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According to the religious, god is all powerful and all knowing. He created everything, good and bad. He created sin and all those evil things to temp us. Those select few, those who can lead a good and righteous life, those who can avoid whatever sins their particular holy book finds egregious, only those few can go on to heaven.
Heaven the real prize.
Everlasting peace and happiness compared to at most a hundred years of life on earth .. phht.. it doesn't even compare. All the glory of gods' heaven can be yours if you lead a life prescribed by 'THE' holy book. It's been said 'wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction'. Follow the narrow path to avoid all the sin and temptation god put in this world to lead you astray.
Why?
Is it just to see who is worthy of heaven?
Why go thru all the trouble to see who's naughty and who's nice? He should know.
If free will is an issue, why do the choices have to be between good and bad? Couldn't an all powerful being give you a choice between good and better? With no chance of bad? Or maybe just make the chances even , remember, narrow is path to heaven and wide is gate hell. Sounds like instead of making it easy to get to heaven the odds are stacked against you.
If god is all powerful and all knowing why not create us however he wants and just put us right into heaven?
If god is all powerful, the extra step doesn't make sense. Why the test?
What is this life for?
To reduce it to some sort of evaluation to see who is good enough for something better lowers the value of this life.
Life is for living, learning and loving. One possible scenario is that God has free will. He created us with free will. God (if he exists and is sentient) has knowledge of good and evil since he has created all things, yet he chooses to do right. All knowing and no since of time leaves a lot of room for allowing development. Perhaps if we are to quit choosing wrong over right consistantly with our free will our moral standard will evolve more towards God's. Perhaps one day we'll be planting a "tree of knowledge of good and evil" somewhere for our little antroids we've created with strong AI for them to develop sentience.
(December 29, 2009 at 9:01 pm)Ashes1995 Wrote:
screw that! life is for living and we only live once! if everone did everything by "the book" our life on earth will be dull and wasted, we should'nt be locked up like that! WE SHOULD BE FREE TO FLY WHERE WE WANT TO!
everyone who lives by "the book" should realise that!
free as a bird baby! well, when i get out of school i will be MORE FREE! Ha!
So why have prisons or courts?
(December 29, 2009 at 9:13 pm)chatpilot Wrote:
I agree, in the scriptures god is always testing us knowing full well who will earn heaven and who will burn in hell. I think that if god did exist and the bible were true it clearly show us that god created us for his own personal amusement.
When asked about a purpose in life I say why ask why. You live and try to make the most of your journey here and you die like so many that have preceded you. There is no purpose, enjoy it while it lasts.
Is this going along the same lines of the arguement that If I ask 1000 people to stand in a line so I can give them money I'm an asshole because a)It excludes some and b)It requires people to get off their butts? I don't buy that. If that's so then I was a major asshole over the holidays and should be ashamed of myself.
(December 30, 2009 at 8:41 am)ib.me.ub Wrote: Most of you seem to talk as if evolution has finished, done it's course, for the human species. For most of you it probably has!
Well, if you believe evolution hasn't finished for you, try evolving right now in someone who understands evolution.
Evolution is not about physical transformation on an individual level.
Really, so how does it take place then?
Oh my gosh! Let's be clear on this, I have no intention whatsoever to be your personal coach for a proper education about evolution, information that is freely all over the internet to find. Educate yourself.
If you believe evolution can make you morph into an elephant, amaze me.
"I'm like a rabbit suddenly trapped, in the blinding headlights of vacuous crap" - Tim Minchin in "Storm"
Christianity is perfect bullshit, christians are not - Purple Rabbit, honouring CS Lewis
Faith is illogical - fr0d0
as far the meaning of life in general that wasn't what I was going for. Most atheists have a different perspective ,even from each other, but it's the religious people I was wondering about. If you really believe heaven is waiting just around the corner you're going to do whatever you feel you need to to get in. Follow what ever teaching you have bought into. This is a test you MUST pass. Making you lose sight of the forest for the trees.
Reminds me of the quote 'Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?'
The garden really is beautiful. Seems a shame to miss any of it because you're running around looking for fairies or worse yet killing people because some fairies don't get along.
the basic idea of a perfect being , making imperfect people, and sorting out the 'perfect ones' to keep, just doesn't make sense to me. Most of religion doesn't but...
What makes more sense to me is maybe god is a sixth grade god and we are all part of a science fair project. Then the test makes sense. He or she [god grade school is co-ed] will be graded on how many get to 'heaven'. So we better try hard 'cause you know all the losing science fair projects end up in the trash.
Your prophet repeats himself too much. He could have started that whole paragraph with "O My servants," and then just written the following points after saying that just once. As you wrote it, it comes off all preachy.
Its gone now! Leo, now my post looks very weird! Oh, well...
