A discussion around family table.

[Scented Nectar]

God is not forcing me to love Him it's my choice it's what I want to do.

So, you don't do it because you are expected to? You love/idolize him to such an extent that you capitalize pronouns referring to him. What's with that silly stuff? The bible constantly orders you to love him, sometimes using different words like worship, praise, into yer heart, or whatever. One of your sacred commandments is an order to not love other gods because your god wants it all to himself, even admits he's jealous. If you don't love god, you're a sinner in his eyes. I mean what the fuck? The whole bible is one big love/obey god-fest.

And how do you 'choose' to love? You either feel the emotion love, or you don't. If you have chosen to feel it, and then intentionally try and feel it resulting in kind of feeling it, then you have just done the faith version of love. Way to taint what should be a nice and true emotion for yourself. Rather than really feel and enjoy it and find it awesome for just being what it is, it's a taste of god's goodness tossed as a crumb to unworthy you, who couldn't possibly feel such a thing without his mercy and magnificence. Do I have that right? Is it something like that?

I do go out living life in and with love and I try to live a good moral life and not because I'm commanded to I do this I do this to show others what God has done in and for my life.

That's sad. Your motivation for being good is to thank god and tout the worship and obeying his commands. Being good for the sake of being good is much more authentic and purely motivated by goodness and true morality. The goodness inspired by religions however, are motivated by the believers being convinced that god wants them to do this or that, and that goodness means whatever god says it means. For a believer, the warm and fuzzy feeling from being good is probably the nice being-approved-of feeling, where god loves you for being so obedient.

I try to do the things I should in thanks to God for redeeming this unworthy person.

Why are you assuming you are starting from some default 'unworthy' position? That's pretty fucking pathetic. They have convinced you that any bad feelings you have inside you, can be cured with god/belief/love rather than actually looking into what has really caused you to feel bad. You can walk with that crutch all your life, or you can fix your leg and not need it after that.

There's no way I can deny Gods love for me because His love cost Him a very high price.

Really? What high price? Do you mean when god pretended to be a human and died in a way that was less painful than many humans have experienced when injured or dying? Didn't your god already know what pain was, since he invented pain and dying? Seriously, what high price do you think your god had to pay?

I know you do not understand this because you have chosen to disbelieve, that is a privilege God has given us, but your disbelief can not and will not change the fact that God is real.

Belief is not a choice, except when one convinces oneself to believe before evidence (and even after no evidence appears), and believing in that way is called faith. Faith is not true belief, it is an induced state of convincing oneself, self delusion to the point where one actually does kind of believe it. They must then battle 'doubts' whenever their mind naturally, and healthily, questions anything regarding it. True belief/disbelief just simply happens. If your god were real, and made himself known to me, I wouldn't have the choice about believing. I simply would believe, since he would be shown as real and not just in my mind. The choice would then be whether to try and follow his hideous laws. If your god were real, and if it mattered to him that I believe he existed, he would show that he existed in a way that can't be denied. Unless he is stupid or sadistic, that is. Is your god too stupid to be able to prove to everyone he's even there? Is he so mean that he would set up a difficult to believe situation that guarantees some to fail, for which he then tortures the failees?

Your disblief does not cancel out my experiences with God.

Nor does your disbelief cancel out my experiences with the Fragrant Flower Fairies. They only created humans to poop out fertilizer, you know. We are only here to eat, and then poop, and and when not doing those things, breed more poopers. What, you don't believe me?

Why is it you believe God would be forcing one believe in Him, just because He gives us choices does not constitute force.

When the so called 'choice' is to believe or be punished, it is not really a choice, is it? He's not just warning you and saving you, you know. He's the one who decided you should be tortured forever. He's driving the truck he's telling you to step out of the way from. He's lighting the fucking match and locking you in the building and then telling you under what conditions he'll let you out. At least acknowledge that you are being coerced bigtime. Oh yeah, you can't think about that or you'll be punished. Never mind, I don't want to get you in trouble.

Good thing that monster you call god is not real !!!

Many people make wrong choices in their lives and pay a penalty for that choice and sometimes that penalty is for life and no one forced them to and they knew the consequences for their actions.

No one forced them? So, it's a choice and not forced, and god did not set up the whole punishment system, one which punishes the person for not thinking good emotions about the punisher? Really?

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I don't believe you've said anything you don't mean or have out right lied intentionally. My point being your onesidedness. If you see God, even only as a human concept, projected to the universe(and I believe you do) You're still ignoring the duality that would inately entail. Here are some examples:

God is an imaginary being, thus a concept only. I do not project the definition to mean the universe. The universe is the universe. Most conclusions are 'one-sided'. Mine is less so than yours though. I am willing to believe in gods should they ever show themselves to be real by becoming perceivable. You are so unwilling to conclude anything other than what you've pre-determined the answer must be, that you need to call natural, very real things, like the your emotions and the universe, a god, just to keep convincing yourself that he exists. It's not that I blame you for doing this, because you do have the eternal torment/misery gun to your head. Inside your head actually, since if you do not control your thoughts, you are hellbound, it's not just your actions.

Here's my very simplified thoughts on a more even approach:
Does God kill people? yes
Does God save people? yes
Does God seperate the good from the bad? yes
Is there justice in his reasoing? IMO, yes.
Does injustice happen? yes.

Why was your god stupid or cruel enough to make such a world? Why have to save people from the killing which he made? Why does your god struggle with the evil he created? Can't he just think it away? If he is all just, why is there injustice? Just how weak is your god, anyways? Creates an enemy, satan/evil, that he then can't fight off. And before you say the bad stuff is just an absence of god, well, is he so unpowerful that he can't fill in those gaps that are everywhere? Where is the justice in setting up a system where some people are certain to fail, and then horribly punishing those people? At least if you need to believe in deities, find one that doesn't do stupid and immoral things like that. Don't follow the ones that people you've never even met from centuries ago made up.

If yoou're loking for the parts of the Bible, that are the crux of why I consider God good to me, I'll point a few out, and I'll try and give you the gist.

I looked at that first page you linked to, and still saw shit. You'll have to be a lot more specific, rather than pages that have a long collection of the bad stuff, like that first page did. I'm looking for the really good stuff. Show me something that cancels out the evil of killing people for nonharmful behaviour such as worshipping some other god or having consentual sex. Being fair in weights and measurements just doesn't do it, you know?

Theese don't "cancel out" anything. Let me give you an excerpt
"Structure-Proposition-Evaluation (SPE) method, popularized by Mortimer Adler in How to Read a Book, mainly for non-fiction treatise, in which one reads a writing in three passes: (1) for the structure of the work, which might be represented by an outline; (2) for the logical propositions made, organized into chains of inference; and (3) for evaluation of the merits of the arguments and conclusions. This method involves suspended judgment of the work or its arguments until they are fully understood. "

Yeah, thanks for explaining how to know what a book is saying {huh?}. I guess the bible forgot to include the warning "if you don't read this 3 times first while unecessarily splitting up your thinking/analysing process into 3 parts, one for each reading, you'll think it's saying the opposite of what it really means".

I think yoou're not suspending judgement, and your chains of inference are horribly one sided.

The one sidedness is a direct result of there being no 'inferences' in your biblebook. You can't even show me what sentences/paragraphs I'm supposed to 'infer' the real commands from. The bible is quite clear, kill, punish, torture, etc. for nonharmful behaviour and thoughts. Nothing in it 'infers' that it does not mean the things it says.

You think there is something I'm still missing that's in the bible. Well, what is it? I keep asking you christians to show me where there is something that changes the bad shit to good shit. At some point one has to stop suspending judgement. That point regarding the bible is when it is very clear that it is very very shitty in what it wants people to do and think. But I am openminded, so if you can show me that it ISN'T in fact so shitty, I'll change my opinion of it. I'm pretty sure you can't do that, or you would have by now, but I am still willing to give your claim a chance.

I can completely understand why your opinons of the merits of the Bible are the way they are.

If that is the case, then you must know exactly what I need to start believing it's a good rulebook to go by. Waiting.......

Blind faith is illogical and counterproductive and I don't appreciate blind faith. I wasn't speaking of blind faith though. I believe I linked to Arcanus' explination of faith somewhere above.

Faith IS blind faith. That is the only type. If it wasn't blind, it wouldn't be called faith. I glanced at your redefinition the other day, but did not memorize the vague and long definitions there. If it isn't faith you are practicing, then call it something else. I'm not going to try to keep remembering what you are really talking about when you use that word. And anyways, you DO practice faith. You are believing something because you have decided to, rather than as a result of the reality being perceived. You predecided/hoped that the world around you is god-infused, and now 'see' it and 'feel' it everywhere. Am I right?