(November 17, 2017 at 12:27 pm)alpha male Wrote: Pride, like many things, is good in measure, but can be destructive in excess. For example, many people think that Trump has excessive pride and are concerned it could result in unnecessary conflict.
I'm *so* tempted to interpret this as a variation on Godwin's law. (Suffice to say that I do not resemble Trump in any meaningful way and expect this state to continue for the foreseeable future.)
(November 17, 2017 at 2:08 pm)alpha male Wrote:(November 17, 2017 at 2:06 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: I agree. By way of your god we aren't autonomous, which is one reason (of many) why I don't subscribe to any of the religious narratives. I mean, did I misrepresent your god in some way? Is my description not accurate?
Point is that if our every thought was in effect prewritten by god, we don't exist in any meaningful sense. We're just characters in a complex novel.
Thoughts are irrelevant here. Regardless of what we think or believe, your god is constraining our behaviour and only providing two possible outcomes (heaven for professing belief, hell for rejecting it). I can think of several other possible outcomes -- simple annihilation of non-compliant beings, or the freedom to craft one's own afterlife, are just two that would be vastly superior to sending anyone to hell.