(May 19, 2011 at 7:00 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Why do you assume that just because you don't understand why God does something a certain way it automatically makes it unjust, or proves he is not real? I don't see the logic in that at all my friend.
I'm sorry if my feeble mind can't wrap my mind around a god who supposedly loves man yet places him in such an impossible position. God: "I demand you love me and believe in my son or face the fire." This is spiritual blackmail.
Or ...
God: "I created man, and it was good. Now, I'm going to put you in the garden where the devil will inevitably tempt you. I will allow the devil into my wonderful garden so you can prove your obedience to me. Unfortunately, you will fail. I knew you would fail beforehand, but I chose to create you anyway. Even though I have cursed you and every other human that will come after you, I love you and Eve. But take heart, I'm sending my son to die a horrible death for you. That makes it better, right? In retrospect, I guess I could have prevented the whole ugly scenario in the first place, but I, in all my lucidity, chose to begin the slow death march of humanity. Some of you, I admit, will think on these things and probably reject me. Oh well. Sorry about that. I'm all-powerful and all-loving, but there's nothing I can do there. My omniscient hands are tied. But I do love you. You know that, right?"
What am I not understanding? What other reasons could God possibly have for knowingly placing us in this spiritual gauntlet? Pronouncements saying that God has his reasons or that God's ways are not our ways, makes "God's ways" very peculiar and cruel indeed. In any case, such pronouncements get God off the hook far too easily.
I don't say all this absolutely proves he is not real, just that it makes it highly unlikely. Or, at the least, makes this god, like all others, unworthy of worship.
Our Daily Train blog at jeremystyron.com
---
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"
---
---
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"
---
