God, Christianity, Control, & Fear

[Caecilian]

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@Caecilian- You would draw no correlation that the synchronicity of the event of you basically asking for a sign from God , then receiving a spontaneous LSD-like flash are related? Maybe I could see getting an MRI and seeing the doctor to verify if they continue, but I think that's denial.
And what would you conclude if doctors and psychiatrists found absolutely nothing wrong with you? You'd probably still deny God had anything to do with anything because it's incompatible with your materialistic view, instead of accepting that your view could be wrong and maybe he did provide you with what you asked for.

Nah. I'm pig-headed alright, but I'm not that pig-headed. In the scenario that you give, I'd be forced to examine my assumptions. After all, if your paradigm can't explain your experience, then maybe the problem is with your paradigm. I'm not saying that I'd convert or anything- frankly I have no idea how things would pan out (how could I?). But one thing that I wouldn't do is try to deny what had happened to me. That would be dishonest, and although I have many faults, dishonesty isn't one of them.

As far as God and morality-The problem with your emotive hate parade is that the first two actually did the events themselves, the third at the most inspired them. What If I have 500 people say that you've inspired them to slaughter all of their own children , because I've told them you have some superhero powers. It turns out your superpowers are completely explainable and you didn't even want them to do what I told them you wanted. What culpability would you actually have in that scenario?

Do you think that Hitler personally killed 6 million jews? Of course he didn't. He didn't even order 6 million jews to be killed. What he did was to create a system- a death machine if you like- appointed the 'right' people, set the policy, equipped his followers with the 'right' ideology, approved the allocation of resources. He was certainly responsible for the Holocaust, but lots of other people were responsible too- on a smaller scale, of course.

God, according to christian theology, plays a similar role in the damnation of people like myself. He created the universe, with full foreknowledge of what would happen. The mechanisms that lead to eternal torment for billions are his work. Just as Hitler created the nazi death machine, so, according to christianity, god created the damnation machine. And if Hitler was directly responsible for the Holocaust, and I think that any reasonable person would say that he was, then god is directly responsible for mass damnation.

Not sure how the superhero analogy works, so I won't comment.

Self examination is always preferable to assuming delusion. Me and EvF got into a discussion on this. Question: If something extraordinary happens to you or you observe something extraordinary is your first assumption that a) it's not real until you can identify it's cause or b) It's real until you can disprove it being extraordinary?

I don't agree with your analogy and here's why:
a) OK, yes we'll agree that God created eternal torment by design just as Hitler created the Nazi death machine
b) You're still presuming that God wants you in the death camp as Hitler did.
c) You're negating any direct killings Hitler has done , which I'm sure is his fare share
d) God doesn't set the policy or the "right ideology". God didn't ask man to make the Bible, we did that on our own, therefore mankind set our own policy based off of our perception of his intentions (which was later shown to be incorrect).
e) I also don't believe God would approve of the allocation of our resources towards war and espousing hatred.

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If something seemingly extraordinary happened, I'd begin by trying to find an explanation from within my current paradigm. Delusion would only be applicable to some types of extraordinary event; events that have distinct resemblances to the effects of hallucinogens are always gonna be good candidates for 'delusion'-type explanations.

If an explanation from within my current paradigm didn't work, then it would be time to look further afield. And to keep an open mind.

I don't think that this approach matches either of the options that you give.

As far as my analogy goes:

- Clearly, instantiating the nazi death machine is a very different procedure from instantiating the divine damnation machine. Most importantly: the Holocaust really did happen, whereas god and hell are fictions.

- If god doesn't want me (and others) damned, then why create the system in the first place? He has foreknowledge of whats going to happen. He could have simply allowed everyone into heaven, or at least made hell a much nicer place to be in. So either he really does want me damned, or he's a complete fucking idiot. Take your pick.

- If god really doesn't want to inspire hatred, then he's not doing a very good job. Read the posts by ecolox on this thread.