A Contradiction of Coercions Can We Have a Christian Explaination?

[Jenny A]

[Randy Carson]

[Ravenshire]

And here lies the greatest problem with discussing anything about gawd with a christer. There is nothing their gawd can do that they can't construe as good, because they get to make up his motives for him. Coercing Jonah into obeying is ok because gawd was "doing a GOOD thing by saving Jonah's life." Ordering the slaughter of the Canaanites was ok because they were evil and gawd had promised that land to the Israelites. Firebombing an entire population is ok, "cuz they was wicked!!!" Destroying the entire fucking world is just fucking dandy because of the "wickedness" of every extant human being (including newborn infants) except, of course, for Noah and his family. Hell, even generations of incest, not once, but twice, seems to be perfectly acceptable despite the majority of christers abhorring the practice as immoral.

The fact that Christians have reasonable explanations for all your silly objections really sticks in your craw, doesn't it?

Get over it.

And here lies the second greatest problem with discussing anything about gawd with a christer. The fact that they think their explanations for atrocities are somehow reasonable.

No Randy, it doesn't stick in my craw. I just find myself dumbstruck whenever one of you christers whip out yet another weak explanation for an atrocity that you would be condemning if it were attributed to anyone else.

[Ravenshire]

God knows just what we need even before we ask him.

Then why are those of us who sought, indeed in some cases begged, still atheists? You've nicely reiterated my point that your gawd (if it exists) knows exactly what evidence it would take to convince every one of us and it could do it without violating our "free will." Yet, here we are.

[Pyrrho]

[Jenny A]

And by the way, I think that God uses a variable amount of evidence/coercion based upon the needs/ability of the person. We don't really have a measurement for units of grace, but I'll make one up for illustrative purposes.

So, for a sensitive child such as Terese of Liseaux, he might be able to reveal himself with only 2-3 lbs of "pressure" whereas with a more worldly person such as St. Augustine or St. Francis, he needed to use several hundred pounds of "pressure" just to get their attention.

Augustine would not have been moved by the light touch that God used on Terese, and she might have been crushed by the approach used on St. Paul.

God knows just what we need even before we ask him.

I don't care what you think about him if you can't show he exists.  And this particular explanation for the lack of evidence of god, causes all my bullshit buzzers to go off simultaneously.

[robvalue]

How come Tim O'Neil and Bart Ehrman are still atheists?

We're always being told how they understand all the evidence far better than us, and they have concluded there is a historical Jesus. We're all just being stubborn if we'd question it for a second.

However, even with their deep understanding of all the evidence, they still do not believe the God of the bible exists. What can we learn from that I wonder? Does the Christian throw them under the bus at this point as stupid and unrealiable?

Also, if God is so against influencing our decisions in whether or not to believe in him, why is he fine with his followers constantly attempting to brow beat us into belief? I can only conclude from this that he wants us to believe in him while there is no evidence to do so. Then he will "reveal" himself. The problem is, that is the very definition of a delusion. Believing something when there's no reason to believe it. So we already have to be literally deluded before we can see the "evidence". And I don't trust the judgement of people who are deluded on a particular subject. It's far more likely to be just a continuation of that delusion, when they can't present me with any evidence.

Why does God want deluded followers? What does that say about him?

Someone trying to convince me of something based on no evidence is a con artist. Whether or not they're aware they are a con artist is a different matter.