If God unconditionally loves all sinners, why all this talk of vengeance?
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Personal responsibility. You know, people used to have that and it was taught by the parents to the children. God gives people a choice. How disappointed He must be these days.
He created me without asking me and then just wants me to be his slave. (and if you're not, I'll do something really bad to you) That's not a choice, that's blackmail. I do not want to be a slave. Period.
It would be like if we now created a bunch of people and made them slaves. I don't think we consider that ethical (I hope not).
Last edited by LoveWisdom; 06-11-2014 at 07:01 PM..
If God said: I am so sorry that you have to go to hell.
He didn't. It is more like "I am so sorry you chose to go to hell". Why do people always want to blame others for their own actions. I know, "If he is God, he can make us......" If he makes us then we didn't choose. If he makes us and we didn't choose we are like dumb animals with no free will. We have the choice. If we don't choose correctly then that's our fault.
That MIGHT be the case if God were actually here doing his thing and visible for all to see. But God is hiding, forcing people to believe strictly on faith alone - and not everyone is wired to do that. I'm certainly not. I can't MAKE myself believe, I can't MAKE myself literally LOVE a supernatural being that, rationally, I know may not even exist - and likely does not.
THAT is not my fault. It is no more my fault than if I had cancer or black skin or if I had been born in Toledo. I don't get to CHOOSE whether or not to believe, whether or not I go to hell. My brain works as it does and I can't reprogram myself to just let go of logic and rationality to embrace myth and superstition. That is, even if I WANTED to do such a thing.
My feeling on it, anyway, is that if God really does exist, he really WILL be fair, just, and loving ... and isn't going to dump good people into a pit of fire simply for not picking the right cult to join or believing in the wrong god (or disbelieving all of them). What a ridiculous and malicious concept to begin with, and it reeks of human control and coersion - to get the masses to obey not a God, but the churches and priests who lead them.
The idea of hell for not believing is simply moronic. Period. It stinks of ancient superstitions and the ever-present fear-mongering, a discipline of which religion has always excelled. Believe in God but follow my decrees, join my cult, worship my god, and you'll be fine. Don't ... and the consequences are your eternal soul. Amazing that people who are surrounded by rationality and the sum of all human knowledge just a mouse click away still believes in this trite nonsense.
God isn't going to save all men. The Bible clearly says that. Do you realize that God hates some people?
LOL! Strange, isn't it, that you speak of petty and negative emotions when it comes to describing your god. And you don't have the faintest idea what that implies and portends. I suppose even God himself warned that he was a jealous god, a vengeful god.
And these are emotions which you find to be part of perfection, do you? Hate? SERIOUSLY?!
Do you even grasp what you're typing? You're portraying your god to be some indignant, self-indulgent child who's only solution to every problem is to kill and destroy - just like a tantrum-throwing child smashing his own toys because they didn't work precisely as the commercials claimed.
If there was ever proof that Yahweh is a man-made Hebrew creation, your portrayal of what God is and what God feels does the trick. There is no perfection in hatred, no dignity in jealousy, no nobility in vengeance. Yet people like you expect me to see your God as precisely that while describing him in a diametrically opposite fashion.
It is a LAUGHABLE paradigm, good sir ... one I'm sure to be chuckling about for some hours to come.
That MIGHT be the case if God were actually here doing his thing and visible for all to see. But God is hiding, forcing people to believe strictly on faith alone - and not everyone is wired to do that. I'm certainly not. I can't MAKE myself believe, I can't MAKE myself literally LOVE a supernatural being that, rationally, I know may not even exist - and likely does not.
THAT is not my fault. It is no more my fault than if I had cancer or black skin or if I had been born in Toledo. I don't get to CHOOSE whether or not to believe, whether or not I go to hell. My brain works as it does and I can't reprogram myself to just let go of logic and rationality to embrace myth and superstition. That is, even if I WANTED to do such a thing.
Yes, God created some people with the lack of ability to believe and then says that you can only be saved if you can believe. Not very nice. (A close friend of mine was also "made" this way and no Christian will tell me that he is CHOOSING not to believe. That's just talking out of ignorance, out of not understanding human nature and the way we were made).
Yep, and he will take your life away WITHOUT asking you and you can't do anything about it.
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Originally Posted by LoveWisdom
and then just wants me to be his slave. (and if you're not, I'll do something really bad to you) That's not a choice, that's blackmail. I do not want to be a slave. Period.
How conveniently you ignore the flip side?
God also says that if you TRY to follow my path, I will reward you with heaven and eternal life. God also says if you make mistakes and then honestly repent, I will forgive you.
God simply has prescribed the right way of doing things to meet your desires and refrain from some of the stuff. If you study carefully, all the stuff that God recommends for humans to do is in a greater benefit for entire humanity. God does not want you to suffer - God simply tests you to see if you try to live your life according to God's recommendation.
It's like, when you are in a test and there are four answer choices, you pick the best possible choice to avoid being failed. Yes, we are in a test, and the choice is your's whether you want to pick the best choice and try to pass the test or ignore to quit.
If there was no death, then yeah, I would think the same as you do and lived forever - carefree.
But, since there is death, I am conscious of God.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LoveWisdom
It would be like if we now created a bunch of people and made them slaves. I don't think we consider that ethical (I hope not).
When a man creates a chair, does he ask the chair whether it's ethical to create you? God has created you, the choice is yours whether you want to play smart and obey him to fry the bigger fish at the end or live this short, very short life in ignorance and be sad at the end?
God not only loves all mankind, He is even fond of all mankind:
Tit 3:4 Yet when the kindness and fondness for humanity of our Saviour, God, made its advent,
That being the case, how are we to understand "Jacob I love yet Esau I hate"? and "Luk_14:26 If anyone is coming to Me and is not hating his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and still more his soul besides, he can not be My disciple."?
First of all, Jesus would not tell His disciples to LITERALLY hate their father, mother, wife and children any more then He expected them to literally eat His body and literally drink His blood. He was telling them that if they want to be His disciples that they were to GIVE PRECEDENCE to Him and His ministry.
God did not LITERALLY hate Esau. He gave precedence to Jacob in blessing Jacob with the first-born blessing. Later on He greatly blessed Esau.
God has given us His word that "He will have all mankind (literally, all humans) to be saved and come into a realization of the truth" (1 Tim.2:4-6). If God can't keep His word on this then we can't trust Him to keep His word in saving "especially them that believe" (1 Tim.4:10) now or in the future.
Moses created YHWH, and he is INCREDIBLY evil, but Moses made the laws stating that YHWH take credit for all things "Godly" and good. That's why, in the Bible, you have a God who is apparently good, and, yet, so evil. It's because YHWH take credit for everything. Jesus didn't break this law either. Jesus made the law that we are all to love YHWH, the immoral God of terrorism.
God also says that if you TRY to follow my path, I will reward you with heaven and eternal life. God also says if you make mistakes and then honestly repent, I will forgive you.
And everything is on God's terms. Even the Heaven he creates is HIS heaven and we don't get a say. Even a well cared for slave is still a slave. The fact that God neither wants or cares about our opinions, about our desires, shows that his love is an empty love, as hollow as a rotted log. Because there is no respect contained within that love, none whatsoever. Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not.
As for honestly repenting, heh, what about sociopaths? Many of them really do not feel guilt when they've commited a sin. They cannot honestly feel bad and thus seek forgiveness. Many of them don't even think they've done something wrong and will rationalize how it wasn't their fault. I suppose they, like atheists who simply cannot make themselves believe, are just doomed to torture. Oh well, I guess.
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Originally Posted by ll0OoO0ll
If you study carefully, all the stuff that God recommends for humans to do is in a greater benefit for entire humanity.
So I can assume then that if I put tassles on the four corners of my cloak, all of humanity will benefit from that. Right?
Seriously though, most of the stuff that God recommends has caused all kinds of oppression, human rights violations, wrongful imprisonment, lynch mobs and stake burnings - history is replete with this garbage, especially during times of plague and famine.
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Originally Posted by ll0OoO0ll
God does not want you to suffer - God simply tests you to see if you try to live your life according to God's recommendation.
I personally know that's a lie ... because my suffering prevents me from really living my life at all much less how God wants me to. I couldn't sin even if I wanted to. Besides, omniscient gods don't need to "test" their followers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ll0OoO0ll
It's like, when you are in a test and there are four answer choices, you pick the best possible choice to avoid being failed. Yes, we are in a test, and the choice is your's whether you want to pick the best choice and try to pass the test or ignore to quit.
Omniscient gods do not need to "test" their followers. It's both ridiculous and redundant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ll0OoO0ll
When a man creates a chair, does he ask the chair whether it's ethical to create you? God has created you, the choice is yours whether you want to play smart and obey him to fry the bigger fish at the end or live this short, very short life in ignorance and be sad at the end?
A chair is not a sentient being with its own wants, desires, dreams, and aspirations. A chair is just a tool that people use to plant their butts into. A chair does not have dreams of becoming a couch nor does it desire that Uncle Bob take a shower because his butt stinks.
Humans, on the other hand, being who and what we are, deserve more than eternal slavery to a maliciously loving (but non-respecting) deity. We are not chairs made of wood with only one real purpose.
When we create a "test tube baby" do we have the right to do with it what we want? To enslave it? Torture it? Kill it whenever we want? Because it is the exact same concept and no, being humans and God being God does NOT significantly change the implications. Because we respect life, as a general rule, we cannot simply torture, enslave, kill, or abuse a human being just because he was created in a laboratory rather than being born naturally. Why would I want to believe in, much less worship, a God who does not have that same ideal that life - human life especially - is sacred?
Yep, and he will take your life away WITHOUT asking you and you can't do anything about it.
Exactly, I am trapped and he is a bully... praise god for that
When a man creates a chair, does he ask the chair whether it's ethical to create you? God has created you, the choice is yours whether you want to play smart and obey him to fry the bigger fish at the end or live this short, very short life in ignorance and be sad at the end?
Here is the difference. The chair is not aware of anything, doesn't suffer, doesn't feel, doesn't know what he is missing. Doesn't suffer because of having unmet desires. That's why it's ethical to create it and to do whatever you want with it.
It's a different story when you create a being with desires and will and ability to suffer.
And if even I have the basic sense of decency and kindness, I am sure the real God has too. And he wouldn't be acting barbarically like the God of the Bible does.
I think it's time to leave the God of the ancient people, who lived in ancient times and created a barbaric idea of a god, and it's time to update our idea of a god. Which will make it resemble the truth a bit more.
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