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Creating the potential is the not same thing as creating something yourself.
Of course it is old fruit! If I leave a loaded gun on the table in a room where your five-year old son is playing then leave the room and your five-year old picks up the gun and shoots himself, who do you think the law would hold responsible?? Would YOU hold me responsible for the death of your son??? After all, I didn't create the gun, I didn't even know that your child was going to pick the gun up and kill himself ...but I guarantee you that you would be calling for my head - because what I did was create the 'potential' for disaster and therefore, the law and you, would hold me responsible.
Now how does your god fair in this scenario.
He created the 'gun' (or whatever potential it is).
He KNEW that leaving the 'gun' on the table would result in your child picking the gun up.
He KNEW that your child would be killed.
So if the scenario would hold me responsible why does your god get a free pass, when your god was in control of every second of the event and I was not.
I think the OP was talking about the Christian god? You appear to subscribe to a different idea of god than most Christians so I am not sure you are addressing the OP really.
Because most Christians appear to think of god as an ALL powerful being of infinite capability and resource. Such a god would not "need help". Your god might. The Christian god does not.
Alas for both however no one, least of all you or any Christian on this forum, has substantiated the existence of these gods one iota.
All we get around here is the occasional new ager linguistically defining god into existence through the misuse of language. Or people like JeffBase40 who go around declaring over and over again there are over 100 proofs of god.... before giving one of his 10 or 20 stock cop out excuses why today is not the day he will be telling you what even ONE of them actually is.
This. Is definitely a perspective thing. From my end, I see atheists and fundamentalists setting up an overly literal interpretation of what God is. The fundamentalists don't care because their minds are literal. The atheists like this, because it's an easy straw man. So let me start by saying, that isn't what everyone believes.
Omnipotent is a word that is essentially meaningless. Consider the question "can God make something so heavy that he cannot lift it?" If God is restrained by logic, if we say yes or no, there is a limit to what God can do. If God can't, there is something beyond God to do. If God can, this means God has at least self-imposed limits. All this assumes of course that Godis constrained by logic.
So let's be real. It isn't about God needing help. If God needs help, worship, company, or anything else we would think that God is a crappy God. We would think that. But that's not what I actually see in the world.
1 Corinthians 3:9 says that we are coworkers in God's service, "God's field, God's building." Is tempting to think of us as beings that just came about because of God, and that God's only relationship with us is to punish us. But this not only makes no sense, but it completely distorts the nature of God. Why make a God that puts his own son on the cross? Oh hey, let me elaborate on this, God is not being a straight up sadist, dogma of the church is that while Jesus is God's son, Jesus is actually synonymous with God. So God is putting himself on the cross. For us? Why? We didn't do anything worthy of that. This doesn't match up with the belief that God is a sick bastard meant to punish us. Because eventually you realize that this is a lie.
The Jews were rewarded when they followed God's law, and punished when they disobeyed. That was the story of the old testament. But it's a lie. If as you say, God is omnipotent, what was God doing punishing a bunch of puny Earth males and females? Answer: the punishment wasn't real. Oh yes, it seemed real. But there are a number of statements I want to lay on you.
1. God is One. (This is asserted several times)
2. We are given 10 Commandments, which later evolved into 600+ laws.
3. However, when pressed what the greatest were Jesus says "love God with all your heart, soul, strength, mind" and "love your neighbor as your self."
4. These are different from the laws about kosher eating. They are different from the laws about murder or theft. As in, sure follow those, but this is sort of a summary of laws.
5. Jesus went on, not to become a member of the Pharisees and devote his life to seeing God, but to sacrifice his life for all people. Does this mean Jesus betrayed his core teaching?
6. No.
7. Jesus's core teaching was to love God fully, and to love others as yourself. Because they ARE yourself. Likewise, if he was sacricing himself to people, if he was loving God fully, what does that make them?
This is not mainstream. But it is what the Bible appears to be saying. That God is with us. Far from a sick God, that God has a plan for us, and the only ones hurting us is ourselves.
This. Is definitely a perspective thing. From my end, I see atheists and fundamentalists setting up an overly literal interpretation of what God is.
Thankfully I do none of this. I am merely commenting on what the majority of Christians appear to think in my experience. And they appear to think god has infinite power and ability.
We are talking about an intelligent intentional agent with the ability to create our entire universe and everything in it. Such a god certainly does not need much "help" let alone from anything as relatively pathetic as Humans.
But as I said, it is not my issue to work out the details of that nonsense. Nor is it my problem to consider, let alone answer, pointless navel gazing like "can God make something so heavy that he cannot lift it?". And most of your sermon above is empty white noise to me because I see no reason to think there is a god at all. Pondering what it's plan for us may or may not be, and how well we are fitting into it.... is about as meaningful to me as the people who are currently debating who would win between the Star Ship Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon in a space battle.
The Christians have certainly shown me no basis for thinking there is a god. And you MOST certainly never have.
White noise? That's your brain's mental filter tuning out anything that doesn't fit into a nice neat existential box. mental filter
Perhaps you might wanna look again.
Let me lay it for you nice and easy.
God sacrificed his life for you. And yet God is not dead. Did God cheat? No. Then how does this universe still exist? Because we are God. All of us, even the guy whose white noise (brain fog) actively prevents him from hearing. God is not dead, because God's dying was a paradox, on the level of an almighty God making an unliftable stone. This was an immortal God trying to kill himself, and two he was sacrificing for people who were also God. By definition logic prevails, and tells that this entire event is irrational. That's the point. Jesus's death is not "for our sins" but for the sin of thinking there was sin in the first place.
All of us are free to live any way we choose. Saying God doesn't exist, while at the same time viewing humans as having no purpose (okay, then by definition we need a God to give us one or waste our lives) and blaming a God who at the same breath we say doesn't exist... This is your right of course. But. I have to point out that if you really didn't believe there was a God, there would be nothing to aim your antagonism toward. That there is means you are still not a real atheist. That you are actively trying to tell me "you're wrong there is no (you just admitted the word)" means in your heart, you know better. Real atheists don't need to convert others, because they know by definition, this is asserting a belief system.
I've heard white noise before. It was ringing in my ear whenever someone tried to tell me something real and I didn't want to hear it. Either decide you are an atheist and become indifferent to discussion of religion, decide you are agnostic, or decide you are a theist of some sort. But you can't decide you don't believe in something you hate. That doesn't work, as you've accepted it exists if you hate it.
Because "God will have all mankind to be saved and **come into a realization of the truth** (1 Tim.2:4-6).
Once all mankind come into an actual realization of the truth, not just assenting to the truth, and once all mankind put on immortality and incorruption and God is All in all (1 Cor.15:28), and all mankind are no longer ruled by the "will of the fiesh" but will be ruled by the spirit, it is a sure bet people in that far off time that those who experience such a wonderful change would not want to throw it away.
Yes the old chestnut about "heart belief" vs "head belief" but this is an individual "aha" moment and there is no way that 100% of humans living will ever achieve it, and unless you believe people won't have children in the afterlife then it's an infinite regress because each newborn will have to grow up and will lack this "heart knowledge" and have to go through the same process, thus tainting paradise with "sin".
And unless you believe the dead will not be resurrected in the afterlife then you have the problem of billions of people who have lived and died without this "actual realization of the truth". Are they just magically going to have this "actual realization"? If so, why couldn't everyone?
White noise? That's your brain's mental filter tuning out anything that doesn't fit into a nice neat existential box.
Nope. It is what I told you it is. Which is that if there is no reason to think "X" exists then ruminations about attributes of X are white noise. Nothing to do with bias, or mental filters, or any other crap you want to invent and assign to me.
As I said, I see little difference between ruminations about "gods plan" than ruminations over the relative combat abilities of two star ships from two different Sci Fi franchises. It might be fun to navel gaze and imagine.... and there is nothing wrong with that..... but the non-existence of the things in question renders such imaginings useless in any effective sense.
Perhaps you might wanna look again. Let me lay it for you nice and easy. If there is no reason to think there is a god, then sermons about "gods plan" are meaningless white noise to me.
Get it now?
Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
God sacrificed his life for you.
See? More of the EXACT same white noise nonsense.
Perhaps you might wanna look again. Let me lay it for you nice and easy.
You have not offered the first SHRED of argument, evidence, data or reasoning to show there even is a god. Yet you sit there presuming to tell me what actions it has, or has not, performed.
How is that any different from wondering what Gandalf got up to in the period between his fall as Gandalf the Grey and his reappearance as Gandalf the white? Or whether Batman or Superman is going to win the fight in the upcoming movie. You can have fun ruminating about it alright, but that does not mean Gandalf exists or that any of the things you imagine he got up to actually happened.
Perhaps you might wanna look again. Let me lay it for you nice and easy. It is the same with your god. Unless, or until, you get around to providing even a shred of evidence that this god even exists, telling me what it did or did not do in it's spare time, or as a hobby, is just empty fantasy musings from an over active imagination.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
But. I have to point out that if you really didn't believe there was a God, there would be nothing to aim your antagonism toward.
That is not true at all.
Perhaps you might wanna look again. Let me lay it for you nice and easy. Beliefs have real word effects. And it is that, not a god or gods, towards which I direct my arguments and debates. So your crass and fetid little attempt to pretend I believe in a god I do not actually beleive in is nothing but a new low in desperation.
The simple fact is that no one, least of all you, has provided the first shred of argument, evidence, data or reasoning that some intelligent intentional agency created our universe. None. Nadda. Zilch. Squat. Nichts. Bugger all. Nothing.
Yet you pretend you can tell us what this gods attributes or actions or plans are or are not. Pull the other one the go get real.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
But you can't decide you don't believe in something you hate. That doesn't work, as you've accepted it exists if you hate it.
And yet I never said I hate anything. So your whole argumentive rant here is based on inventing and assigning an emotion to me on this topic which I do not actually feel. Does it not worry you that in order to discuss things with me, that you have to wantonly contrive to make up falsehoods about me in order to do so?
Perhaps you might wanna look again. Let me lay it for you nice and easy. That tactic from you says little for the strength of your position, and even less for your credibility.
White noise? That's your brain's mental filter tuning out anything that doesn't fit into a nice neat existential box. mental filter
Perhaps you might wanna look again.
Let me lay it for you nice and easy.
God sacrificed his life for you. And yet God is not dead. Did God cheat? No. Then how does this universe still exist? Because we are God. All of us, even the guy whose white noise (brain fog) actively prevents him from hearing. God is not dead, because God's dying was a paradox, on the level of an almighty God making an unliftable stone. This was an immortal God trying to kill himself, and two he was sacrificing for people who were also God. By definition logic prevails, and tells that this entire event is irrational. That's the point. Jesus's death is not "for our sins" but for the sin of thinking there was sin in the first place.
All of us are free to live any way we choose. Saying God doesn't exist, while at the same time viewing humans as having no purpose (okay, then by definition we need a God to give us one or waste our lives) and blaming a God who at the same breath we say doesn't exist... This is your right of course. But. I have to point out that if you really didn't believe there was a God, there would be nothing to aim your antagonism toward. That there is means you are still not a real atheist. That you are actively trying to tell me "you're wrong there is no (you just admitted the word)" means in your heart, you know better. Real atheists don't need to convert others, because they know by definition, this is asserting a belief system.
I've heard white noise before. It was ringing in my ear whenever someone tried to tell me something real and I didn't want to hear it. Either decide you are an atheist and become indifferent to discussion of religion, decide you are agnostic, or decide you are a theist of some sort. But you can't decide you don't believe in something you hate. That doesn't work, as you've accepted it exists if you hate it.
Obviously your mental filter is doing the same thing, Bulma. If you had spent any time reading about WHY people who do not believe in God debate the existence or merit of that God, you would know that it is not because they believe in it. I know you have, because I have seen you on the threads where people have explained this.
I'll lay it out nice and easy for you...
People in the US especially, use this God and his holy book to try and create laws. They use this God to try and take away rights and get special privileges. So you can expect rational thinking people to object to this, and give their reasons for it. Also, a lot of the responses you see, and again, people have stated this over and over, are for the lurkers.
And if his mental filter that he uses to filter out the reasons people give for what they say.... so that he can then invent and install his own on their behalf to use up his stock of straw..... needs it to be laid out even nicer and even EASIER for him.... then Micheal Nugent does it about as simply and straight forward as it gets right here.
If he still does not get it after that, it can simply be that he does not WANT to get it.
And if his mental filter that he uses to filter out the reasons people give for what they say.... so that he can then invent and install his own on their behalf to use up his stock of straw..... needs it to be laid out even nicer and even EASIER for him.... then Micheal Nugent does it about as simply and straight forward as it gets right here.
If he still does not get it after that, it can simply be that he does not WANT to get it.
Yea, it amazes me that someone can not understand why people who do not believe talk about religion or God. Either they live in a bubble, or their "mental filter" is keeping them from understanding. I have seen many people here explain it to them, yet they still don't get it. They think that debating the merits of their god should only be between those who believe in it. Well, stop trying to pass laws and take rights away and it could be between only believers. Until that day, rational thinkers and anyone who values rights of people will talk about and debate the merits of it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yea, it amazes me that someone can not understand why people who do not believe talk about religion or God. Either they live in a bubble, or their "mental filter" is keeping them from understanding. I have seen many people here explain it to them, yet they still don't get it.
It makes me wonder how (or IF) they got through school. For example in English Literature in school I had to write a commentary on the character, actions, and morality of Silas Marner.
I did it quite easily. My teacher did not like it because I lambasted him, whereas she forgives him.
But at no point in doing those essays did I have to believe Silas Marner exists, or ever existed. At. All.
How do people like bulmabriefs144 get through lessons like that? DID they get through lessons like that or did they flunk? Did they sit there and say "Oh teacher I can not comment on that question.... because I can only do that if I believe Silas is real.... and I do not.... so I simply can not say anything!!!! Can I go pray now???"
The work of atheists and secularists in this world has NOTHING to do with belief in a god. It has EVERYTHING to do with the words, actions, and effects of those that do believe there is a god on our society and culture. How that is too complex for the likes of bulmabriefs144 to get is beyond me.
I do not know which is worse to be honest.... to think that he truely does not understand something so simple..... or to think that he does understand it perfectly well but is contriving to willfully distort everything about atheists in order to straw man, misrepresent and sell a propaganda driven agenda and narrative more worthy of the likes of JeffBase40 and SuperSoul.
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