A discussion around family table.

[tackattack]

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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?

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1- I am perfectly willing to come to any conclusion I see evidence toward. I'm not as locked into any conclusion as you'd like to believe. Your failure to see this is a point of frustration for me. I'm just going to have to conclude that you can't see it from my perspective and leave it alone. I haven't predecided anything and I'm not wishfull for God to be all around us or in an afterlife. I'd be just as happy tomorrow if today you'd disprove God.

2-Your using a very weak version of the POE by peppering it with ad hominem attacks. I can see you don't truly wish this conversation to go anywhere.

3- You are incorrect in your statement " You are believing something because you have decided to, rather than as a result of the reality being perceived." I am choosing to believe in something with subjective experience, logic, reason and commited trust. It is not despite reality, as much as you would like it to be.

4- I have linked yoou to the "good parts" of the Bible that even the agnostic atheists at the SAG to the Bible site will ackowledge. Your continuous refusal to even acknowledge them will bring this conversation to a swift close, which appears to be what you desire.