(August 18, 2010 at 10:34 pm)Godschild Wrote:

(August 18, 2010 at 3:28 pm)Captain Scarlet Wrote: [quote='Godschild' pid='87751' dateline='1282099610']
[quote='Godschild' pid='87513' dateline='1282019462']

You know for someone who doesn't no much about the scriptures you sure do show it.

Thanks godschild, you know what they say: " if a job ain't worth doing, it ain't worth doing it well". I am an expert on Shrek though, which is a much more uplifting fairy tale.

PS noticed you avoided answering my challenges again, yet again and yet, yet again. Are you saying god has never once acted to transgress human free will to compel us to 'love' him, either in scripture or in your view in reality? Are we or are we not commanded to follow god,a being that can do anything, else he'll get us and our kids? Is that love and free will?

No need to chastise people for not responding to posts, don't be hypocritical. I'm up for a challenge, but I apparently missed it, please issue again so I have the chance to respond?

FREEWILL?! Tell that to a little child abused by a priest. Who had the free will? The priest.

Who had freewill when 6 million people were forced into gas chambers? The Nazis.

Further, the priest will have free will to "confess" and"repent." Have you ever talked to a victim of religious abuse? They CANNOT pray. They CANNOT go to church. They CANNOT STAND TO hear the Bible read or to read it. It is not that they do not want to because many do, but they can't.

They are then blamed just to preserve the notion that free will exists so the powers that be can't be blamed or disproved.

So where the hell is FREE WILL? It does not exist. If there is any, The powerful have free will, not the powerless.

So, in Xian thinking, a good God sets up a system where the powerful smash the powerless just to prove that we must choose him when those who are harmed beyond repair are so far beyond choice and staggering through day to day.......just because God gave the choice to the powerful to smash the weak to prove that we must choose him.....this sounds more circular and stupidier every time I write a new sentence. No wonder the church needed Thomas Aquinas to obfuscate the rational thinking of Aristotle to the point no one understands so they just agree to it- like the Tax Code.

Am I insane to even be giving this my time?!! I must be,

But back to SUFFERING:

Suffering is a chain saw that cuts through all the BS in a millisecond. Read the book "God's Problem: by Bart Erhman. Finally someone said it. The obvious prevails. Occam's razor, sharp as sh*t,

There simply CANNOT be an "All Loving" and "All Powerful" being that co-exists with human suffering. Can't be. If you take the little child under the robes of a perverted priest, an all powerful being might let it go because he might be perverted, too. All all loving being might let it go, being not powerful. But an ALL LOVING AND AN ALL POWERFUL being would smash the priest to bits and eat him for lunch.

Even a human who saw a priest fondling the child would punch the priest nice and fast.

But there is no help from above.

My uncle is a historian who works with battle history. Yes, there are MANY atheists in the foxholes and here is a very poignant story of one:

Two men were on the field, one a chaplain and there was incomming fire. They both ran to the safe area, but only the chaplain made it. The other soldier got tangled in constatina wire. His guts were stuck- The chaplain man tried to get him out, but he was in it bad.

ALL NIGHT LONG the chaplain could hear his friend screaming SCREAMING in agony. He kept thinking that god would succor him, make him pass out, that endorphins would stop something. But no. On and on the screaming went till the chaplain went mad. He on that day never recovered and never ever considered god to be anything more than either a monster or not there.

Aquinas never covered that one.

(August 18, 2010 at 3:03 am)tackattack Wrote: I thought I addressed this but I'll rephrase.
God created everything, therefore he created suffering. It's productivity, usefullness, or causes are given to us in the form of choice. I'll illustrate. God make a bi blak rock. He created humans who will have to move that rock to create a path. What the human's do with the rock (how it's disposed, moved, etc) is up to us. They put it aside and by the rock's round nature it rolls around and kill somone. Was that God's fault for creating the rock, putting it there in the first place, or is it the human's fault for not watching what the hell he was doing? Suffering is a tool that's necessary for evolution and thiving as a species. It's worth (needless or productive) is based on our involvement in it.

You still haven't addressed the issue, which is that God could give us choice without suffering, and certainly without needless suffering, such as that caused by volcanoes. Why does he allow volcanoes to erupt? Why did he choose to create us through evolution, if it causes so much suffering?

Quote:Did you sponsor 5 families in your home so the don't have to live in a village on the side of a volcano? Did you help build levees that protected a village from flooding? Have you done research to help prevent infant death rates from climbing? Our capacity for violence, war and sadism is not our fault? That sounds like schewing accountability and a lack of personal responsibility. I am responsible for my own desires and animalistic instincts and it's my social obligation to use the roductively not destructively.

No, I've done none of these things. Maybe I should feel guilty about that; I'm not sure. Certainly I'm more ethical than many people, though no doubt less ethical than quite a few. All that's irrelevant, though. My point is that human nature is such that people are inclined to harm each other. God could've given us more compassion, say, and made the male hormone in particular less conducive to aggression. If compassion is not incompatible with free will at the moment, why would more compassion be? Nobody is responsible for their desires and instincts; that's nonsense. Whether they obey them is perhaps their responsibility, but again, it's God's fault for giving us those desires and instincts in the first place.

(August 19, 2010 at 7:23 am)tackattack Wrote: No need to chastise people for not responding to posts, don't be hypocritical. I'm up for a challenge, but I apparently missed it, please issue again so I have the chance to respond?

? I guess I'm just a disciplinarian!

My chastising was aimed at godschild who manages to erect more strawmen than a straw farmer with lots of surplus stock and a strange voodoo fascination.

(August 19, 2010 at 2:03 pm)Captain Scarlet Wrote: ...who manages to erect more strawmen than a straw farmer with lots of surplus stock and a strange voodoo fascination.

LOL

Kudos for that

People who are NOT buried by an earthquake and then sit around with a full belly formulating reasons why God allows earthquakes are ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as those who WERE buried and then turn around and say God was teaching them something.

BUT.......Why does God keep taking center stage, even in an atheist forum?

(August 19, 2010 at 3:08 pm)RachelSkates Wrote: People who are NOT buried by an earthquake and then sit around with a full belly formulating reasons why God allows earthquakes are ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as those who WERE buried and then turn around and say God was teaching them something.

BUT.......Why does God keep taking center stage, even in an atheist forum?

Hi RS. To be fair this is a christianity forum within am atheist website. As such discussion as to why you think the Christian god may or may not exist doesn't seem out of place. in addition as atheism is a rejection of god/s (and in the context of this thread the personal god of Christianity) it would seem relevant anyway.

(August 19, 2010 at 7:23 am)tackattack Wrote: No need to chastise people for not responding to posts, don't be hypocritical. I'm up for a challenge, but I apparently missed it, please issue again so I have the chance to respond?

That's OK tackattack, if this child wants to be unreasonable then that's the way it will be. Things like that don't bother me with God on my side who do I have to fear.

@Godschild - God

@ RachelSkates - I'm sorry If my religious beliefs and being here offends you. You obviously have a lot of hostility towards religion in the 2 posts I've seen from you. I bet it's also justified, Religion is a horrible thing, and I'm not alone in that sentiment even among Christians. Religion adn the Bible are however both man-made. God nor Jesus asked that they be made. Jesus even chastised the method, interpretations and tyrannical control believers of that time used to seperate people from the true meaning of the word. I hope you can find some respite in a religion crazy world at this site, however if you don't want to hear it, stay out of the Religious discussion section (no pun intended). God didn't promote the tyranical system, that was humans succoming to their own evil intentions aside.

@The OO- I am responsible for my own desires and animalistic instincts, all of them. You shouldn't feel guilty, you're in a boat with a lot of people. IF however you have the instinct to protect those hurt, inaction is the same as refusing to act. You aren't responsible because you feel a certain way, I agree. You are however responsible for every action (and inaction) based on those instincts and feelings. I also disagree that humans as a whole are inclined to hurt others. To answer your questions:
Why does he allow volcanoes to erupt? Aren't they necessary for techtonic shifts? I'm no geologist.. subduction or something
Why did he choose to create us through evolution, if it causes so much suffering? That's a valid point. Death causes suffering though too.. I guess if he didn't create suffering or the option to suffer we'd all be angels. To answer your question.. he already did that. MAybe our ability to learn and adapt has a goal that could surpass ignorant bliss of subserviance, idk?

@Captain Scarlet- Just pointing it out.. so you said something about a challenge?