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Originally Posted by nebulous1 True, but you can't see emotions either.
And love is not just an emotion it is also a way of life; Jesus taught us to love others in the exact same way we want to be loved, so love can be the foundation of a philosophy. So you admit that if people act according to Jesus' philosophy you can see God (or love)?
I don't see how you derived anything like that from what I posted.
I didn't say a thing like that or "admit" anything.
You missed the point of my whole post entirely. Which may have been on purpose.
There are two possibilities: to either say we can never understand God's mind, but we must trust him. he knows what he is doing and he is is good, merciful and Just. We know because his manifesto says so.
or
we can say it looks like the other religions; man's attempts to deal with the fear of death and the problem of evil. Why do the wicked prosper? It's all very well to have a police force, but surely the Just gods could take a few moments off turning themselves in to swans for the purposes of seduction to turn a few criminals into ash. The only explanation is to say the wicked get it after death. Because they sure don't seem to get it before death.
The trouble there is, that having a post mortem place where grinning devils saw the malefactors asunder tends to be too tempting for the Preists and preachers. They start to assign others to the torments, too. Unbelievers, believers in the wrong beliefs. Those who pull the girls the preacher's can't. The ones wo have fun the way the priests aren't allowed to. They can't be prevented from having fun in this life (though the god-botherers continually campaign for it) but they can be eternally punished for it in the next.
And then the pulpit -pounders discover a very useful side - benefit. Threatening the fun-loving with eternal torment, if it is presented graphically enough, frightens a remarkable number of them into the temples. Dressed up as a logical proposition by Pascal, it even looks logical, too.
Many dictators claim to be good. Many politicians claim to be good. Many people claim to be good. Making a claim is just that.
Apparently not. Complete freedom of choice, if it leads so many to unbelief, backsliding and generally becoming worthy of the eternal barbeque lovingly being polished up by the loving God in anticipation of a greater or lesser majority of His creation being roasted eternally, is not really in our interests.
Take the analogy of a parent guiding the children or, as I have seen, a criminal being put in jail.
But the learning curve argument doesn't work. That non-Christian religions are being allowed to do well, causes confusion. That the evidence for God is so poor and because He declines requests to speak to John Snow on Newsnight, a lot of people fail to believe. God (if he exists) must know by now that his methods urgently require reappraisal, and if this is not done, it means that God is either unable or unwilling to give his creation a better chance. Or he doesn't exist at all.
Second, the learning curve analogy fails because the TRUE analogy would be to send the kid out with a list of instructions and a threat that, if he doesn't interpret them correctly, he will be thrashed for the rest of his life. The prison analogy is no better. The idea of punishment of children or criminals to get them to behave might work during life, though the lessons of the Crusades, the success - and failure - of Islam, the prosperity of Mormons and Scientology and Katrina and the Tsunami are conflicting ones ideed. But in hell, there is no remission and no chance to try again. It is simply terrible torture for eternity. Vicious, vengeful and pointless.
Originally Posted by nebulous1 So you don't believe in love either?
No one has heard love, or taped it.
Just because love is an abstract construct does it mean that it doesn't exist.
FYI the fact that you cant detect something means that it is hiding from you, it just means that you're unable to detect it.
The fact that humans can't see ultraviolet rays does it mean that these rays are hiding from us.
A choice without consequences is not a choice either.
I admire your conviction, but those analogies don't work. I don't mean that in a mean way either.
I admire your conviction, but those analogies don't work. I don't mean that in a mean way either.
Probably for the same reason that people generally don't see what they do not understand.
People who have no notion what love is will never see it; the same way that autistic people generally cannot relate to 'normal' people because they are unable to understand things from another pov.
Many dictators claim to be good. Many politicians claim to be good. Many people claim to be good. Making a claim is just that.
Watch their actions, not their words.
By their fruits, I have to say, is not a guide to validity. That Hitler was not very nice says nothing about whether his reacial theories were true or not. That Stalin was not very nice is no indication of whether his political theories were valid or not. That various religious figures were nice (or not) says nothing about whether their beliefs are valid or not. It is only evaluation of their theories or beliefs that show that. Not their behaviour.
It is not uncommon for the religious to go around 'doing good' and then hold that up as some validation of their beliefs. Politicians do the same, I agree. Though that is more a question of covering up or explaining away their misdeeds. And that goes for one or two churchmen I could think of, too.
How is offering the ultimatum of "Me or Hell?" a parental lesson? How is not showing himself to us a parental lesson?
Parents don't hide from their kids and expect the kids to get to know them from a book.
Parents respond to their kids.
This isn't about making mistakes. Who gets punished for making mistakes?
I don't quite follow what's going on here... I think you pretty much reiterated what I have been trying to say. "Me or hell", is not a parental decision. Likewise hiding from kids and having them learn it all from a book is also not good parenting.
I was talking about people who really are parents in regards to the mistakes comment. Sometimes a good parent will let their kids learn the hard way - this is a necessity. I was asserting that the omni-parent that runs this show doesn't really act like a parent at all. He just throws some fire and brimstone when things don't go how he wants.
This doesn't really account for much. There is nothing special about someone being able to write a book or build a church.
True, just look at the Scientologists.
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True, but you can't see emotions either.
So you admit that if people act according to Jesus' philosophy you can see God (or love)?
So you don't believe in love either?
FYI the fact that you cant detect something means that it is hiding from you, it just means that you're unable to detect it.
A choice without consequences is not a choice either.
