(January 20, 2016 at 9:12 am)robvalue Wrote:(January 17, 2016 at 8:45 pm)ApeNotKillApe Wrote: That seems like a pretty inefficient way to get a message across; I don't understand why an omnipotent, omnipresent being would constrain itself to the limitations of bronze age tribals.
If God wanted to communicate a message to people, why, of all the ways he could have done it, did he decide to "inspire" a handful of desert dwelling nomads in an isolated portion of the world to present his message in the form of vague parables and spread it by way of centuries of genocide, ignorance and atrocity? How many indigenous peoples were slaughtered or enslaved so that this message could get across? How many people were subjected to unspeakable torture and atrocity? How many were burned at the stake? How much violence has arisen out of disagreements over these vague texts? How much suffering have people endured simply because God couldn't think of a better way to communicate?
Or he could just talk to us, right now. Why were those small groups of people in one particular time period so important? We're here, he's here so we're told, yet he watches us all argue about what the message is meant to be. It is about the single worst way I could imagine communicating a really important message, especially while you watch people kill and torture each other over it and don't step in to clarify.
If God did show up, would you worship him?
Cecelia and others (including Christopher Hitchens, btw) have been very clear that they would not. And if he did, would this trample on anyone's free will?
So, what would be the advantage of such an entrance into our little world?
