Demons?

[Chad32]

Yeah, it's a bit strange that they claim his ways are not our ways, and totally incomprehensible to us, but assures us without a doubt that he is the paragon of virtue and we are but filthy dung beetles.

[Avodaiah]

Those were conditional statements, so no, I wasn't judging. I said 'if' God's reasons were the same as those given to Job, which you repeat almost verbatim by saying "He's god and you're not," then yes we can judge them, because those aren't valid reasons for explaining why God did what he did to Job. That's equivalent to me shooting your dog, and when you ask why, I reply "because I can." If God's answer is only "because I'm God," then I don't need to know more to judge him. If he has other reasons than this, you haven't presented them. Matter of fact, you are claiming to know God's reasons by implying they are beyond my comprehension. How would you know this? You wouldn't. Perhaps God's real reason for the genocide of the flood was, "I was pissed at an angel, and needed to take it out on someone." You can't have it both ways. Either you don't know God's meanings, in which case you can't say they are beyond my comprehension, because you don't know; or you claim to know God's intentions well enough to imply that they are beyond my comprehension. You would at least need to know something about God's thinking just to make either statement. So no, your dodge doesn't work because it's essentially a lie; if you truly don't understand the intentions of your God, then you're in no position to say they aren't comprehensible because you just don't know.

You're trying to play both sides of the "knowing God's intentions" quandary at the same time, and it doesn't work. Either you don't know, and must be silent. Or you do know, which makes your claim that you don't pretend to know God's intention a lie. You didn't keep silent, so that makes you a liar.

You don't get to play God's lawyer and then claim you know nothing about the details of the case.

And then seeing how poorly giving someone free will goes, when you're as much of a control freak as Yahweh is, he still gave it to humans. This deity isn't very smart.

Maybe God has a reason for doing it that we don't know? That would make Him smarter than us, not dumber.
If God really does exist, we would expect Him to be this way, wouldn't we?

I never said I know for sure that God's intentions were good. I said it may be that God had another reason other than "This deity isn't smart", and likewise, it may be that God isn't being malevolent. The fact that God is God only shows that there may be something God knows that we don't.

[Chad32]

I'm sure that if he exists, he knows things we don't. I know things you don't. I'd just need a good explanation before changing my views. Reacting with suspicion to perceived wrongs until a suitable explanation is given is natural for anyone. I could be wrong, but I will require something more than hope or faith to apologize for my accusations.

[Avodaiah]

I'm sure that if he exists, he knows things we don't. I know things you don't. I'd just need a good explanation before changing my views. Reacting with suspicion to perceived wrongs until a suitable explanation is given is natural for anyone. I could be wrong, but I will require something more than hope or faith to apologize for my accusations.

Right. I was just commenting on the possibility. I'm glad you understand.

[Angrboda]

Father Zosima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the peasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up into the portico. Father Zosima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led up to him. As soon as she caught sight of the elder she began shrieking and writhing as though in the pains of childbirth. Laying the stole on her forehead, he read a short prayer over her, and she was at once soothed and quieted.

I do not know how it may be now, but in my childhood I often happened to see and hear these ‘possessed’ women in the villages and monasteries. They used to be brought to mass; they would squeal and bark like a dog so that they were heard all over the church. But when the sacrament was carried in and they were led up to it, at once the ‘possession’ ceased, and the sick women were always soothed for a time. I was greatly impressed and amazed at this as a child; but then I heard from country neighbors and from my town teachers that the whole illness was simulated to avoid work, and that it could always be cured by suitable severity; various anecdotes were told to confirm this. But later on I learnt with astonishment from medical specialists that there is no pretence about it, that it is a terrible illness to which women are subject, especially prevalent among us in Russia, and that it is due to the hard lot of the peasant women. It is a disease, I was told, arising from exhausting toil too soon after hard, abnormal and unassisted labor in childbirth, and from the hopeless misery, from beatings, and so on, which some women were not able to endure like others. The strange and instant healing of the frantic and struggling woman as soon as she was led up to the holy sacrament, which had been explained to me as due to malingering and the trickery of the ‘clericals,’ arose probably in the most natural manner. Both the women who supported her and the invalid herself fully believed as a truth beyond question that the evil spirit in possession of her could not hold if the sick woman were brought to the sacrament and made to bow down before it. And so, with a nervous and psychically deranged woman, a sort of convulsion of the whole organism always took place, and was bound to take place, at the moment of bowing down to the sacrament, aroused by the expectation of the miracle of healing and the implicit belief that it would come to pass; and it did come to pass, though only for a moment. It was exactly the same now as soon as the elder touched the sick woman with the stole.

— Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, published 1880.

[Mister Agenda]

I never claim to know God's intentions. In fact, by calling God a "vindictive asshole" and morally inferior to "today's children of five", it is you who are presuming God's intentions. You're saying that God is in the wrong, but you give no other reason than that God's actions do not make sense to you. But why would they? He's God, and we're not.

Here's the problem for you with that: if we can't judge God to be 'bad' based on what the people who believe in him say about him and the state of the world in light of those claims being true because 'he's God, and we're not', he can't be judged to be good, either. Which means, by your own logic, his goodness can't be a reason to worship him.

[Sword of Christ]

God is good, the universe he created is good though harsh given the way it has to be to allow living intelligence to exist and humans are made in the image of God and are therefore good. However humans are subject to various flaws and imperfections due to their limited nature and therefore subject to sin, and this is why the world is in the state it's in. It's not just the case that you're here and you suffer and die for no reason or purpose there is an eternal context to all this and God lays at the heart of it. This is essentially what Bible says and there is no good reason why it can't be true or scientific discovery that renders the central message void. God in the this context is something worthy of worship.

[Esquilax]

God is good, the universe he created is good though harsh given the way it has to be to allow living intelligence to exist and humans are made in the image of God and are therefore good.

"Has to be"? So now there's limits on the kind of universe god could create?

[Sword of Christ]

[quote='Sword of
"Has to be"? So now there's limits on the kind of universe god could create? :thinking:

He could have made any kind of physical universe with any physical laws but there wouldn't be any organic life in it. We know exact conditions life requires in a universe so science does come into this. He could have made something else completely entirely different but the general idea is that he did, and we will be experiencing these other realities at some point, for most people this will be after death.

[Esquilax]

He could have made any kind of physical universe with any physical laws but there wouldn't be any organic life in it. We know exact conditions life requires in a universe so science does come into this. He could have made something else completely entirely different but the general idea is that he did, and we will be experiencing these other realities at some point, for most people this will be after death.

Well, you don't know that life couldn't have arisen through other sets of circumstances, so this point is moot anyway, but I like that you're positing a god that isn't omnipotent, though: if there's something he cannot do...