Indoctrination & Mental Gymnastics

[Lek]

Me: Great propaganda. They really try hard to make you feel like you're doing something wrong, pulling all those existential strings. To your perception, God sacrificed himself, to himself, to save' us, from himself. "Worship me so I can save you from what I'm going to do if you don't worship me." The first four commandments all relate to Yahweh's gigantic ego. Those four would have been better used for commandments like "thou shalt not rape" "thou shall not have slaves" "thou shall not harm children" and "thou shall treat everyone as equals" Imagine what things would be like if the writers had made him less egocentric. Selflessness is a value the abrahamic deity lacks.

Welcome to the forum Glitch. I'd like to take a stab at critiquing your comments. I might not have the time to address them all at one sitting. Yes. God's human son (who is also God) sacrificed himself to his father (who is also God) to pay the penalty for our sins. He did command us follow your four suggested commandments as shown in his "two greatest commandments":

Matthew 22:37-40 New King James Version (NKJV)
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Finally, it wasn't the writers' job to make God appear less egocentric, but to write as their inspiration led them to do. Obviously, you think God is egocentric, but that wasn't the opinion of the writers of the bible or of we who follow the bible.

Me: Lucifer? The guy that killed 10 people in the bible? Or do you mean Yahweh? The guy that killed 2,821,364 people in the bible? Oh, so you're telling me that the other 5 billion living people on the planet will all go to hell because they believed in the wrong God? All the Islamic, Buddhistic, and Hinduistic children? All of the kind people who care for others...and aren't Christian?

Lucifer doesn't have the power to kill anybody and he didn't kill anybody in the bible. After the sin of Adam, God ordained that we all would die - 100% of us. Which was worse for the Amalekites: dying quickly by the sword or dying from some slow agonizing death from disease as many of us will experience? The bible emphasizes that death was a result of our sin. You may believe different, but that's what bible-believing christians believe.

Me: So rejecting your specific deity equates to agonizing torture in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity? Sounds fair. Out of the world's 4,200 active religions and the hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses, you expect them to pick Yahweh? It's a needle in the haystack and it's likely everyone else feels that their own deity is the right one. Your an atheist for every god created by humanity except for that one. If you were born in the Middle East you would be Islamic and claim that Allah is the one true God. If you were born in classical Greece you would believe in Zeus. If you were born in India you would believe in Vishnu. You had no choice in choosing a religion or God, your parents did that for you.

The bible says that Jesus died for the sins of us all. That doesn't mean just those are introduced to the bible and believe, but for all who honestly seek him:

Matthew 7:7 New King James Version (NKJV)
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Those who seek him will find him. They may not know that his name is Jesus or know the bible, but they are responding to the light that God has given them and will be saved. I'm not talking about every single person, but those who honestly seek him and respond to what he has revealed to them about himself. What you stated concerning that if you were born in certain countries, you would believe so and so, is not true. Christians are in every one of those countries you mentioned. Finally, my parents raised me as a christian. I'm all grown up now and I accept christianity for myself.

Me: You're performing some serious mental gymnastics to avoid rationality. Everyone believes that their God is the real God, everyone believes that their God affects the world and no one else's. Your God is as real as all the other Gods. It's subjective and determined by your culture. I know you're smarter than this, think outside of your perspective, consider why others believe in their gods and the look back at why you do.

You have no idea what she has experienced between God and herself and of why she's a christian.

Me: Where your born has a greater impact on what God you'll believe in than anything else. If you were born in a non-Christian region, you would not believe in the God you do now. If Yahweh is so omnipotent, why has there yet to be a child born with the foreknowledge of Yahweh's supposed existence? Why were you taught about this God at a young and impressionable age, rather than inheriting the information?

Like I already said before, there are millions of christians who were born in non-christian regions. As far as questioning why God didn't do it your way, I figure that if I'm God that's my business. But you're welcome to your opinion.

Me: That's an absurdly convoluted plan for a God. Look at how convinced you are of your own God's existence, now imagine how others may feel about their own. The God you worship is as real to you as their God is to them. You may find that they are as convinced as you are in their reasoning. Try to convert them, seriously attempt to convert a Hindu, Buddhist, Islamist, or Jew to Christianity. Grab every evangelical Christian you can find and attempt to convert the other 4.8 billion people in the world. It's been tried in the past, erupting nothing more than conflict.

There have been countless conversions to christianity in all parts of the world due to God working through missionaries. It happens every day.

Me: So, God is powerless without someone to speak for him?

No. He wants to use his people. That part of our mission on earth as christians.

Me: God's plan? That sounds like a feeble attempt to explain natural disasters killing millions. If the concept of God's plan is true, you have to accept that it's in God's plan for us to abort children. If God is both omnipresent and omnipotent, you must accept that God willfully allows the murder of innocent people and permits rape to take place. Epicurus says it best. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comets evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

It's not his desire that evil is done. His desire is that we love one another, but it's also his desire that we have the freedom to choose between good and evil. So yes he does allow evil things to happen.