God send that person? If I have been praying for a year that a church blows up and it blew up only one day, was that because God said no all year but decided to answer that prayer on my last day?
How is that not just coincidence?
And I could be completely sincere while praying to the FSM. I did one time, while making cupcakes, pop them into the oven, thinking that they would turn out ugly and mushy, pray to the FSM that they come out delicious and fluffy. And they did! That was very unlikely. Does it prove his existence?
How can you say then with absolute certainty that your god is the one taking pity on people praying to their gods and answering their prayers anyway? Many Eastern religions have lots of gods. How do you know your answered prayers isn't one of them taking pity on you?
And saying that unanswered prayers are just God's way of saying "no" is another example of confirmation bias. It doesn't logically make sense that He would so randomly entertain silly requests but let thousands of people suffer and die on purpose.
EDIT: I'm re-reading through this next part and realizing that it's very blunt. So I decided to leave it in, but it's up to you whether or not you want to read it.
I'm so critical of Him because it's paradoxes like those that make it absolutely impossible for that god to exist. It's dangerous logic like that that lead me to my ultimate conclusion that the god described by the bible can not exist.
I might one day believe that there is a higher power, but there is not one god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and full of infinite love that would so callously kill and torture.
He is only superior to me if He exists.
I mean why can He not destroy Satan without harming people?
No one can make the claim that He can do anything if He can't do that.
If He really wants us to survive, why does he allow there to be dangerous, addictive, and mind altering drugs? Why does He allow babies to be born unhealthy?
It is not our own fault. If He created us then He made it our nature. If He created us, every one or our flaws is because of how He made us. If not, He didn't create us.What am I supposed to do about that? If I could become a Christian convert instead of one raised in the faith, I would, but as it is unless I seek another religion for a while (which would really kill me) I'm stuck. And yeah, if I picked out the other arguments instead, wouldn't that be kinda foolish? Who defines logic? I think my logic is sound, but someone else could probably tear it apart. I know people who seem to have very little logic, and I know others who have better logic then I do. The people I know with the greatest logic tend to be either Christian writers like CS Lewis, or Christian converts who have it all puzzled out better then I do. Quote: Rev7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth- -Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. Leading people to their death? And satan's called the Father of Lies. He wants to lead people away from the Lord, because that would mean spiritual death. God said He would. If He wnet back on it, He would've been lying, and God makes a point of not lying. For the metaphor, yes because they could always throw the leader's out of office. For the actual topic, it still depends on when the individual sins. Being human doesn't mean we're automatically damned, it's our actions that do it. Quote: According to Jesus, there is no greater demonstration of love than self sacrifice to the point of death. Since God is love (1 John 4:16) and there is none greater than He, I conclude that God can and will be the one who demonstrates the greatest act of love. I cannot see God allowing a mere creation to demonstrate this in a better way than He. It would be a necessary outcome of His own nature and a necessary manifestation in any universe He created that the two greatest commandments referenced by Jesus to love God and love your neighbor would be supremely demonstrated by none other than God Himself. Jesus was God in flesh who loved the Father perfectly and He loved us completely by laying down His life for us. This is the greatest and most perfect act of love according to Jesus. If this is true, then it just might be that God had to create the universe so that the fall would be included in His plan for the very purpose of demonstrating and manifesting His perfect character: Love! To demonstrate the very greatest part of His nature of love, He would have to die for someone else. This could not be done if there was no one for whom to die and no reason to die for them. There could be no reason to die if there were no need for an atonement. There would be no need for an atonement if there were no sin. If there was no fall, there would be no sin. http://www.carm.org/questions/about-god/why-did-god-create-us-sin-world Quote: This means we are moral creatures. We care about justice and what is right. We spend millions of dollars to catch a criminal, because of this trait. Animals don't set up court systems, or even know they have a appointment with death. God has written His moral Law on our hearts and put it in our conscience. Our conscience tells us when we have done wrong. Romans 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; God didn't make us into robots, He gave us free choice. He could have made us so we all worshiped and praised Him, but He wanted us to do it willingly. Sure, but a lot of them are born into it. Something I hear a lot in the church is that every generation has to come to God. You're not supposed to be Christian because you're family is, but because you believe and you want a relationship with God. Their arrogant because they're imperfect fictional creations. They're what their creators imagined god would be like. Those wicked men had free will, choice, and the ability to push God out of the picture. Quote: Genesis tells us that during this time: * Men’s hearts were wicked and all they thought of was evil all the time (Genesis 6:5) * The Earth was corrupt and full of violence (Genesis 6:11) * The holiness of people were gone and completely corrupted (Genesis 6:12) * The Earth was so evil it made God’s heart grieve in pain that He made them (Genesis 6:6-7) We could only imagine how vile and wicked the Earth was, to the point where God was heart-broken. Remember, since God is all-knowing, He knew that mankind was headed towards eventual self-destruction unless He intervened. But through his mercy He gave us hope by starting all over again and wiping the Earth of all evil except the righteous. So what about the babies? This is probably one of the most difficult ones to answer. We must understand that God is the sovereign creator of life and as the creator, He has every right to take life because it belongs to Him. I do not have the right to take your life because I do not own it. Furthermore, if God did not put a stop to all this evil, mankind would surely perish and you probably wouldn’t be reading this as we speak. We know that before God flooded the Earth, innocent babies were already dying from the evil and warfare. If they didn’t die young, the chances are that they probably would grow up to be evil and thus continue on with the endless cycle of mass evil. http://herculescummings.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/why-did-god-kill-innocent-babies-during-the-flood/ And I think other necessary changes to the earth were made with the Flood. We were discussing Noah, I thought? Yes, but He wuld regardless of your prayer. I'm sure it'd make Him glad to know a believer was thankful for the sun rising though. Besides just because the prayer's silly doesn't mean God doesn't make sense. Quote: Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. C. S. Lewis Satan might've answered it, or it could be a coicidence, unless the church was evil. And God can always answer a prayer later (kinda like the kid who asks 'are we there yet' until you get there. XD ) Could be. Just because a prayer or two could be coincidentle doesn't mean God doesn't answer prayers. No, but it could be satan, God or coincidence. It depends on the long-term effects of the cupcakes. Because those ones tend to be as silly and illogical as the Greek ones, and you need an evil power to be the one doing the false miracles. Who knows the long term effects on such things though? I prayed for a butterfly once, and I saw mor that summer then I ever had before, including on that day. Was it a silly prayer? Yes, but it also helped to cement my faith. I can't explain all unanswered and answered prayers, because I don't oversee all of creation. I can trust God too though. And as for confimation bias, most people do that. Like I love my little sister, but I could easily look for proof that she's an evil person, or weigh her bad actions against her good and find her wanting. Instead I weigh the things we have in common and how much I enjoy spending time with her more then I do our fights and her occasional shallowness. I do it with God because I've got an emotional investment in Him. Sure that means I'm not entirely neutral, but I really value a life with Him more then a life without Him. Thanks for the warning. ^_^ You see paradoxes, and I see reasons to trust Him and reasons for those paradoxes. I wouldn't call it callous. He has grieved, and He has suffered for our race. Plus love is only one part of His nature. Quote: Some may argue that God is supposed to be all love. Yes that is true but God is also all just. God cannot be more love than He is just. It is perfectly balanced. He must punish those that sin and he detest sin because it interrupts peace and harmony. Also, it wouldn’t make sense for God to be a judge and be unrighteous Himself. His perfection is the standard and reference to our judgment. But if He does, no matter what kinda God He is, you're at His mercy. Any proof that He's less then what you desire in a God still doesn't make Him less real. So if you were to believe, you might as well believe Him good. Quote: Although this can't be directly proven from Scripture, I believe reasonable deductions from the Biblical evidence can be made on this subject. By allowing evil to exist, God isn't merely trying to prove something to mankind, but also to all the created beings of the universe. Since people, or even the angels, won't necessarily take God's word for it on faith that some other way of life besides His works, He has allowed people to live and experience other ways of life. Here, this becomes a type of self-inflicted misery, but then people feel like blaming God for the evils their free choices brought upon them. For example, God says not to have sex before or outside of marriage relationship. But if people insist on doing so, and suffer consequences such as unwanted pregnancies, abortions, diseases, emotional upset and torment, unpleasant memories, etc., from committing adultery, fornication, etc., then whose fault is it? If God denied us freedom to sin, people would complain about not having the freedom to find out if some other way besides God's way would work. Presumably, a similar issue came up among the angels. Satan attacked God's character, and got one-third of the angels (Revelation 12:9) to side with him against God. These angels, like many of us humans, didn't trust God or have faith in God's revealed will as being loving and unselfish. God is presently allowing these spirit beings (the demons) to learn along with humanity that disobeying God's law isn't a successful or happy way to live. God may also be allowing Satan to operate in order to help us develop holy righteous character more quickly, since Christians have to learn to resist against Satan's influence. Here the analogy would be with weight-training and the concept of resistance, only there's a spiritual principle being applied here: We develop the habits of obeying by our own free choice more solidly and permanently if we have to resist more in order to develop them. God could have done away with not only Satan, but Adam and Eve also after they sinned. But He decided in advance that if they (the humans) did sin, He would pay the price personally for their sin. Always remember, in Christianity, God in the Person of Jesus chose to suffer like humans from the consequences of sin and living in a world cut off from God. He didn't live an easy, sheltered life in the lap of luxury. Instead, He chose to die a horribly pain and humiliating death for people (in most cases) who didn't know what He did or who actively consented to His death. Therefore, we should have faith in God that He knows what He is doing when He allows sin temporarily to exist in the universe as a temporary, unwelcome visitor. God is in the process of making beings like Himself that have 100% free will (like He does) yet will also obey His holy righteous law of love 100% of the time (like He does also) (compare Matthew 5:4 cool . This would be the main reason God allows evil to exist by deduction from the Biblical evidence. Fundamentally, we're always faced with the bottom-line of the principle as found in Isaiah 55:6-11 : "Seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.' "'For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.' " (Isaiah 55:6-11, NKJV) We aren't in a position to judge God and His actions, as Job did. (Someone perplexed by this issue should consider reading Job in a modern translation). We don't know enough nor do we have His power. So let's be humble, and faithfully and patiently await the day He'll abolish all sin and Satan himself. For medication. A lot of those drugs have medicinal uses as well. Because of the parents choices, to show the world a miracle, so he child will be stonger for his or her hardship as he or she grows older, because it'll be the babies time...etc. When we're damned, it's because of a sin of ours (otherwise our sin nature would damn us). He also created us with an inherent sense of right and wrong to help guide us. Sin nature just mean we're predisposed to it, but we don't HAVE to sin. We choose to. Then we've walked away from God and we need Jesus. And sorry for the wall of text. sweatdrop
And what's the point of considering the other side of the debate? Well for persuading purposes, if you understand the other side, you can debate your point on many different levels. If you approach points opposing your view from a neutral perspective and come to the conclusion that it's wrong based on logic rather than bias, you can point out exactly what is wrong with that reasoning.
And though obviously neither of us is going to change our minds anytime soon on this subject, if you stay completely open-minded, you could change your mind.
Paradoxes like the ones I listed earlier don't make logical sense. That and if you take some of the stories literally, they couldn't possibly happen. Take Noah's Ark. First of all, Noah had to round up two of every animal. There are lots of animals. A quick search on google tells me that there are over 300,000 species of beetles alone. On top of that, not only would there be many species that he couldn't possibly know about or retrieve but some that hadn't even been discovered yet. That, and we now know that all of the earth's water travels in a cycle. Water doesn't just appear. It rains, the water evaporates from the earth, it turns into clouds, it rains again. So enough rain to flood the earth wouldn't just appear. So with what we know today, the story is scientifically impossible.
Even if you did argue that God doesn't have to obey science, why would he so easily bend its rules in such huge displays of power way back when but suddenly stop before there was a way to actually record these miracles? Why is he so silent and relies so heavily on blind faith today?
Basically, it's a story to display God's power, teach a lesson, etc. But if you take it literally, it's impossible and illogical.
Satan's intentions seem pretty subjective and up to interpretation. He seems to me mischievous at worst. Meanwhile God is actually killing people. And He's the good guy!
Perhaps He should have never threatened Adam and Eve in the first place. He's all-knowing, didn't He see that coming?
If our actions that damn us, why doesn't He make it clear what we're supposed to do? He leaves it up to preachers and Christians to tell people, yes? But from a neutral perspective, why should I listen to them over any other religious group? Because the Christians threaten me with Hell if I don't join them?
Your morals/conscience comes from society. They are far from universal.
Free will seems like a cop out to me. God punishes those who disobey Him for eternity, right? So He clearly wants people to have unquestioning obedience to Him.
Most civilizations have created some kind of god or gods. People become Christians because they have been exposed to it. People with no exposure to Christianity will not come to those same conclusions on their own. Many people have a relationship with god. Just not your god.
So you're saying that man created those gods as what they thought God should be like? Why is the same thing untrue about your own God?
If He is both all-knowing and merciful, why did He not stop the whole mess at the start? Why did He not just remove the tree?
Haha, we may have started talking about Noah, but if it's not clear yet, I have serious issues with God's parenting style.
Well, why does a good answered prayer support God's existence, but unanswered prayers, evil prayers, or prayers to other gods are either coincidence or Satan?
How do you know that your answered prayers aren't the result of confirmation bias, benevolent gods of another religion, or evil gods of another religion trying to lead you away from those gods?
Seeing more butterflies is another example of confirmation bias. Say a person goes to a psychic and is a true believer in her powers. The psychic tells him that he will have good luck that day. It could be the same as any other day, but every person who holds the door for him, every penny he finds on the floor, every red light he avoids confirms that the psychic truly saw his future.
I cut some of the stuff at the end because it's 2:00am here and it's mostly stuff we've covered before. But if there's something specifically that you want a reply to, by all means, post it.Here's the thing though-I don't want to change my mind. The minute I decide there's no God and life has no purpose, is the minute I look up the least painful way to die and do just that. I'd leave a note for my mom and little sister, but there's nothing really except knowing there's a God and my life has a purpose that keeps me tied to this earth. This site has a a lot of links that show how it's Noah's Ark could work: http://www.rationalchristianity.net/ark_feasible.html There's also different theories like the area where Noah lived was flooded, but not the rest of the planet. I think the story's plausible though. Some things that God did back then were connected with science, but just because man can explain something doesn't mean it's any less miraculous. And there are still miracles, but you have to realize the major ones did tend to be anywhere from years to centuries apart. We could be in a dry spot (though a lot of Christians are expecting the end of the world. That'll be big ) The minor ones people tend to rationalize away. I think we've been over this before, but let's see....They're both up to interpretation, but if one sent His Son to die for us, and the other seems to decieve with the intention of harming us, who do you think's on our side? Especially when the former is greaer and could've killed all of mankind off in a heart beat, but instead works for our benefit. Warned, and there had to be choice or it would've been enslavement. If we didn't hve choice, it's likely we'd be like animals. He does-we have a conscience and the Holy Spirit, the ability to pray, and the majority of the world is gaining access to Bibles. And there's always the believer who pops out of nowhere because they have a revelation of Jesus. No, because He loves us. That's why the most sincere belivers join. Then God wouldn't make them laws. He's not punishing people-it's their choice. Good flows from God, and the abscence of Him is why you get a place like Hell. When people choose not to be with Him, they end up going where He's not, so naturally it's an extraordinarily uncomfortable and painful place. Then why are there books about Muslims and others who have, out of nowhere, had a revelation of Jesus? Because a god I'd be comfortable with is one who'd provide me with anything I want, not have any demands on me, wouldn't do anything bad to non-believers, wouldn't care whether people were gay, was elemental, had a great love of animals, who I didn't owe anything to. Because He didn't just want a bunch of animals. And I don't, because I blame mankind and satan, not God, and because I happen to think He can do whatever He likes with His creation. Faith. Faith, and because those other religions have so many holes it's not funny. Plus I don't know of any evil gods in other religions, and there's too many coincideces. How do you know my seein five butterflies the summer I prayed for them when previously I might have seen one isn't proof of Him? There's no way to prove which one of us is 100% correct. That's fine. You do know that since so much of this depends on interpretation I'm proably never gonna prove anything to you, and vice verse, right?
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 6:22 pm
A person can not EVER become a GOD!!!
I believe a god must come from the higher forces. This does not mean men are not derived from this force, but there is a different concentration. Gods may be capable of taking on flesh, but it doesn't happen often, and I myself do not beleive in such things. The belief in a god makes the god real.
This is what gives pagans bad names. This idea of "lightning from fingertips" magic is preposterous.
Now lets look at the source of this information. A TV show, but not any TV show, a cartoon. I apologize for my aggression, but do you really wish for us to take this seriously? Not all you see on TV is accurate.
But aside, it is an interesting question, but a question I'm sure you knew the answer to prior.
To answer the real question...what makes a god. Mericals are cheap tricks and prayer is a bonus. The only true thing required to make a god is the belief that it is a god. That's how cults are formed thinking men are gods, and if it is real for someone, it is just as real as any god.
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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 7:22 am
zabazor A person can not EVER become a GOD!!! Proof. Quote: I believe a god must come from the higher forces.[And what is this higher force. Quote: This does not mean men are not derived from this force, but there is a different concentration. Why is this concentration fixed. Quote: Gods may be capable of taking on flesh, but it doesn't happen often, and I myself do not beleive in such things. And because you don't believe this, we should agree with you why? Quote: The belief in a god makes the god real. Abrahamic and even Hellenistic religions would disagree with you on this one. Quote: This is what gives pagans bad names. This idea of "lightning from fingertips" magic is preposterous. What belief in becoming a god? You know there are Hindu based religions that believe that becoming a god is a possibility in reincarnation Quote: Now lets look at the source of this information. A TV show, but not any TV show, a cartoon. I apologize for my aggression, but do you really wish for us to take this seriously? Not all you see on TV is accurate. Wait what? Where is this coming from and what does this have to do with this topic? Quote: But aside, it is an interesting question, but a question I'm sure you knew the answer to prior. Why? Quote: To answer the real question...what makes a god. Mericals are cheap tricks and prayer is a bonus. The only true thing required to make a god is the belief that it is a god. That's how cults are formed thinking men are gods, and if it is real for someone, it is just as real as any god. Why is belief all that's need to make something/one a god? I have not seen any reason why I should accept this assertion. Especially when you contradicted yourself by saying that man cannot become god but all that's needed to make a god is belief.
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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:59 pm
xxEternallyBluexx Here's the thing though-I don't want to change my mind. The minute I decide there's no God and life has no purpose, is the minute I look up the least painful way to die and do just that. I'd leave a note for my mom and little sister, but there's nothing really except knowing there's a God and my life has a purpose that keeps me tied to this earth. This site has a a lot of links that show how it's Noah's Ark could work: http://www.rationalchristianity.net/ark_feasible.htmlThere's also different theories like the area where Noah lived was flooded, but not the rest of the planet. I think the story's plausible though. Some things that God did back then were connected with science, but just because man can explain something doesn't mean it's any less miraculous. And there are still miracles, but you have to realize the major ones did tend to be anywhere from years to centuries apart. We could be in a dry spot (though a lot of Christians are expecting the end of the world. That'll be big ) The minor ones people tend to rationalize away. I think we've been over this before, but let's see....They're both up to interpretation, but if one sent His Son to die for us, and the other seems to decieve with the intention of harming us, who do you think's on our side? Especially when the former is greaer and could've killed all of mankind off in a heart beat, but instead works for our benefit. Warned, and there had to be choice or it would've been enslavement. If we didn't hve choice, it's likely we'd be like animals. He does-we have a conscience and the Holy Spirit, the ability to pray, and the majority of the world is gaining access to Bibles. And there's always the believer who pops out of nowhere because they have a revelation of Jesus. No, because He loves us. That's why the most sincere belivers join. Then God wouldn't make them laws. He's not punishing people-it's their choice. Good flows from God, and the abscence of Him is why you get a place like Hell. When people choose not to be with Him, they end up going where He's not, so naturally it's an extraordinarily uncomfortable and painful place. Then why are there books about Muslims and others who have, out of nowhere, had a revelation of Jesus? Because a god I'd be comfortable with is one who'd provide me with anything I want, not have any demands on me, wouldn't do anything bad to non-believers, wouldn't care whether people were gay, was elemental, had a great love of animals, who I didn't owe anything to. Because He didn't just want a bunch of animals. And I don't, because I blame mankind and satan, not God, and because I happen to think He can do whatever He likes with His creation. Faith. Faith, and because those other religions have so many holes it's not funny. Plus I don't know of any evil gods in other religions, and there's too many coincideces. How do you know my seein five butterflies the summer I prayed for them when previously I might have seen one isn't proof of Him? There's no way to prove which one of us is 100% correct. That's fine. You do know that since so much of this depends on interpretation I'm proably never gonna prove anything to you, and vice verse, right?
I've struggled with the ethics of debating theism before for that exact reason. This is a thread I made in the Gaian Atheists United guild about that exact topic. I'm pretty sure the guild is public, so you should be able to read it. It's why I bring my debates here instead of in real life.
I'm not going to go into detail on the things wrong with the site, but few of their arguments seemed very solid and in general they seem to require a lot of faith. If you want detailed responses, you can always make a separate thread on the possibility of Noah's Ark. A much more plausible answer for why the story doesn't make sense with what we now know of the world is that the people piecing together the details of the story had a limited understanding of how the world works. This is why most Christians I know recognize the story as little more than a teaching device.
Why would God be so eager to make himself known then though and be so silent now? It might make more sense if He did not want us to know/worship Him, but He clearly expects both of those things from us.
It is not a bad thing that people rationalize away minor miracles because there usually is a rational explanation. And if there is a rational explanation for a miracle, whether it was indeed caused by God or not, it is unreasonable to assume that it was.
I'm going to try to sum up a lot of the ideas that I've posted in a clear, organized way.
Let's assume for a moment that there is a God who has existed forever and always will exist. This God created everything that has ever existed. Factor in that this God is all-knowing. It knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. So this God has created everything and knows the exact consequence for everything He creates and all of the infinite consequences of those consequences. If that is true, that everything in existence, good or bad, is His fault. Our mistakes our His mistakes, because He created us knowing that we would make them. Anything that Satan does, He has done, because He created him.
That is why I believe that anything bad that has happened in the world is His fault, if He did exits.
With that reasoning, I say that He should not have had to have His son die because He could have prevented needing a savior.
And He clearly wants us to be slaves. He obviously wants to be known and worshiped because any person that does not know and worship Him is sentenced to a life of unimaginable suffering and torture in Hell. I know we've debated this, so I'll organize my exact thoughts on this too.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the argument I keep getting against the fact that God does this out of spite is that humans with sin can not exist in Heaven because of there sin. The only way to be saved by sin is through Him. The only alternative to Heaven to those with any sin (meaning that regardless of the lives they have led, they are sinful because they did not choose Him), is Hell. For eternity. And this is all despite the fact that He loves each and every one of us more than we can ever imagine and wants us to be saved. With my reasoning before, I believe that a truly perfect God could make it so that we would not need saving. But regardless, at no point does He try to tweak His paradise so that we, the sinful, may live in it. No where does He attempt to create another afterlife for the sinful, depending on personal interpretation. These all seem to be little more than mistakes by God. But God doesn't make mistakes.
No one would choose to go to Hell. Even the teenage angst-theists who claim they would prefer Hell to living with an unjust God would almost certainly praise Him if it meant escaping Hell. People are unknowingly sentencing themselves to Hell because they are flawed which is ultimately God's fault. This also means that anybody who was not exposed to Christianity or did not blindly guess that Christianity was the right religion suffer as well because they were not saved from sin, right?
I can reach no other conclusion that God is either spiteful or fallible if Hell is true.
But there's no reason to guess that Christianity is the true religion and that all of the others are false. Other religions can explain everything you can. Many of them provide more reasonable explanations and/or require less blind faith. So can psychology, biology, and many other "ologies". And with no divine intervention from God, except by those who desperately wish to see it, there's no reason to assume that Christianity is the true religion.
Isn't Jesus a prophet in Islam? Also, I've yet to hear of any case of someone with no exposure to Christianity coming to the revelation that they should follow Christianity, let alone a believable one.
For the reasons above, I believe that He very much does want mindless slaves. Also, anything that mankind, Satan, or anything else in existence does is ultimately His fault. If He treats His creations with cruelty or neglect, doesn't that make Him cruel or neglectful?
Faith may be fine for you, but faith is not reason. In my mind, it is like saying that there is no reason to believe that your god is not created by man other than that you'd really like it not to be true.
I feel that you are viewing all other religions through Christian goggles.
Christianity is full of holes and paradoxes that you choose not to see or find complicated rationalizations for. I know I'm being a little condescending, but it's not fair to make such incredible excuses for your own religion and scrutinize others based on Christianity's expectations.
I know, but putting my ideas into words like this helps me solidify and organize them. It makes my own beliefs stronger and more detailed. Debating like this improves my skills in persuading. Also, I always like having my own perception of reality questioned.
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