Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Sure it does. Jesus is the answer. It's because of Jesus dying on the cross that I'm forgiven.
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Forgiven for what, exactly? Doing precisely what we were sent here to do? Even if Christianity were to miraculously turn out to be the one right religion amidst hundreds of others, consider this:
The things we do, whether for good or for ill, we do because it is in our nature to do them. Our nature is part and parcel, completely inherent to who we are. We cannot help but be who we are because that is how God made us. No one here is a "mistake" whether it be Indira Ghandi and Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. Everyone has done what they were sent here to do - doesn't matter if that "thing" is to be good or to be evil.
Because evil did not erupt from nowhere - because if it did, then the entire argument of "something cannot come from nothing" that is so often used against both evolution and The Big Bang is no longer valid. Right?
God created evil - and he created those who commit evil. Unless Satan has a soul factory, too. And Satan isn't a creator, to the best of my knowledge. Satan is not responsible for evil. Satan was just another construct like everyone and everything else. Satan's rebellion was all foreseen by God anyway - Satan is fulfilling the role God wanted him to have. Otherwise God could simply snuff out Satan with a thought.
There is something - inherently terrible in having to grovel constantly for forgiveness for being made to deliberately fall short. Whose fault is that? Certainly not ours. We can only live the lives we were designed to live. Just like a fish cannot live the life of a bird - a person designed to be evil cannot live the life of a saint. You said it yourself - people are preordained to be saved - or not. Which in itself is wicked. It means God is creating people he knows will burn forever - so - why create them?
You have asked me to ponder that difference - and I simply cannot accept a black and white, rigid interpretation of sin. For even if such a concept actually exists, then it was created by the very being who cannot abide by it - as Christian teachings so often state.
But this is a major point I want to make here. If you read nothing else that I ever write or understand nothing else that I ever say, then please read and understand this one point:
I do not reject Yahweh and Jesus because I'm some horribly bad person. I think you know that. I'm not any worse - or better - than you.
I reject Christianity because I do not believe that Yahweh or Jesus are morally good. Because I do believe there is a certain objective morality - and neither of those entities comes anywhere near what any person would see as objectively moral. Even the fact that God had to adopt an entirely new personality overhaul when he became Jesus shows that even God has no objective morality.
For instance, I do not, and never will, believe that a truly good and just god, a truly fair and understanding god, would demand -
demand! - love. Demand worship. Demand adoration. Demand praise. And such a god would not even
think about sending his creation to some fiery pit where you are burned and tortured forever. And worse still, send people there for no better a reason than because they worshiped a different god - or never believed he existed. (Especially when this god knows he's providing no proof at all for his existence and thus forcing humanity to take it all on faith.)
A truly good and moral god would realize and understand that, at worst, a person like me was simply wrong. And when I die, this god would put his arm around my shoulders and say,
"Do you see me now, child? And know that I am real? Good. Then enter my kingdom and be joyful." Not this egotistical line regarding,
"What? You rejected me? How dare you! Go and burn, and may you never know another moment of peace and joy for all of eternity. Muahahahaha!"
One sounds decidedly evil - and other - decidedly good. Don't they. Which is why I do not believe every action we undertake is judged - and we burn and rot in hell if one sin goes unrepented. I remember seeing my grandfather in his final month. He knew he was dying. My grandfather was a Christian, and honestly, one of the most decent and loving men there ever was. And yet this poor man spent his last days on earth sitting in dark rooms worried sick he was going to Hell - and it broke my heart. No one, especially not him, should be so bound by fear that they cannot die in peace. But I saw the fear - no - the terror in his eyes for those last few weeks, so worried he wouldn't measure up, so scared that God would turn him away.
I'm sorry, Baptist, but a truly good god would not do that to such a wonderful man. I cannot believe that. I don't
want to believe that.
No ... a truly good god would be infused with the same qualities that he would try to teach us. And one of those qualities would be
humility - something Yahweh has none of. Not a speck of humility. A being of limitless power doesn't require - shouldn't require - that billions of lesser, imperfect beings fear it, constantly praise it, to spend their lives on their knees in supplication and genuflection. A truly good god knows what it is and does not need constant reminding.
A truly good and just god would wish to walk among his creation - not rule it from above. Thus god could be the form of any stranger, any animal that we may meet. Perhaps that is one reason why people should treat each other far better than they do.
Unfortunately, humans are not very good at inventing truly good and just gods. Whenever humans create a god, it always ends up being a tyrant. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And thus we end up with a Yahweh that murders and destroy indescriminately.
"I'm god, therefore, I can do what I want and I don't have to abide by a moral code - not even my own!"
But a truly good good would not do such a thing. Would it. Not in my world, he wouldn't. It harkens to that age-old saying:
"Just because you can
do a thing does not mean you should." A truly good god would have that saying on his lips before he wiped out every living thing on the planet in some adolescent pique of rage. A truly good god would not allow Satan to torture Job to satisfy a ridiculous bet. A truly good god would not justify slavery - especially not a racist and sexist version of it. A truly good god would not look at women as inferior to men and demand that they obey their husbands as if they were little gods themselves. A truly good god would never -ever - ever - ever -
ever - condemn anyone to eternal torment. Especially since even the most evil among us are only carrying out god's desires.
After all, when God made Hitler or Stalin or Bundy or bin Laden or any other truly evil person, did God make a mistake? And if so, he certainly seems to make an awful lot of mistakes - and those mistakes seem to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
My apologies for writing another long post - I know you do not care for them. But if you have any kind of desire to understand why I believe what I do, think what I do, say what I do, then I suppose now is the time.
I do appreciate the fact that you actually responded to me rather than simply dismiss me. It is true that we may never see eye to eye where religion is involved. But I am not some evil crone riding my broomstick to an evil atheist coven. I don't even belong to any atheist groups or societies. I fly completely solo.
What's unfortunate is that I had thought you had decided to actually have a dialogue with me without the usual ... hostility. Until I read down to the part where you began saying I was "spouting off about things of which I'm ignorant" or something along those lines. At which point I realized we were back to this again. Oh well.
At any rate, I've said the truly important stuff. The rest, I hope you read, but do with it what you will. Someone will read it even if you don't. *shruggles*
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
We sin because we are sinners. We fail to worship because we are sinners. And people are punished for being sinners, rebellious against God.
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Well, here again, why would a truly good god expect and demand worship? Or even want it? This is why truly good and humble people would always feel uncomfortable if those around them were always on their knees. And it's not just because they're not god.
If a regular normal person were to suddenly acquire the same powers and abilities as God, I can almost guarantee you that, at first, that person would refuse worship and would ask that his "children" did not do it. At first. It's only after that power begins to corrupt when this super-human would start demanding worship - and then dolling out punishments to those who don't. That should make you wonder about Yahweh, shouldn't it? Because those who invented him simply cannot envision an all-powerful god acting in any other way but cruel, vindictive, malicious, selfish - and why? Because that is precisely how a human would act under the very same circumstances. It shows very elegantly how Yahweh was invented to be the God of the Hebrews - a splinter group that separated from the worship of the Canaanite god El.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
We sin because we are sinners. We fail to worship because we are sinners. And people are punished for being sinners, rebellious against God.
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I honestly cannot follow God's rules when owning slaves is not considered a sin but working on the Sabbath is punishable by death. Again and again, it seems as if God doesn't have our best interests at heart. Only his own. Only his desires. His wants. His demands. Which is why I find it amusing when people claim America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. And yet I challenge anyone to find where Yahweh - or even Jesus - champions democracy. Religion has always been about
"do as your told" and you never ever get a vote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
We are not sinners because we sin. We were all sinners long before we committed our first sin. There is a difference in those 2 statements. I'd encourage you to ponder it.
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I have pondered it, Baptist. Believe me, I didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be an atheist. It was a process that took many years. It was through such musings that I realized the things that I often write about here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Yet, God is merciful with his creation and he chooses to save those whom he predestines for salvation.
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This is an interesting statement.
Predestines? What this is saying is that God creates people who are simply going to burn in hell - doesn't matter what they do. Because God has created them in such a way as to never be saved.
How is that the mark of a good and just, much less fair and compassionate god? It goes back to what I said before - that if your religion is at all true, it means God creates people to carry out evil only to be tossed into Hell as if it had been the fault of the human from the very beginning. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me - and it certainly isn't fair. Or just. Or anything close.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Not through a "Palestinian" (as if Palestine existed at the time of God appearing to Abraham) tribal god, but through the Creator of the universe.
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Yehweh is a Palestinian tribal god. Yahweh was worshiped only by the tribe of the Israelites and no one else. And yes, Palestine existed even during the time of Abraham. It may not have been called "Palestine" in those days, but the land that eventually took that name did in fact exist.
As I said (or think I said), it seems rather odd to me that the Creator of the Universe created everything and then narrowed his focus down to a single Bedouin tribe eeking out a meager living in the Middle Eastern desert - never once even attempting to be the God of Everyone. In fact, he still hasn't done that.
Abraham was the father of Judaism, not Christianity. I'm pretty certain you're not a Jew. Christianity only came to be when a certain number of Jews decided to form their own faction - those that believed Christ was the prophesied savior. They broke away from the traditionalists who did not believe Christ was the prophesied savior. (Hence, Judaism did what every religion does - it broke apart into this or that faction, all of which have a different interpretation regarding vague and imprecise texts. Just like Christianity itself broke apart into a bunch of other factions - most of which were wiped out by the Catholics. Which is why Catholocism ruled the Western world for almost 1500 years. But I digress.
What I find rather interesting is why Gentiles believe Jesus has anything at all to do with them? The prophesied savior was meant to be the savior of the Jews - and only the Jews/Israelites/Hebrews - not everyone. None of this applied to the Hindus or the Chinese or the Meso-Americans or Australian aborigines, etc. etc.
Our religion is based on faith in God to fulfill the promise made to Abraham to bless him and all nations. It was God himself stepping into human flesh to die for us and redeem us. Not just some guy.
Abraham. You mean the crazy, wild-eyed guy who was all set to murder his own son without question or even a moment of pause simply because God told him to? That's the kind of religious fanaticism that causes events like 9-11. Or maybe you're referring to the Abraham who cheated on his wife Sarah with their servant Hagar? Because adultry isn't a sin or anything ... It seems like Yahweh always picked psychos to represent him. Especially people who had no qualms about butchering children, babies, fetuses still in the womb - to say nothing of cute, fluffy kittens and puppies with their famous eyes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Now you're off on a tangent. The Bible doesn't say a thing about bathrooms.
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Really? It doesn't? Because given the number of fundamentalists and evangelicals who seem to think one of the biggest problems we face is people using the wrong gender using the opposite bathroom. Because, you know, people should only use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender "god gave them."
I always found it rather creepy just how obsessed so many Christians are about genitalia, gender, and gender roles. How dare someone do something outside of the box their gender put them in.
So no, Baptist, I'm very sorry to say - but when it comes to the Christian agenda, bathrooms are not a mere tangent. It wasn't that long ago when a certain North Carolina governor threw his entire state under the bus to pass a ridiculous bathroom law that no one wanted.
It really is a shame that Christianity could not mobilize to combat problems like homelessness, poverty, wealth and income disparity, the erosion of democracy, domestic violence, gun violence, and other pertinant problems that actually harm people - in the same way Christians mobilized against same-sex marriage. In that way, Christianity could truly be a force for good - instead of being a force for oppression, hatred, prejudice, and bigotry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
No. He really didn't. Have you read John 9? When asked whether a blind man sinned, or his parents, the answer was "None". Nor did Jesus say a thing about demons. It was so that God could be glorified when he was healed.
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Would a truly good god deliberately give someone a disability - that would be tantamount to a death sentence in those days - just to make God look good when that disability was healed?
Because, in my mind, a truly good god would heal a person of their ailments because it's the right thing to do. And God would do it to help the person in question - not just to make himself look good. Why does God need to be glorified? Why would a truly good and moral good even want to be glorified? A truly good god helps people - because people need help. Not because helping people somehow glorifies him. It's essentially saying that if healing a person gave God no glory, then God would no longer heal people and would instead allow them to suffer. That, to me, is not a good and moral being.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Or perhaps you merely delight in spouting off about things you're ignorant about.
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Ah yes, here it is. That delightful Christian indignation. "How dare you see things in a different way that I do - and because you don't agree with me, you're ignorant!"
Sorry, Baptist, but I think I've more than adequately proven to even most Christians on this forum that I know precisely what I'm talking about. After all, that's what gets so many of them riled up. Religious belief requires that a person simply ignore facts and exist in a sort of "alternate reality" whereby magic is real.
What's interesting is how, even when Jesus healed the man of his blindness, he had to spit on the ground to make mud which was put over the man's eyes. He couldn't just touch him and viola, he's healed. There is obviously ancient Hebrew magic taking place. Even the idea of Yahweh creating life - he needed a pile of dust to animate. Then he needed a rib. He couldn't simply cause Adam to appear from nothing.
It's called a golem spell - which is precisely the reason why the 2nd commandment exists. The fear was that, if you make an image or scupture of something living, someone could breathe life into that image or sculpture and literally create life. Theoretically, a person could even animate inanimate objects, but it would be much more difficult to animate the sculpture of a stone than it would the sculpture of a dog. It's rather ... amusing ... that the people in Biblical times did not even see the creation of life as being the purvue of God and only God. Virtually anyone could do it if they knew how.
But it is interesting how these ancient magic rituals all require what is known as "material components." Spit and mud, a pile of dust, a rib, the blood sacrifice of various animals. Often they are accompanied by verbal and somatic components - chants and magical words, arcane gestures ...
In all honesty, it is you who is ignorant, Baptist, because you haven't any inkling about the history of your own religion. Because you can't step outside of your religion and see it as history, to see how your religion evolved. It didn't spring up out of nowhere. Even the characters of your religion like Satan evolved from earlier myths and stories that can be easily traced. There is virtually nothing unique to Christianity that would make it "the" religion. It's merely an amalgamation of other myths and religions.
But all of this is neither here nor there or anywhere else, as far as I'm concerned.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
If you think the Bible is equal to Koran, it's easy to see why you're so misinformed.
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LOL! Of course, Baptist. Whatever you say.
Though, as the saying goes, what should I expect from a pig but a grunt? In other words, it goes without saying that you would disdain the Qu'ran in favor of the Bible. After all, Christianity is the religion you got stuck with - being born in the United States, which has the same amount of religiosity as an impoverished, uneducated Third World country. Of course you would say something like that. It's to be expected.
Of course, billions of Muslims are saying the same thing about the Bible - and how it is not the equal of the Qu'ran. It's all a matter of perspective.
And yet I've said it so many times - they can't all be right. But they
can all be wrong.
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