(April 14, 2011 at 5:45 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Well EA it seems you demand satisfaction in a manner that denies the full answer already given.
I didn't demand satisfaction, frodo. I asked for understanding ... over and over. There's a difference between demanding and asking. It's only God in his capriciousness and bizarre moral code who demands things of us. Questions and apparent contradictions surrounding the nature of the Christian god are far from answered, such as:
- What kind of god gives humans reasoning power and punishes some of those humans for actually using it?
- Why couldn't God, if he was there, take five minutes out of his busy schedule to help me, in my stupyfied ignorance, understand after sincere pleading on my part?
- How can God be both merciful and just? Or all-loving and omnipotent?
- How could an all-loving god have created humans knowing full well the thousands of years of misery they would endure because of their "choice" to disobey him?
- How did an omniscient god allow Satan into the Garden? Why did an all-powerful god allow Satan into the Garden? Was this to test man by placing a tree in the Garden and then saying, "Don't touch!" How can an all-loving god be that cruel? How could an all-loving god do all of that to Job and live with himself? Does God feel guilt? He should.
- What kind of loving father demands you love him back and then makes you pass tests to show your love?
- What kind of a loving father demands you love him back and also believe in his son or face eternal torment? What kind of loving father says you have free will, but gives you only two options on which to exercise that will?
- What kind of loving father sends his son on a mission of martydom, when, presumably, if he was all-powerful and all-knowing, he could have come up with a more humane way? Or, simply say that all sins are forgiven outright. Why is god obsessed with blood sacrifice? Why does God require a blood sacrifice to atone for sins? He can't just forgive people since he's all-loving? If he has this limitation, he isn't all-powerful either.
- How could an omniscient and all-powerful god let an obviously cobbled together work like the Bible be passed down to us as his authoritative word to humans? Presumably, he had the power to make sure that the Bible was non-contradictory, free from scientific and mathematical errors and not used to advance slavery, witch burning, the Crusades and the denial of condoms to people in Africa.
- How could a god of love exist alongside Satan and his minions? Why doesn't God use his power to crush Satan and said minions right now? What's the hold up? Why didn't he take care of matters when Lucifer tried to seize power? Presumably, he could have crushed Satan then and there rather than cast him into hell, thus saving a lot of time and trouble of creating man, then watching him be tempted, then watching man suffer thousands of years of famine and wars, then coming up with a new covenant, then watching his son die a horrible death for our sins, sins that God knew we would commit before creating us, the whole bloody scenario also being fully in the mind of God before he created the first man.
Our Daily Train blog at jeremystyron.com
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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