God says “Love me or die”

[Zen Badger]

God gave the gift of life. Like a construction worker building a road with many off-shoots, He forged the world. What road and what off-shoot you take, then, is entirely up to you. James chose to stay on the road, instead of crashing his car into the ditch beside the road.

Get it?

I'm sorry, I thought you were giving me examples of god manifesting himself.

And define 'sinner' for me. As I said, if you choose to sin that's up to you, but you're the one making your life a living Hell in doing so, not God. When you die, all you have to look forward to, then, is what you've done to yourself. The worst form of punishment is knowing it's all your fault.

But you just said that if I don't choose to go to hell then I won't.

Make up your mind.

[Watson]

It was an example of God manifesting Himself. From the street James was walking down, to the nice comment the stranger made, to the sun shining in the sky. All of that was God. All of it. James made a decision, based on the options before him.

And I told you already, I have not contradicted myself in sayign that if you choose to go to Hell, you do. By your actions and your decisions, you either condemn yourself or not. And each decision you make in life is entireley up to you.

[Zen Badger]

Yeah, but do you expect Satan/Lucifer to intervene any more so than God? No, of course not, since Gods worst trick is making people think he doesn't exist at all.'

Quick edit there buddy

Why bother with the sacrifice? Uuuh, because the Satanist thought it would go to Lucifer, which it would not. The sacrifice is meaningless, obviously.

And I assert that it's extremely important to this discussion how you think God should have intervened. You think that His intervention would have helped anything, tell me in what way He should have done so?

Isn't exposing his buttocks the preferred way?

[Watson]

Okay, ad hominem for the sake of digressing from your inability to answer...

And that edit makes no sense. With God, if He manifested Himself in some way that was not open for interpretation, it would not allow for free will to make the chocie on believing in Him or not.

[Zen Badger]

It was an example of God manifesting Himself. From the street James was walking down, to the nice comment the stranger made, to the sun shining in the sky. All of that was God. All of it. James made a decision, based on the options before him.

And if the weather had been crap? And the stranger had told him to"F**k off"

And he went though with his suicide, is that god also manifesting himself?

And I told you already, I have not contradicted myself in sayign that if you choose to go to Hell, you do. By your actions and your decisions, you either condemn yourself or not. And each decision you make in life is entireley up to you.

And if I live a good, virtuous blameless life but reject the notion of god.

What then?

[Watson]

No. Suicide is something God would never do and never condone. God's gift to us is life, it is given purely out of love for us. Returning the gift is something unthinkable, and leaves behind nothing of your soul but misery and pain. Things which God quickly forgets.

If the weather had been shit and the stranger had told James to fuck off, he could have recalled earlier days when the weather was not shit, and decided that the stranger was an asshole who wasn't worth the anger or the suicide.

If you live a good, virtuous life and are happy with how you went about things, and confident in your own decisions, then it doesn't matter whether you believe in God or not. You'll give yourself what you deserve, and be remembered for what you did.

[Zen Badger]

Okay, ad hominem for the sake of digressing from your inability to answer...

And that edit makes no sense. With God, if He manifested Himself in some way that was not open for interpretation, it would not allow for free will to make the chocie on believing in Him or not.

Well technically if for the sake of argument he did manifest himself it would longer be a case

of belief, we would know he exists.Then the choice would be to follow him or not.

And where is the problem with that?

By your standards he is the fundamental force of the unverse.

It would be like choosing whether to believe in gravity or not.

---

No. Suicide is something God would never do and never condone. God's gift to us is life, it is given purely out of love for us. Returning the gift is something unthinkable, and leaves behind nothing of your soul but misery and pain. Things which God quickly forgets.

If the weather had been shit and the stranger had told James to fuck off, he could have recalled earlier days when the weather was not shit, and decided that the stranger was an asshole who wasn't worth the anger or the suicide.

And I reiterate, if he HAD gone through with his suicide, is that god manifesting himself?

If you live a good, virtuous life and are happy with how you went about things, and confident in your own decisions, then it doesn't matter whether you believe in God or not. You'll give yourself what you deserve, and be remembered for what you did.

Then why is the bible so shit hot on punishment for unbelievers?

Just remembering that the bible is the inerrant word of god.

[Watson]

Exactly, why would you choose not to believe in gravity? It's self-evident, you don't have to choose. But if the same could be said about God, if you did not have the choice, then that would be taking away your free will, which is not God's way.

And [b]I[b] reiterate that no, it would not be God manifesting Himself. Did I or did I not say that God would never do such a thing and would not condone it? This is because life is a gift to us from God, and returning that gift is foolish when the gift is one given out of love.

The Bibl eis the inerrant word of God as seen through the eyes of man. As I have detailed in other topics, it is not that God inspired these people by planting words in their heads, it is that they were inspired by what they saw and their understanding of God to write about Him.

What the Bible is suggesting with the 'punishment' of unbelievers goes right back to what I said about punishing oneself; essentially, it is suggesting that unbelief is harmful to oneself and is itself the punishment.

[downbeatplumb]

I think Stephen Fry sais it best when he said the bible was 'the hysterical rantings of a group of bronze age goat herders'

I grow weary of this 'god is in all things' shit.

They are just objects and things happen beacause they do.
There is no cosmic puppet master making us dance to his tune and for that I am glad.

Watsons vision of the universe is a nightmare and I am glad that all the evidence points to him being wrong.

[Zen Badger]

Exactly, why would you choose not to believe in gravity? It's self-evident, you don't have to choose. But if the same could be said about God, if you did not have the choice, then that would be taking away your free will, which is not God's way.

No, cos I would still have the free will to reject him, BTW, how do you know this is not gods way?

And [b]I[b] reiterate that no, it would not be God manifesting Himself. Did I or did I not say that God would never do such a thing and would not condone it? This is because life is a gift to us from God, and returning that gift is foolish when the gift is one given out of love.

So god isn't bad weather then? My point being that you are only prepared to attribute the good things
to god and not the bad things even though you claim he is in everything.

The Bibl eis the inerrant word of God as seen through the eyes of man. As I have detailed in other topics, it is not that God inspired these people by planting words in their heads, it is that they were inspired by what they saw and their understanding of God to write about Him.

So the bible is not then the word of god, but the words of men.

So why should we take anything it says seriously?

What the Bible is suggesting with the 'punishment' of unbelievers goes right back to what I said about punishing oneself; essentially, it is suggesting that unbelief is harmful to oneself and is itself the punishment.

If unbelief is its own punishment I can live with that.

And even die with it if thats the worst I'm going to face.