RE: AF Hall of Shame (Theist edition)
May 14, 2013 at 10:40 am
(This post was last modified: May 14, 2013 at 10:42 am by Tonus.)
(May 13, 2013 at 7:03 pm)Faith No More Wrote: Then what's the point of the test, a.k.a. life? Isn't the whole point of existence to make a choice to be with or without god? If god knows how everyone will turn out, what's the point of the whole charade?
I think that the more relevant question is- what guarantee does a believer have that god will follow through on his promises? If his actions cannot be evil, if his decisions cannot be unjust, then nothing stops him from sending his most faithful follower to hell simply because he finds it amusing.
The story of Job is a reminder that serving god faithfully won't stop him from punishing you severely. Near the end of the narrative, god lectures Job. Not because he wanted to explain why he'd allowed so many people to be treated so horribly (remember that Job's servants and children were massacred), but to give Job a holy dressing-down for wanting to know why he was suffering.
God can reward the most terrible sinner with eternal heaven and punish the most devout servant with eternal hell, and it would be both justified and good. Why serve something like that?
Oh, nice. 666th post!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould