Are you for or against the separation of church and state?

[Ryantology]

You say you do not want God to save you and the rest of those who aren't saved probably feel the same. So why should He force you to live in eternity with Him if that's not your desire or anyone else for that matter. You said He should save those who do not desire it, so why did you change your mind.

Here's the problem I think most of us have with it.

If it was just a matter of getting sweet heavenly rewards for getting on the Yahweh bandwagon, if it was nothing but a positive incentive, who would care? I don't want those rewards, they do not appeal to me in the slightest. So, when I die, I just want to die. If you leave me to do that, then that's okay.

The problem is that God sees fit to punish us for not jumping on the bandwagon. It is not enough for him to just let us non-believers experience oblivion. Salvation is not a positive incentive, because what are we being saved from? An eternity of pain and misery in hell. I recognize no authority which considers this acceptable, because no crime, no collection of crimes, no lifetime aggregation of crimes, deserves eternal punishment, and it's worse still when you consider that the almighty and omnipotent God does not define sin as things which are negative or detrimental or harmful or dangerous. Some sins have these qualities, but a lot don't, and God doesn't care either way. God doesn't care about the murder victim, he cares about being the victim himself, because he presumes to think that any crime committed is a crime against himself. That's insane and stupid. If someone shoots me, or my kid, I couldn't give a fuck less what God thinks about it (especially when he is directly responsible for it happening).

If I'm wrong about everything and end up in hell, I'm okay with that. I live my life for myself, my loved ones, my friends, and for whatever I can contribute to humanity as a whole. I would not live my life for a being as monstrous and hateful as your god, and if he sends me to hell, he still can't rob me of the satisfaction that I have lived a happy, fulfilling life as an independent person, and I can take solace in the fact that the company will be much more interesting.

Please show me the endless excuses Christians use for God not presenting Himself to man in a way everyone can know He's real.

You have a knack for issuing challenges which are insultingly easy to overcome. I found these on the internet, within about 20 minute's time.

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1. If God made us unable to deny his existence, we would be unable to choose to love Him.
   
2. He communicates his presence using subtle intimations so as to not be forceful.
   
3. People don't see him because they're blind
   
4. God has not opened their eyes
   
5. Those looking for proof have no idea what they are looking for.
   
6. He will show Himself soon.
   
7. If you're not one of His children you won't hear Him.
   
8. That is why it is called "faith".
   
9. He doesn't need to.
   
10. You want to SEE even though the creations are before you.
    
11. The point was to send us to earth & test us to see if we would earn our right to live with him again
    
12. Why would god need to go around proving his self to people?
    
13. The Bible represents everything which God has revealed to man.
    
14. If someone is closed to the idea, no amount of evidence will ever convince them.
    
15. faith suffers from too much freedom, too many temptations to disbelieve.
    
16. He did show up. His name is Jesus.
    
17. It's only when someone is born again by the Spirit of God that they have genuine, enduring, faith that doesn't need God to be a constant "visible" presence here on earth.
    
18. If the Lord Jesus returned for a week, went on television interviews, performed miracles, and then went back up to Heaven, within a month or two people would have written it off as just another one of those odd things that happen, and their minds would be filled with the next most exciting things going on in the news.
    
19. He wants only those people with good souls to live in heaven
    
20. The universe itself reveals the existence of God.
    
21. He doesn't show himself because he respects that you will make the right decision through faith.
    
22. You just have preconceived notions as to what He should look like.
    
23. God can never be reached because of sin.
    
24. You can't see the wind, you can only see things that the wind moves. God is like that.
    
25. He shows himself in the miracle of birth/life.
    
26. He came to Moses as a burning bush.
    
27. If He shows himself to us the CREDIBILITY of our FAITH won't exist.
    
28. He does, everyday, some people just miss it.
    
29. Jesus has been such a success that no other prophets after have been required.
    
30. Everything of himself that he has already shown is purely out of mercy and love.
    
31. He shows himself in nature every single day.
    In people's smiles..their helping hands when you need help.
    A child's smile...or tear.
    
32. He has given us all the evidence we need but you look in the wrong places
    
33. God cannot be in the presence of sin, without destroying it.
    
34. Because we must prove ourselves to him
    
35. Personal guilt before a Holy God drives the guilty from the presence of God.
    
36. God demonstrates who He is through man.
    
37. It is we, not Him who hides, and He who pursues us, not us who seek to know Him
    
38. He has determined that we are to be saved by faith, not by empirical “proof”.
    
39. Even if He should desire to fully reveal Himself, it is impossible for us to fully know Him.
    
40. The Israelites still refused to trust Him when He wanted them to enter into the Promised Land.
    
41. He shows himself to Christians in ways that Christians understand.
    
42. There is no excuse for anyone in the United States to say they need a sign from God to believe. That is the biggest excuse sent from Satan.
    
43. The true reason of unbelief is because people don't want to take time to read the Bible, they want someone to tell them what the Bible says and that is their biggest mistake.
    
44. Because there's enough evidence that his existence is obvious.
    
45. God does only what is best for us in each instance.
    
46. How would an Omnipotent Being reveal Himself to finite beings?
    
47. So God is not interested only in our knowledge of Him.
    
48. God has left us many clues, from the Awareness and yearning inside each of us, the incredible Bible that is a book like no other book, and the Creation that simply cannot be explained with natural terms.
    
49. God wants us to love him (and thus, of course, also love all our fellow human beings). But love must be voluntary.
    
50. It must take a great deal of ignorant faith to read the Gospels and still deny that God revealed Himself to mankind.
    

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The idea that if God to reveal himself, physically, to the world, my free will to choose to love him would be erased, is illogical. I do not love my mother and father because they are my mother and father. I do not love them because I know they physically exist. I love them because they have demonstrated, physically and emotionally, that they loved me and cared for me. They were the ones changing my diapers, feeding me, giving me advice and support. They were the ones teaching me. They are the reason I am the man I am today, for better or worse. That is why I love my parents. If they were bad people, if they hurt me, belittled me, the fact that they are my parents, the fact that they physically exist, would be irrelevant.

If God appeared to the world, I would be forced to accept the fact that he exists. That is it. Whether or not I would pursue the sort of personal relationship Christians insist God wants would depend not on God's existence at this point, it would depend on what he does. Would thousands of children still starve to death every day? Would thousands die in agony? Would people die in random accidents? Would a select few have far more than they need while the vast majority has too little? Then, I would choose to spurn the God who allows it all to happen.

So far, all the 'evidence' we have for God's existence is a holy book no different from any of a thousand other holy books. Unless I go out of my way to pretend otherwise, it depicts God as a distinctly negative force, the enemy and tormentor of the humans he created, an injust and capricious tyrant who cares only about himself. I can't love my brother because I don't have a brother. If someone insists that I do, I won't believe it until solid evidence is presented. And, even if he is real, if his personality resembles God's, I could never love him.

If God was real and it was obvious, the practice of apologetics would not be necessary. Like everything Godschild ever says, apologetics is nothing but lies and horse shit. I need no apologetics. I don't need fifty different justifications. I need only state the obvious: what does not exist cannot show itself.