(August 31, 2014 at 12:37 pm)Natachan Wrote:

(August 31, 2014 at 11:53 am)Greatest I am Wrote: I think I see your mind set. You do not mind leadership and rules but object to tyranny. I agree.

We should all seek the ideal man to lead and rule over us but not idolize him or her.

That my friend is pure Gnostic Christian thinking and that is wht I am.

Even after my apotheosis, no it is not woo, the ideal or Godhead I found, I set aside, raised the bar of that/my view of ideal, and seek a new God continually.

That is what we should do politically as well as spiritually.

My religion aside, do you see what I mean?

Regards
DL

No. You still set up a king in Jesus, God, or whatever. You set up a being to whom you are forever in subservience. You still are considered lesser than another. THIS is the problem.

I recall a fictional kingdom where the leaders rise through great deeds. They work hard, and their deeds gain them prestige. They then expect those who have less prestige to bow, scrape, and to even refrain from looking them in the eyes. This is the problem. While they might be respected, they demand treatment that lessens those who have not achieved. They insist that they are a different race than those others.

My problem is the idea of some demanding veneration. I give no veneration. I give no worship. I give respect where it is earned.

You set up a being to whom you are forever in subservience.

I said no such thing and in fact said elect as in a democracy and there is nothing forever about that leader.

You missed my point though. Without those leaders, you have anarchy and chaos.

You also missed where we are to seek the ideal leader perpetually.

Perhaps it is my poor delivery.

Regards
DL

(August 31, 2014 at 12:40 pm)Drich Wrote: God is omniscient, duh. Before the crime after the crime is the same to Him. Therefore if he says this will happen if we do not take out these people, guess who gets taken out before sunset on the sabbath?

Exactly what I thought: "God said so, so it's okay."

This is circular reasoning. The end.

Quote:The hitler analogy is also a play on omniscience, or rather humanity's nearest approximation to it. In that if we have the benfit of future knoweledge (if you had a chance to kill baby hitler/knowing who he would become) would you?

If I had the benefit of future knowledge I could arrange it so that the bad future doesn't come to pass, without having to kill anybody.

Quote:If you know an out come of a singular human life was absolute and it served the greater good would you take a life is the question.. Then one step further would you take out a whole race of people if you knew for absolute certain they would doom the whole planet?

So god drowns babies to save the planet, rather than just saving the planet without drowning babies, which he could totally do. And you're okay with it, because god did it.

Just thought I'd phrase that accurately.

(August 31, 2014 at 12:30 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(August 31, 2014 at 12:22 pm)Losty Wrote: Second, and far more importantly, if I was god I certainly would not kill a baby hitler. I would create a baby hitler who wasn't interested in killing off all the Jews.

Or- to cut off any rambling about free will in response- you could create a series of small, natural coincidences that do not interfere with Hitler's free will, but nonetheless prevent him from attaining the power that would allow him to kill anyone.

After all, one's will refers to one's ability to think thoughts, not their automatic ability to succeed at whatever they want to. Otherwise gravity is god interfering with free will.

I don't believe that Hitler was predestined to want to kill all the Jews in the first place. I like where you're going with this, but I would take it even farther by changing the circumstances of his life so he would end up a well rounded individual who hadn't experienced whatever things made him turn out to be a murderous psycho.

Or better yet, never create a hitler at all. Only create people who naturally and on their own free will would never want to murder.

Or never create evil and then all people would naturally be good on their own free will.

If I was god, I would take advantage of my ability to know everything and do everything. I would change "all" the rules and I would know exactly how to make it work.

(August 31, 2014 at 12:46 pm)Greatest I am Wrote:

(August 31, 2014 at 12:37 pm)Natachan Wrote: No. You still set up a king in Jesus, God, or whatever. You set up a being to whom you are forever in subservience. You still are considered lesser than another. THIS is the problem.

I recall a fictional kingdom where the leaders rise through great deeds. They work hard, and their deeds gain them prestige. They then expect those who have less prestige to bow, scrape, and to even refrain from looking them in the eyes. This is the problem. While they might be respected, they demand treatment that lessens those who have not achieved. They insist that they are a different race than those others.

My problem is the idea of some demanding veneration. I give no veneration. I give no worship. I give respect where it is earned.

You set up a being to whom you are forever in subservience.

I said no such thing and in fact said elect as in a democracy and there is nothing forever about that leader.

You missed my point though. Without those leaders, you have anarchy and chaos.

You also missed where we are to seek the ideal leader perpetually.

Perhaps it is my poor delivery.

Regards
DL

Can you depose God for bad behavior? Are you equal? Or is God one who demands subservience? At all?

If you believe either of these things then you are a far cry from what I understand as Christianity.

Quote:God is omniscient, duh. Before the crime after the crime is the same to Him. Therefore if he says this will happen if we do not take out these people, guess who gets taken out before sunset on the sabbath?

This gives you a whole new problem. If god kills the baby before it grows up to commit the crime it was killed for, surely this interferes with free will? Plenty of murderers/rapists etc are around, so god didn't kill them off as babies. Why has god stopped killing off potential murderers?

Also, if god kills them before the crime was committed, do the babies get punished for the crime they did not commit?

(August 29, 2014 at 11:57 am)Greatest I am Wrote: Only man is fit to be God.

There is no higher form of intelligent life as far as we can tell with any confidence.

Man has already proven that he can produce better laws than any of the Gods so to want to have man led by a God with less moral values would be like us electing Satan.

We are a part of the animal kingdom. In this kingdom, all animals look to their own kind for guidance and the best rules for them to live their lives by. These they learn from instincts. Man seeks the same best rules to live life by and not only uses his instincts and feelings, he also uses his intellect and reason.

Religions would have us emulate some absentee Gods while knowing that they are less moral and intelligent in their laws than man. That is why religions tend to not try to have holy laws put into our societies. They are way too draconian.

If all other animals emulate their fittest as God, in the sense of the best rules for life, then why do some humans want to follow what can only be called an alien God?

Humans should rule over humans. No alien God should ever be let to rule over us even if one did show up.

Do you agree and if not, why not?

Regards
DL

Humans do rule over humans.
Yes humans should rule over humans because the next best alternative I can think of is men letting dolphins or elephants take control, and although they are intelligent as far as animals go I don't think they could organize a good health service or plan the layout of cities.
I don't know who this alien god is so I can't say for sure if he would rule better than humans have done so far.
They want to follow a divine god because they believe this god has power over what happens after they die.

(August 29, 2014 at 11:57 am)Greatest I am Wrote: Only man is fit to be God.

There is no higher form of intelligent life as far as we can tell with any confidence.

Man has already proven that he can produce better laws than any of the Gods so to want to have man led by a God with less moral values would be like us electing Satan.

We are a part of the animal kingdom. In this kingdom, all animals look to their own kind for guidance and the best rules for them to live their lives by. These they learn from instincts. Man seeks the same best rules to live life by and not only uses his instincts and feelings, he also uses his intellect and reason.

Religions would have us emulate some absentee Gods while knowing that they are less moral and intelligent in their laws than man. That is why religions tend to not try to have holy laws put into our societies. They are way too draconian.

If all other animals emulate their fittest as God, in the sense of the best rules for life, then why do some humans want to follow what can only be called an alien God?

Humans should rule over humans. No alien God should ever be let to rule over us even if one did show up.

Do you agree and if not, why not?

Regards
DL

If sentience is a necessary criteria for god, then unfortunately nothing other than humans is currently known to fit the bill.

(August 31, 2014 at 12:51 pm)Losty Wrote: I don't believe that Hitler was predestined to want to kill all the Jews in the first place. I like where you're going with this, but I would take it even farther by changing the circumstances of his life so he would end up a well rounded individual who hadn't experienced whatever things made him turn out to be a murderous psycho.

Oh yeah, I don't buy predestination either, I was just trying to work with the least number of alterations to history possible, knowing that the more I tried to add, the easier it would be for the theists to cry "free will!" The truth is, you don't have to change anyone; every bad person on earth could be as bad as they are right now, but their free will does not ensure them success in their endeavors.

But imagine if you could change people. With Hitler specifically, imagine if he'd succeeded at art school. Imagine if he'd been great at art (inspiration and artistic talent are often characterized as gifts from god. Funny how that kind of interference is never brought up in free will discussions. ) The entire course of his life could have been altered; the world would have had a brilliant new artist, millions of lives would have been saved, and one particular life wouldn't have ended in defeat and disgrace in a German bunker.

Imagine how easy it would have been, for god. Surely the benefits would have outweighed having to (positively) interfere with someone's free will, if that's what you could call that at all?

Didn't happen though. And interestingly, look at the difference in approaches: in Drich's method, he zoomed straight to killing babies. In our atheist method, our morally bankrupt sinful method, we sought to improve countless lives in a non intrusive way. What does that say about adherence to this god's teachings?

(August 31, 2014 at 12:07 pm)Drich Wrote: If you could kill baby hitler would you, or would you let millions die so you could self righteously proclaim you killed a man who slaughtered millions?

It's not really an either/or situation, is it? Why not seek to change his circumstances so that he became a successful architect (which he was quite passionate about) and later a wealthy philanthropist? Not only does he become a net positive, but World War II would have amounted to Italy getting its ass kicked by Albania.

(August 31, 2014 at 10:59 am)Drich Wrote:

(August 31, 2014 at 3:28 am)Tobie Wrote: I Chronicles 21:9-14; God sends a pestilence to Israel which kills 70,000 innocents because their ruler wanted to do a census.

Deuteronomy 3:1-7 recounts the slaughter of all the living things in the 60 towns of Bashan.

Need I go on?

I think you need to continue until you find some NT example.

Quote:REVELATION 6:8

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

God is a nasty sob even in the new testament.