Evidence for God being "a superior being" ?

[tackattack]

Just let me know when/ where you want to finish the conversation. I'll make sure we check into the necropost message.

[BethK]

As a premise i will call "God" the Judeo-christian God that most Christians believe in. I will also take the approach of God as what some Christians (and by that i mean fundies) i encountered use, which is that Creation is true, and Jesus was his Son.

Any time you talk to a theist about God, they will systematically say the same thing: God has higher
means than us, and we cannot understand his nature. But the thing is that it is God himself who said
that he had higher means.
So why do they believe in it ? What evidence do they have that suggests God, if he exists, has higher
means than humans ?

If God, meaning the God portrayed in the Christian Bible exists, seems to have all of the failures of any
human being. In fact, he does them in a much "bigger way".

Now my question is: how do they know it is true ? If i told someone i was the greatest genius that
ever was, they would consider my nature, my actions, and then decide if my claims were true.

Agreed. Actually, if that God were to prove his existence to me somehow, I would still not worship him.
He is more limited than I am, is cruel in remarkable ways that we would certainly never tollerate from
any ordinary human being, as I will show below.

Points in favor of God being superior are that he has supernatural powers, that he can perform miracles.
These are valid points, if you accept the existence of supernatural phenomenons, as to God having
more than human attributes.

However in the Bible itself, there is evidence suggesting that God, in fact, does not have higher ways
than us, and may well be either a malevolent being, or a human-like being..

Yes. I think this demonstrates that the Bible was written by human beings. In fact, they depict a very
immature being with about the emotional stability of a certifiable paranoid schizophrenic.

How else do you justify God's need for continually "testing" his creations, when he already knows
through omniscients how they will act, his periodically getting mad at everything and killing everybody
and (sometimes) destroying everything in the process? These are the actions of a frustrated toddler
who is mad at his toys, and probably overtired. God did that with the flood and says he'll do it again "with
fire and brimstone". Heck, it's even worse than a toddler, because the child is not capable of planning
ahead to getting mad at his toys and breaking them again next week.

-He is always said to be all-loving and forgiving. This would mean that he feels at least some human
emotions.

-He created man "in his image and likeness". If "image" means appearance, then, to me, "likeness"
means the intelligence and emotions that men have, like anger, jealousy, but also kindness and
compassion.
.

Jealousy is generally held to be indicative of insecurity by most psychologists. How or why is God
insecure? Humans can learn to make themselves feel more secure. God does not seem to have this ability.
Why is he so insecure that we'll worship other Gods? If He is the only God and those are "false Gods",
what is there to be jealous of? Anger is about getting one's needs fulfilled or not. One gets angry because
someone is not getting what they need, or they are getting something that takes away from those needs. How
can a God that is complete within himself have ANY needs?

A lot is spoken of God's kindness and compassion. But, that's somewhat the exception, and the things
God is being compassionate and "saving" us from are those things that he created! Whether that be to
save someone from some sort of mishap, disaster, or illness, or to save one's soul from eternal punishment
for some finite deed. God created Hell. God made the rules through his omnipotence about getting
there or not. God does not seem to have the ability to arbitrarily break those rules which he arbitrarily made.
I can choose to forgive someone, or change the rules. I don't require that they kill my son who is really
me who comes back from the dead... Or, I'm not bound by the requirement for blood sacrifice to
obtain forgiveness. That's blood sacrifice of something of God's creation in any event. Why the requirement
that God does not always seem to say he likes, and he seems powerless to change that requirement?
jealous over things.

-He regretted making man, so he created the Flood. This means that he can feel regret (a "bad" emotion)
and can make mistakes (making him fallible)
.

He can feel regret and anger... and at the same time claim to be omniscient, so he knew all along if he
made the creation the way he did, this would happen. He did it anyway. Then, it's not fulfilling God's needs
(anger) and he regrets doing it (doesn't make any sense).

-The 10 Commandments start by statements that he is to be followed at all times. He is clearly a
jealous God.

-The Bible says that he does not simply say "believe in me and you will be saved", he says "if you do
not believe in me, you will burn in Hell". This means he is a cruel God, with unjust sentences.
.

If we applied this to a human parent, who set things up to entice his/her children to do things that violated
"the rules", which are never explained so that the child can understand them, and that parent tortured that
child endlessly for some infraction, including "thought crime", that parent would be charged with
child abuse, at a minimum. That, or be declared mentally incompetent. Any parenting book will tell you that
the nature of the misbehavior should be consistent with the severity of the punishment. Nearly all
human parents are capable of understanding this. And, that the punishment should be close enough to
the infraction to make the association, and the purpose is to teach and promote good behavior. To
wait until "the end" or "much later" and punish for everything all at once would be more absurd than
a parent who keeps a list of all of the child'ss wrongdoings over the year, does not say anything at the time nor
give any indication that it's wrong, and at the end of the year whips the child with a bullwhip for a
number of times indicated by the number of infractions made over the year.

This would not teach the child anything, would not promote good behavior. It would prove that the parent is "bigger"
and "more powerful" than the child. It would be held to be child abuse by most reasonable people. It's
totally absurd, and would be viewed as such even by a young child.

-He is capable of lying: he told Adam and Eve that they would die should they eat the forbidden fruit.
Although this has been said by theists that they mean a "spiritual death", he still did not tell them the
truth about what would happen if they ate the fruit. He also lied to Abraham when he told him he had
to sacrifice his son to him. Even though he did not mean it, it does show that he is capable of lying, a
quality shared with humans..

...And, I'll point out that lying is one thing that is a "sin". It's a case of "do as I say but not
as I do". It's more of an indication of "parental" dysfuntion.

-If he is all-loving, would he not do anything do prevent his beloved children from going to Hell ? The
only response is that he is testing us, and has a higher plan, which brings this following question:
.

The criminal justice system of any nation or jurisdiction has a list of crimes and a list of
punishments commensurate with how serious that society views a particular crime. No punishment
possible by humans is infinite - possibly severe and possibly long-term. Hell is infinitely "bad" and lasts through
eternity. How is this at all a "just" sentence for any sin, which is by its very nature finite? No,
God is more brutal than the worst dictator.

-If he knows everything, why would he need to test us ? Should he not know what will happen ? And if
he does, and knows the person will be sent to Hell, he is not all-loving.
.

Yep. If that God exists, he is an evil b*****d, and is no worthy of worship. The need to "test" implies
not knowing.

-His "creation" is not perfect. for example, our eyes fail many of us, forcing us to wear glasses, or even
be blind. Some of us are born with genetic deficiencies, some die seconds after they are born. Species of
animals and plants disappear every year without any intervention from man, meaning that not only
man, but all of life, is not perfect.

As a conclusion, i can say that if the God of the Bible is real (which i highly doubt), believing he is
all-loving and cannot be comprehended is something that only relies on His own words, which are
shown to sometimes be lies. As such, if he exists, he is no better morally than any of us.

No, he's morally far worse than even the worst human being could ever hope to be. This God is morally
unworthy, petty, juvenile, unreliable, arbitrary, and quite dysfunctional. No society would tolerate
a parent who treated his or her children this way. We don't tolerate dictators in the world
that treat their citizens/subjects this way. Why worship a God that is far worse?

No, even if that God would be somehow proven to exist, I would not worship it because he is even
more limited than I am. He makes design flaws in what he creates, an blames that which he creates
for having the design flaw. An engineer who designed a bridge (for instance) that would collapse under
the weight of many vehicles, would collapse in the wind,and could not tolerate heat and cold
known to exist where it is built would be viewed as incompetant. If he noticed this during the design,
he would re-design it. In no case would this engineer "blame" the bridge! An engineer who designed
such a bridge than destroyed it would be viewed a sociopath. An engineer who designed such a bridge,
then seeing it didn't function properly, would just order its destruction would be rightly viewed as a
waste of taxpayer's money. If he burned the bridge down the fist time, tried to correct the problem twice
(after Noah and through Jesus), said that it was going to fail again an he was going to blow it up with
a blast that would destroy things for miles, the guy would probably end up in the funny-farm, not
heralded as a "great" engineer, even if he said he was the greatest engineer of all time.

Oh yeah, this God appears to be a megalomaniac on top of it all. He says he's perfect, blames
someone else (if not the creation, blames this being called "Satan" which he also created and he seesms
unable to destroy). Yeah, he's showing clear signs again of mental illness.