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Ryft · May 15, 2012 at 11:42 pm

(May 15, 2012 at 8:36 pm)gringoperry Wrote: I'll stand at the gates of heaven and still ask God why he treated people so badly.

You will? I never took you for a theist.

Angrboda · (This post was last modified: May 16, 2012 at 1:15 am by Angrboda.)

@Godschild: The reference to Job was a direct response to . Thanks for not paying attention. Oh, and learn to edit your quotation or use hide tags, you hoser. How you came to that interpretation of Anthony's words is a mystery which likely will not be made clear until the end days.

Quote:THE READY-TO-HAND

For the most part, Dasein encounters entities that are not present-at-hand, but ready-to-hand. Dasein does not usually stare at things or analyze them theoretically, but uses them and takes them for granted. In any given moment, most of us are not thinking about the chair we are sitting in, the floor that supports it, the solid earth beneath the floor, the oxygen we breathe, or the heart and kidneys that keep us alive. Instead, we take these things for granted and focus our attention elsewhere. There is no such thing as “an” equipment, since all equipment is assigned to other equipment in a single gigantic system of references. A house refers to bad weather and to Dasein’s need to stay dry; the need to stay dry refers to our medical knowledge; this knowledge refers in turn to our fear of illness and to the ambitions that might be derailed by early death. The number of mutual references of equipment is infinite, and all equipment makes up a unified whole. In order to be what they are, tools must recede from visibility. The outward appearance of a thing does not give us an understanding of ready-to-hand entities — tools are not meant for looking at, since we usually just silently rely on them.

Furthermore, the significance of entities is not invented by Dasein in monkish solitude: equipment always belongs to a public world. For some people, sunset refers simply to peace and calm and the end of a long hard day, while for other Daseins it signifies the end of fasting during Ramadan. The readiness-to-hand of equipment is what we encounter first; it is not something that we inject into things after first seeing them as bare physical lumps. In fact,what we encounter initially is the world as a whole, not a group of scattered individual things that need to be woven together. Not only is Dasein woven together with the world — all parts of the world are fused into a colossal web of meaning in which everything refers to everything else.

BROKEN TOOLS

Of course, it is not quite this simple. Yes, equipment usually hides from us. It is inconspicuous or unobtrusive. Usually, only bad equipment makes us notice it frequently, such as when ceilings are too low and we bump our heads too often. But equipment also malfunctions sometimes. Cars break down; hammers fall apart or wine glasses shatter; bodily organs suddenly fail us. It is mostly in these moments that equipment first becomes conspicuous and draws our attention to it. There is also the case of tools that turn up missing: when our car is stolen, the bus fails to arrive, or we find that we have misplaced our shoes before leaving for work, these items of equipment are no longer quietly serviceable, but loudly announce their reality.

All such cases make tools present. However, it does not make them purely present-at-hand, since they are still deeply intertwined with world and significance: the broken hammer or vandalized windshield are now annoying pieces of failed equipment that we would like to shove aside. But normally, the items in the world do not announce themselves in this way. This is not merely a negative feature, but a positive one, since tools are actually getting some-thing done while they fail to announce themselves. This brilliant tool-analysis is perhaps the greatest moment of twentieth-century philosophy. Its primary target is obviously Husserl. What comes first are not phenomena that appear to consciousness. Phenomena are only rare cases of visible things emerging from a dominant silent background of equipment.

SIGNS AND SIGNALS

Heidegger speaks of another special case of readiness-to-hand: signs and signals. He refers to the automobiles of his time, which had just begun to use primitive turn signals in the form of adjustable red arrows. These arrows indicate the region of space where Dasein plans to turn its vehicle. Unlike the normal case of equipment, the turn signal does not unconsciously direct us toward the region where it wants us to look. Instead, the signaling arrow remains visible, openly declaring itself as a sign that wants us to notice one specific direction rather than the others. By contrast, a hammer is usually not a sign — unless an archaeologist interprets it as a sign that Neanderthals once camped here.

Most equipment disappears from view, but a sign or signal is equipment viewed “as” equipment. This is true even of tools whose use is unknown to us. If we enter a strange laboratory and fail to understand the purpose of all the vats and cages, or if we open up a television and have no idea what each of the parts do, we still understand that all of these things are equipment. We do not think of them as random lumps of plastic and metal, but either ask an expert to explain them, or turn away in boredom and despair. Just as with equipment, an entity’s use as a sign is not something projected onto it after we first encounter it as a mere physical lump. Heidegger asks us to imagine that a peasant regards the south wind as a sign that rain is coming. In this case, the peasant encounters the wind as a sign from the start. He does not just feel a rush of air in his face and later add the judgment that “rain must be coming.” Everything happens simultaneously.

— from Heidegger Explained by Graham Harman

ETA: There is an interesting inversion here as well. If I in my limited aspect cannot understand God in his omniscience, he reciprocally cannot understand me in my finiteness, for to do so, he would have to somehow "forget" everything he knows (which likely has unintended consequences as well). Since he cannot know what it is like to be a finite being in the absence of infinite knowledge (a problem for omniscience), he is in no position to pass judgement on my morals. (Infinites tend to have undesirable properties in general if not tightly formulated; if you apply Anselm's ontological argument to include being everything it /God can be, then my existence as not God is a mistake which Anselm's argument seems to dictate being swallowed up by God, erasing me. Every not God makes God less than God could be, which the logic of Anselm does not seem to admit. [this is likely symptomatic of a much larger issue with Anselm's argument, but I'll not entertain that as another further digression at this juncture.])

(May 15, 2012 at 5:35 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:
(May 15, 2012 at 4:01 pm)apophenia Wrote: Now that we have the text before us, please show where God is claiming that his moral judgements are beyond our ken.
In the text God repeatedly demonstrates that his knowledge exceeds that of Job. Job is forced to admit that he cannot answer any of God’s questions. Thus God’s judgments are based on more information than would be available to Job.

He does? All I see are a bunch of questions. Now if God had said parenthetically, that the reason he was asking these questions was to show how much greater his ethical understanding was compared to Job's, you might have something. But that's why I pulled out the declarative statements alone to show that God made no such statement. In order to conclude that your assertion was God's implied meaning, we would have to either know the mind of Job as God does, in order to know what understanding God expected Job to have, or know God's intent stolen from His very brow. Unfortunately, Job is long dead and left no further statements, so we can't learn from him. The only other person who knew what God's statements were meant to imply for Job is God himself, and since you've basically argued that we can't know the mind of God, you've effectively argued yourself into a corner from which we can't know the meaning of God's rather Socratic dialog with Job. Socrates, if I recall correctly, argued that his questions were a method of bringing forth knowledge that the subject already has, but is not aware of possessing; if this is the nature of God's dialog with Job, it's doubtful you can attach any determinate meaning to it.

(ETA: It occurs to me that there is an even greater problem with Job 38-39. Even if we believe we can make a reasonable guess as to what God's message to Job was, ignoring the possibility that that specific message was meant for Job alone, since this is the word of God, in order for us to take a determinate meaning from it, we must assume God had two messages, not one. The first, intended for Job, but also one intended for us, since God knew that we would be interpreting His words to Job in the context as God's message to us. Even if we accept God's message to Job as simplistically rhetorical in the sense you suggest, it doesn't tell us what God's message to us was meant to be. For that, we have to take into account the entirety of Job, a story with a lot in it, including a lot of commentary from some chatty Cathies. Telling what God's specific overall message in Job is to us is one that has eluded both professional and amateur commentators for millennia. That you, ChadWooters, feel confident to speak about God's meaning for us in giving us the story of Job is a most extraordinary claim. An extraordinariness not satisfactorily met by the caliber of your arguments.)

Regardless, you were asked for a scriptural support for the point, and your scriptural support has been found wanting. What else do you have?

Angrboda · May 16, 2012 at 1:29 am

"Dasein’s inauthentic being in the world can be seen as a threefold temporal structure made up of idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. In idle talk, Dasein hears something without grasping the depth of the topic, and passes the word along to other Daseins, who then pass it along still further … It is impossible for the reader of any book to know how much of the material was grasped by the author with firsthand insight, and how much of it is just empty cliché heard from others and passed along as intellectual gossip. As a structure of the they, idle talk thinks that it understands everything, but puts no work into seeing anything on its own."

ibid.

This just seems somehow strangely appropriate here.

Godscreated · May 16, 2012 at 1:50 am

(May 15, 2012 at 11:56 pm)apophenia Wrote:

@Godschild: The reference to Job was a direct response to . Thanks for not paying attention. Oh, and learn to edit your quotation or use hide tags, you hoser. How you came to that interpretation of Anthony's words is a mystery which likely will not be made clear until the end days.

Like you do not jump on my replies to others, get real.
Yes I suppose that what Christians say would be a mystery to you, I've seen it many times on this forum. So your the one who complained.

THE READY-TO-HAND

For the most part, Dasein encounters entities that are not present-at-hand, but ready-to-hand. Dasein does not usually stare at things or analyze them theoretically, but uses them and takes them for granted. In any given moment, most of us are not thinking about the chair we are sitting in, the floor that supports it, the solid earth beneath the floor, the oxygen we breathe, or the heart and kidneys that keep us alive. Instead, we take these things for granted and focus our attention elsewhere. There is no such thing as “an” equipment, since all equipment is assigned to other equipment in a single gigantic system of references. A house refers to bad weather and to Dasein’s need to stay dry; the need to stay dry refers to our medical knowledge; this knowledge refers in turn to our fear of illness and to the ambitions that might be derailed by early death. The number of mutual references of equipment is infinite, and all equipment makes up a unified whole. In order to be what they are, tools must recede from visibility. The outward appearance of a thing does not give us an understanding of ready-to-hand entities — tools are not meant for looking at, since we usually just silently rely on them.

Furthermore, the significance of entities is not invented by Dasein in monkish solitude: equipment always belongs to a public world. For some people, sunset refers simply to peace and calm and the end of a long hard day, while for other Daseins it signifies the end of fasting during Ramadan. The readiness-to-hand of equipment is what we encounter first; it is not something that we inject into things after first seeing them as bare physical lumps. In fact,what we encounter initially is the world as a whole, not a group of scattered individual things that need to be woven together. Not only is Dasein woven together with the world — all parts of the world are fused into a colossal web of meaning in which everything refers to everything else.

BROKEN TOOLS

Of course, it is not quite this simple. Yes, equipment usually hides from us. It is inconspicuous or unobtrusive. Usually, only bad equipment makes us notice it frequently, such as when ceilings are too low and we bump our heads too often. But equipment also malfunctions sometimes. Cars break down; hammers fall apart or wine glasses shatter; bodily organs suddenly fail us. It is mostly in these moments that equipment first becomes conspicuous and draws our attention to it. There is also the case of tools that turn up missing: when our car is stolen, the bus fails to arrive, or we find that we have misplaced our shoes before leaving for work, these items of equipment are no longer quietly serviceable, but loudly announce their reality.

All such cases make tools present. However, it does not make them purely present-at-hand, since they are still deeply intertwined with world and significance: the broken hammer or vandalized windshield are now annoying pieces of failed equipment that we would like to shove aside. But normally, the items in the world do not announce themselves in this way. This is not merely a negative feature, but a positive one, since tools are actually getting some-thing done while they fail to announce themselves. This brilliant tool-analysis is perhaps the greatest moment of twentieth-century philosophy. Its primary target is obviously Husserl. What comes first are not phenomena that appear to consciousness. Phenomena are only rare cases of visible things emerging from a dominant silent background of equipment.

SIGNS AND SIGNALS

Heidegger speaks of another special case of readiness-to-hand: signs and signals. He refers to the automobiles of his time, which had just begun to use primitive turn signals in the form of adjustable red arrows. These arrows indicate the region of space where Dasein plans to turn its vehicle. Unlike the normal case of equipment, the turn signal does not unconsciously direct us toward the region where it wants us to look. Instead, the signaling arrow remains visible, openly declaring itself as a sign that wants us to notice one specific direction rather than the others. By contrast, a hammer is usually not a sign — unless an archaeologist interprets it as a sign that Neanderthals once camped here.

Most equipment disappears from view, but a sign or signal is equipment viewed “as” equipment. This is true even of tools whose use is unknown to us. If we enter a strange laboratory and fail to understand the purpose of all the vats and cages, or if we open up a television and have no idea what each of the parts do, we still understand that all of these things are equipment. We do not think of them as random lumps of plastic and metal, but either ask an expert to explain them, or turn away in boredom and despair. Just as with equipment, an entity’s use as a sign is not something projected onto it after we first encounter it as a mere physical lump. Heidegger asks us to imagine that a peasant regards the south wind as a sign that rain is coming. In this case, the peasant encounters the wind as a sign from the start. He does not just feel a rush of air in his face and later add the judgment that “rain must be coming.” Everything happens simultaneously.

[/quote]

apophenia Wrote:ETA: There is an interesting inversion here as well. If I in my limited aspect cannot understand God in his omniscience, he reciprocally cannot understand me in my finiteness, for to do so, he would have to somehow "forget" everything he knows (which likely has unintended consequences as well). Since he cannot know what it is like to be a finite being in the absence of infinite knowledge (a problem for omniscience), he is in no position to pass judgement on my morals. (Infinites tend to have undesirable properties in general if not tightly formulated; if you apply Anselm's ontological argument to include being everything it /God can be, then my existence as not God is a mistake which Anselm's argument seems to dictate being swallowed up by God, erasing me. Every not God makes God less than God could be, which the logic of Anselm does not seem to admit. [this is likely symptomatic of a much larger issue with Anselm's argument, but I'll not entertain that as another further digression at this juncture.])

The omniscient God has no problem understanding any or everything, not understanding is a problem you seem to be very familiar with, you should remedy that you know.
God being your creator and absolutely righteous gives Him every right to judge you, me and everyone, I will be found not guilty, can you say the same.
You nor anyone can lessen God, God's being does not require your opinion nor your existence, God doesn't even need this universe to be, He exists outside His creation. No one's opinion, and that's all you have at this point, lessens God.

Angrboda · (This post was last modified: May 16, 2012 at 2:10 am by Angrboda.)

Moar.

Quote:But Heidegger still wants a better sense of Dasein’s being as a whole. His strategy for doing this may sound almost comically literal: for Dasein’s existence to become visible as a whole, we need to look for its death. One obvious problem is that once we die and reach completion in our lives, we will no longer be here to analyze Dasein. As it turns out, this misses the point. What we really seek is not death as an event someday in the future that kills us off, but rather the death that is with us at every moment. As soon as we are born, we are already old enough to die. The specter of death is always with us. Dasein is thrown into death as a constant possibility of its being, as revealed in Angst. It is not death itself that interests Heidegger, but being-towards-death, since this attitude is with us at all times even when it is concealed by our absorption in distracting curiosities. This sort of concealment is not to be blamed on weak or fearful Daseins, but stems from the fallenness of Dasein itself.

Death is not usually a shocking event: everyone already knows about it. The they interprets death as an unlucky mishap that occurs to other Daseins sometimes. The they does not hide the fact that all Daseins must die, it simply tranquillizes us by telling us not to worry about it yet. In Heidegger’s words, we all realize that “one of these days we’ll die too, but right now it has nothing to do with us.” The they makes efforts to ensure that death is deprived of its power to shock. We console sick people by telling them not to worry, they will be better soon and will soon be tranquillized once more. The death of another Dasein is sometimes even viewed as a tactless action that one must guard against. The they deprives us of all courage for anxiety in the face of death, since it is preferred that we not think about it or discuss it at all.

ibid.

(May 16, 2012 at 1:50 am)Godschild Wrote: The omniscient God has no problem understanding any or everything, not understanding is a problem you seem to be very familiar with, you should remedy that you know.

~~Welsh cake~~ · May 16, 2012 at 3:36 am

(May 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm)Godschild Wrote: The way you talk about your life, it sounds as if you did and it was granted.

If God were real and that were true then I would cease to exist.

(May 15, 2012 at 3:56 pm)Aiza Wrote: You don't "send them to Heaven"; God brings them to Heaven.

Why?

(May 15, 2012 at 5:35 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: The Lord draws all men unto Him.

Why?

Quote:The damned are those that resist that invitation.

Why?

Quote:All infants who die as such are saved and become angels.

Guess god fucked up with old people then.

What so everyone becomes angels? How dull.

(May 15, 2012 at 5:36 pm)Godschild Wrote: The sinful can not judge the Righteous one, that would be like the criminal passing judgement on the court.

Of course they can judge. They just don't have any power or authority to pass on those judgements or convictions.

I judge your god to be a complete bastard, a tyrant. I can't do anything to him though, if he's a god can I? But then the ants can't do anything to stop me from dividing the hive and showering my elect ants with sweets and squishing the damned ants out of existence, although this doesn't make me any less of a dick for doing so.

(May 15, 2012 at 11:42 pm)Godschild Wrote: As for me and my family we will walk through those precious gates praising our savior, as for you I assure you God will deal with you justly, remember this the glory in heaven is the absolute opposite of hell. Maybe this will help you are a triune being.

And the members of your family-to-be who strayed? Oh wait, you interpreted the meaning of "family" as members of the same cult belonging to you haven't you? Fair enough.

Its futile teaching us sinners the glory of heaven when all we've ever know and ever will know is an existence without god or gods. Give up. Your idea of godless hell is our idea of godless heaven silly and your preachings will fall on deaf ears every time.

(May 16, 2012 at 1:50 am)Godschild Wrote: God being your creator

I have no god.

Quote:You nor anyone can lessen God,

Let's put that to the test shall we? Your god is a cosmic cunt.

See what I did there?

Quote:God's being does not require your opinion nor your existence,

I don't require god or gods to function either. Undecided

Quote:God doesn't even need this universe to be, He exists outside His creation.

Why its as if he's practically pissed off somewhere else and left us all to it! Why aren't you a deist?

NoMoreFaith · (This post was last modified: May 16, 2012 at 5:36 am by NoMoreFaith.)

(May 15, 2012 at 12:43 pm)Ryft Wrote: "Where" is a spatial question that is intelligible only in the context of spatial coordinates. Given that God created and upholds this space-time manifold, it follows that he transcends it (or exists independent of it); how, then, is it meaningful to ask specifically "where" God is? (Hint: The question is meaningless.) The very reason why God is omnipresent or immanent throughout all space and time is because he is not existentially part of creation.

If we state that God transcends, or exists independently, then why is it not fair to state that he would be detached from the causes of pain and suffering.

Being detached and attached to the causes of pain and suffering. This is not an optional set of answers that has "other" as a possibility for a God any more than the fallacy of creating square circles.

He either has no hand in it, has a hand in it, or is at least sticking a finger in. Equivocated declarations that hint towards a fourth option is simply logically impossible.

He transcends, and is omnipresent, which by default places him as part of the cause of pain and suffering (such as the aforementioned fire).

You'll have to excuse me, but when pain and suffering is involved, God magically appears transcendent and/or independent, but when "Goodness", charity is involved, he's bang in the middle of it.
This is unreasonable in light of an omnipresent creator, because it implies that he opts out of it (which I'll get to).

The only reasonable position (which I suspect is closer to what you feel) is for God to be aware of the pain and suffering and mourn it, but recognise its necessity for some "transcendent" reason.

Due to the multitude of differing reasons on the difficulty of pain and suffering I would argue that the answer inevitably becomes further equivocation on "Gods reasons cannot be understood by man".

(May 15, 2012 at 12:43 pm)Ryft Wrote:
(May 15, 2012 at 12:12 pm)NoMoreFaith Wrote: At least atheists acknowledge when they are doing so and appeal to be excused, rather than being blind to the idea an appeal was made at all.
You did. Here. This time. But you peruse these forums just as I do; you know how pervasive the appeals to emotional arguments are (e.g., hand-wringing about all teh baybeez) and that there is almost never that acknowledgment. But it is to be expected: if your argument has no logical punch, deflect using an emotional one.

I do agree, but I do not believe it is possible to present an example of unnecessary pain and suffering without resort to presenting an example which is emotional in nature.

My point was to clarify what Gods role in pain and suffering actually is, which is better served in this case through example.

My main issue with the concept of God in the context of pain and suffering, is based upon moral responsibility for positive action.

I would argue, that the more power you have, the greater your moral responsibility to prevent pain and suffering becomes.
As the ultimate power, some say omnipotent power, leads to an ultimate, moral responsibility to prevent pain and suffering. Reasoning based that suffering prepares us for the afterlife, or any such thing, does not prevent this moral imperative.

Like Epicurus, we have to question, if he is able but not willing then the failure to act is considered malicious.

So from your point of view, what would refusal to act upon a moral imperative of this nature?

The question, of course, is based upon the assumption that God is a perfectly moral being, since many consider him to be the objective source of moral goodness.
If the same moral imperative on power exists, and this imperative comes from God, then we must consider God to be hypocritical.

Tobie · May 16, 2012 at 1:48 pm

Godschild Wrote:The omniscient God has no problem understanding any or everything, not understanding is a problem you seem to be very familiar with, you should remedy that you know.
God being your creator and absolutely righteous gives Him every right to judge you, me and everyone, I will be found not guilty, can you say the same.
You nor anyone can lessen God, God's being does not require your opinion nor your existence, God doesn't even need this universe to be, He exists outside His creation. No one's opinion, and that's all you have at this point, lessens God.

If your god created the universe, it stands to reason that he is external to it. Seeming as we know nothing about what is outside of our universe, or even if there is an outside to our universe, how can you claim to comprehend your god's will? We don't have any knowledge of aliens, and they would exist within our universe.

**Neo-Scholastic** · (This post was last modified: May 16, 2012 at 3:45 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)

(May 15, 2012 at 11:56 pm)apophenia Wrote: He does? [God demonstrates superior knowledge] All I see are a bunch of questions… God made no such statement. In order to conclude that your assertion was God's implied meaning, we would have to either know the mind of Job as God does, in order to know what understanding God expected Job to have, or know God's intent...since you've basically argued that we can't know the mind of God, you've effectively argued yourself into a corner from which we can't know the meaning of God's…dialog with Job.

Once again you have failed to distinguish between general intentions and specific ones. I need to eat and intend to do so. That follows from my inherent nature as an animal. What I intend to eat and how I get it are discretionary decisions that do not follow from my inherent nature. Similarly, given the biblical God and a revealed text, a thoughtful exegesis gives us God’ general intentions (reward the righteous, etc.), but not a detailed list of everything God knows.
With regards to how Job understood God’s answer, the answer is in Chapter 42:3 “…I have declared that which I do not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know.” Job previously declared he suffered unjustly. As such, the issue in question was God’s moral judgment.

(May 15, 2012 at 11:56 pm)apophenia Wrote: … if we accept God's message to Job as simplistically rhetorical…it doesn't tell us what God's message to us was meant to be.

Any fair minded person can see that the structure of the tale and its content are not meant to be a purely dramatic reading. Nor were they intended to serve as a philosophical treatise. It is obviously a morality tale, intended to also be read for instruction and reflection. That is one of the historic functions of storytelling and one that fits well with the text. The fact that numerous commentators have mined the story for deeper significance does not undermine a simple reading. Interpretation of stories, be they biblical or otherwise, is always an art. Just as a general observation, interpretations are not foolproof because fools can read whatever they want into any text.

(May 16, 2012 at 5:34 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: My main issue with the concept of God in the context of pain and suffering.

I’m not trying to be flip or diminish the true anguish of tragic and unfortunate fates but pain is a given; suffering is optional. Pain provides useful sensory feedback about bodily harm. In that respect pain is a blessing. Suffering, on the other hand, is the emotional response to that pain based on our judgment about it. Athletes endure pain willingly as part of training. That would not qualify as suffering. We suffer when we believe our pain is pointless, unfair or unnecessary. In a theological context, the natural events that cause pains are in some sense just or serve God’s purposes.

Godscreated · (This post was last modified: May 16, 2012 at 3:53 pm by Godscreated.)

(May 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm)Godschild Wrote: The way you talk about your life, it sounds as if you did and it was granted.

Wc Wrote:If God were real and that were true then I would cease to exist.

By the way you describe your life you do not exist.

(May 15, 2012 at 5:36 pm)Godschild Wrote: The sinful can not judge the Righteous one, that would be like the criminal passing judgement on the court.

Wc Wrote:Of course they can judge. They just don't have any power or authority to pass on those judgements or convictions.

I judge your god to be a complete bastard, a tyrant. I can't do anything to him though, if he's a god can I? But then the ants can't do anything to stop me from dividing the hive and showering my elect ants with sweets and squishing the damned ants out of existence, although this doesn't make me any less of a dick for doing so.

You have proven my point in your statement, if you are powerless to enforce judgement then there is truly no judgement, the only thing you can give is an opinion, which holds no water with One who omnipotent.

Those ants you think you have so much power over might surprise you, God has power over all mankind, let's see how you fair with army ants.

(May 15, 2012 at 11:42 pm)Godschild Wrote: As for me and my family we will walk through those precious gates praising our savior, as for you I assure you God will deal with you justly, remember this the glory in heaven is the absolute opposite of hell. Maybe this will help you are a triune being.

Wc Wrote:And the members of your family-to-be who strayed? Oh wait, you interpreted the meaning of "family" as members of the same cult belonging to you haven't you? Fair enough.

Its futile teaching us sinners the glory of heaven when all we've ever know and ever will know is an existence without god or gods. Give up. Your idea of godless hell is our idea of godless heaven silly and your preachings will fall on deaf ears every time.

Not sure what you mean by "family-to-be who have strayed," I'm talking about my relatives. As far as my spiritual family that is a given.

I'm not preaching that is against the rules, what I'm doing is stating the facts as I see them, if you choose to ignore them that's your God given right. I've come here to learn and learning I am doing.

(May 16, 2012 at 1:50 am)Godschild Wrote: God being your creator

Wc Wrote:I have no god.

Your denial of God does not have any bearing on His existence, it has no bearing on the fact He is your God.

Gc Wrote:You nor anyone can lessen God,

Wc Wrote:Let's put that to the test shall we? Your god is a cosmic cunt.

See what I did there?

All I see is you running your mouth and senseless babble coming forth, and in that you have lowered yourself and raised up God.

Quote:God doesn't even need this universe to be, He exists outside His creation.

Quote:Why its as if he's practically pissed off somewhere else and left us all to it! Why aren't you a deist?

God has not left us, He does exist outside this universe, however He works within it for our good. I'm not a deist because I know my God and accept what He as done for me.

(May 16, 2012 at 1:48 pm)Tobie Wrote:
Godschild Wrote:

The omniscient God has no problem understanding any or everything, not understanding is a problem you seem to be very familiar with, you should remedy that you know.
God being your creator and absolutely righteous gives Him every right to judge you, me and everyone, I will be found not guilty, can you say the same.
You nor anyone can lessen God, God's being does not require your opinion nor your existence, God doesn't even need this universe to be, He exists outside His creation. No one's opinion, and that's all you have at this point, lessens God.

If your god created the universe, it stands to reason that he is external to it. Seeming as we know nothing about what is outside of our universe, or even if there is an outside to our universe, how can you claim to comprehend your god's will? We don't have any knowledge of aliens, and they would exist within our universe.

No aliens, thus no knowledge of them, God shares His knowledge and will with those who chose to believe and serve, and that is quite an awesome thing.

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