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Many other people are working hard trying to make it better, and often succeeding. All too often the people trying to block human progress are religious zealots like yourself.
Many other people are working hard trying to make it better, and often succeeding. All too often the people trying to block human progress are religious zealots like yourself.
Step out into the real world, and you'll see it's not a better place. If everyone followed God's way, it would be. Everyone would put the needs of others ahead of themselves and love unconditionally. Sinful men can only love conditionally.
Step out into the real world, and you'll see it's not a better place. If everyone followed God's way, it would be. Everyone would put the needs of others ahead of themselves and love unconditionally. Sinful men can only love conditionally.
So I guess your God is conditional then. He obviously doesn't love everyone unconditionally, or he wouldn't burn them in hellfire for eternity for not worshipping him. Sounds like a condition to me.
It as only after Adam sinned and God brought about the curse He said would come should they eat of the forbidden fruit, that death entered into the human race. Consequent to that event, humanity became susceptible to disease and pathetic. God was only making good on His promise that should Adam break this only commandment then "to die shall you be dying" will be invoked. Adam agreed to it.
If that were true then god chose to subject humanity to suffering and misery for countless generations and billions of people (including innocent newborns who had no part in the Fall) when he had an infinite repertoire of less painful alternatives available to him -- not to mention an infinite repertoire of how he could have made humanity and the rules and regulations and penalties he could have promulgated. He could for instance simply decide that fornication is okay, or made people to have no interest in it in the first place. Or he could have decided that wearing mixed fabrics was okay. Talk about not picking your battles!
You are basically saying that god is a sadist in that he chooses human suffering and punishment over protection and guidance. If your child "insisted" on putting his hand on a hot stove, you could say he "agreed to it" and that the consequences were his choice and explained in advance ... or you could avoid being accused of neglect and do the right thing, intervene before he hurts himself and patiently train him to avoid hurting himself. Most parents would do that much, even though, unlike god, they had no choice in how they made the child and didn't have the power, like god would, to make the child any way they wanted the child to be in the first place.
God would also in your scenario have to be a sadist in that he made us as we are and then rejects us for being as we are. Even if you argue we weren't that way before the Fall, it is obvious that Adam and Eve were destined to eat of the forbidden fruit anyway. All this BS over a piece of fruit?!
Your god is not god in the conventional sense in that he has limitations on what he knows and/or how he can choose to intervene and/or is limited in his compassion and mercy beyond what even some humans are capable of producing. And all this mayhem is a result of the desires and weaknesses he chose to bestow on humanity and the rules and penalties he chose to put in place despite our obvious inability to follow them assiduously even when we try very hard to do so.
In your favor, you believe in universal reconciliation, but even there, you have to account for human suffering in the meantime. I can't imagine that you'd be okay with your loved ones being sentenced to torture on the rack simply because you believe that they will eventually be released, healed and sent on their way, never to be tortured again.
Of course I don't believe the legends in the first place. I don't hold a god who doesn't exist responsible for the human condition. I am simply arguing from your framework of understanding and belief to show how it is self-inconsistent. Either god loves and cares or he doesn't. If he condemns humanity for it being human, is willing to allow death into the picture for any reason then he is callously ignoring human pain and suffering and loss and grief, even inflicting it effectively by his own actions and policies.
You creationists dont understand how natural phenomena can organize things.
Does anyone design the coastline? Coves, headlands, beaches. These are changed by a few variables. If you are on a beach and see a neat line of debris at the high tide mark, or intricate brqnching rivulets in the Sand...do you look adound for someone lining them up or do you realise this pattern results from natural phenomena.
So I guess your God is conditional then. He obviously doesn't love everyone unconditionally, or he wouldn't burn them in hellfire for eternity for not worshipping him. Sounds like a condition to me.
A very good point. I hadn't thought of that. Bravo!
Evolution works with what it has...vs a designer can invent something and apply it all over. When solar panels were invented we could take those same panels and have them appear on cars, homes, boats, even airplanes.
Evolution produced the complex molluscan eye and the vertebrate eye. Because the nerve in the vertebrate eye enters from the back...it causes blind spots. A designer upon inventing a better eye would probably have phased out the vertebrate eye. Our brains fill in these blind spots, so we do ok...well enough to survive and reproduce in todays environment dexpite this flaw.
You creationists dont understand how natural phenomena can organize things.
Does anyone design the coastline? Coves, headlands, beaches. These are changed by a few variables. If you are on a beach and see a neat line of debris at the high tide mark, or intricate brqnching rivulets in the Sand...do you look adound for someone lining them up or do you realise this pattern results from natural phenomena.
In that beautiful profound poetic book, "Job" is stuck in a very difficult life situation, pondering the nature of God's purposes and acts ….
Toward the end of the book, God directly answers Job,
"Where were YOU during the Initial Conditions of the Big Bang … ???" -- 38: ff
So I guess your God is conditional then. He obviously doesn't love everyone unconditionally, or he wouldn't burn them in hellfire for eternity for not worshipping him. Sounds like a condition to me.
Umm no:
"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
2 Peter 3:9
He has no desire for anyone to go to hell. But man in all his stupidity chooses that path. God just can't win with skeptics like you. IF He does nothing to wipe out evil and sin, you blame Him. If He doesn't allow sinners to exist without judgement, then you blame Him.
Would you say your parents didn't love you if you stubbornly refused their pleas not to walk off the edge of the cliff? Blaming God is like blaming the parents. They should have chained, tied up their kid to prevent his free will.
Last edited by jeffbase40; 12-02-2015 at 11:55 AM..
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