Franics Collins

[athrock]

Cool story?

1. I know how we do it in the US, when a parent is guilty of a capital offense...... we execute the child as well.
2.  Yeah, and the lesson is this..do what god wants the way he wants it.... or he'll hurt you.

So what's all this "if" gods judgement is perfect business?  There is no "if".

You make a good point.

God's judgment and justice are perfect. There is no if.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or it isn't.  You sit on one side of the line and I sit on the other.  Ne'er the twain shall meet, eh?  I have to ask, though...would you advocate that we kill 70k people if our government failed to conduct a census properly? Will you advocate for the execution of children for the incompetence of a census taker or the crimes of their parents?

Show me that you have the courage of your convictions. Condone those actions. Or...... are you a fraud?

[athrock]

Unless you are simply wrong. From a single reading? Really?

Do you not recall that God gave David three choices:

• three years of famine
  
• three months of fleeing his enemies
  
• three days of plague.
  

David reasoned that the latter would be the best option because he trust more in the mercy of God than in the mercy of men (his enemies).

Why did this happen? Two possibilities come to mind:

1. God was punishing the entire nation for offences that had been building up over time, or
   
2. God sought to teach His people (note that carefully, the Israelites were HIS people) an important lesson concerning strict obedience to His instructions.
   

It's understandable that you have emotional difficulties with this, but if God's judgment is perfect based upon His omniscience, then His justice is also perfect. Nothing that He did was unfair or unjust.

In this account, the multitude was killed for the sin of one man; later, one man would be killed for the sins of the multitude on a cross.

So it's perfectly okay according to you that God killed 70,000 people for a census?  What makes that justice?  The fact that he's god?  Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.  Him being God would not absolve him of anything.  If God killed 70,000 people for a census, then I would say you cannot say that his justice is perfect.

Did you read Lord of the Rings several times, and discover that Sauron was actually the good guy all along?  

To be perfectly honest if anyone managed to convince me that the Christian God Existed, I'd more likely worship Satan instead.  He sounds far more reasonable.

LOL. No, because unlike God, Sauron WASN'T a good guy all along.

The census may have merely been the final straw or occasion of punishment for a series of events or patterns of sins that God finally had to address. And yes, I can say that God's just is perfect because His justice matched the offense in ways that you cannot comprehend.

For example, everyone rants about the killing of the Canaanites...conveniently overlooking the fact that the Canaanites were truly horrible people...engaged in all sorts of perversions including child sacrifice to their idols, etc. Or they whine about the flood when God wiped out everyone but Noah's family...again missing the point that the sins of the people were a stench in God's nostrils. Or they point to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (recently uncovered by archaeologists, btw - another vindication of the historical accuracy of the Bible), and claim that God was unfair while completely ignoring the sinful lifestyle of the homosexual population of the cities that was the cause of God's wrath.

Like I said before, your emotional reaction to these stories is understandable at one level, but your failure to deal with the full set of data is the real reason why you can't understand why God acted as He did.

[athrock]

One would imagine that the bar for perfection is a great deal higher, eh?  This nonsense above cheapens the notions of perfection, justice, and god.

Or simply points out the limits of your own human understanding.

[athrock]

One would imagine that the bar for perfection is a great deal higher, eh?  This nonsense above cheapens the notions of perfection, justice, and god.

One would hope so.

Hitler's justice apparently was perfect.  The germans were his people after all.

Another brilliant riposte from the "bright" side of the tracks. 

[The Grand Nudger]

One would imagine that the bar for perfection is a great deal higher, eh?  This nonsense above cheapens the notions of perfection, justice, and god.

Or simply points out the limits of your own human understanding.

Do you have the courage of your convictions...or an explanation that would help me overcome my limited understanding to your greater understanding?  Unless you have these things, you have consigned yourself to charlatanry.

Or they whine about the flood when God wiped out everyone but Noah's family...again missing the point that the sins of the people were a stench in God's nostrils

No one "misses" this point, it is precisely this point upon which people begin to question your humanity. Being a "stench in gods nostrils" justifies xenocide? If you believe this, tell me why you don't belong in a padded cell?

[Whateverist]

I was struck by this passage from his interview with PBS:

"As I began to ask a few questions of those people, I realized something very fundamental: I had made a decision to reject any faith view of the world without ever really knowing what it was that I had rejected. And that worried me. As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data. It was pretty clear I hadn't done any data collecting here about what these faiths stood for."

I can't help wondering how many people in this forum are in that same position of having rejected faith without actually knowing what it is that they have rejected. When I read the posts of many forum members, it is obvious that they have little to no real understanding of basic theology and that their views of the Bible are based not upon a careful reading of those 72 books but on mischaracterizations of them by Internet bloggers and other forum members.

The irony pointed out by Collins is that while these folks claim to believe in the principles of the scientific method, they behave in a decidedly unscientific fashion by making their decisions to reject God with flawed or incomplete data.

And why is this the case? Collins explains:

"...if you're going to accept the existence of God, at some level you have to give up control, and you can't just do what you want to because it feels good. And I liked very much being in control. I liked not having to answer to what was holy and vote for what was right. Maybe in some way, I was aware already without having put words to it, of the moral law — and aware that I wasn't living up to it.

So in recognizing my desire to have relationship with God, I also had to come face to face with my own massive imperfections. If God is holy, and if you can see God in some ways as a mirror to yourself, you realize just how far you fall short of anything that you could be really proud of. And that is a terribly distressing kind of experience for anybody who's first coming to that. So I would not say I was an ecstatic convert."

And thus it comes down to an emotion-driven act of the will to avoid the intellectual rationale for faith. The brain knows (or fears) that God is real, but the unbeliever does not want to give up control of his life (falsely believing that what he calls freedom is actually slavery to sin), so he refuses to make the choice to act upon that knowledge. From that point on, life for the unbeliever is a daily struggle of swimming against the tide.

Only the apatheist is free from such internal conflict...free because thoughts such as these never cross his mind. But for the atheist, the one who has declared to himself (if not to others) that there is no God, crossing that line has not brought peace but open warfare.

My wife bought his book on faith but I scarcely looked at it.  

I had made a decision to reject any faith view of the world without ever really knowing what it was that I had rejected. And that worried me. As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data. It was pretty clear I hadn't done any data collecting here about what these faiths stood for.

These are good quotes from Collins.  I've always thought it was wrong headed to assume that a "faith view of the world" was nothing but an empirical mistake.  The subjective life of the mind along with its complexity make that way too facile.  So I'm with him so far.

But then I think he then goes right off the rails:

"...if you're going to accept the existence of God, at some level you have to give up control and you can't just do what you want to because it feels good. And I liked very much being in control. I liked not having to answer to what was holy and vote for what was right. Maybe in some way, I was aware already without having put words to it, of the moral law — and aware that I wasn't living up to it.

From the concession that a faith based worldview need not be dismissed out of hand, it does not follow that one should abandon control to a hypothetical god.  That is just whack.  One can admit that one has less control than many probably surmise without willfully abandoning any role whatsoever in ones life.  Self abnegation is always a mistake as well as reprehensible.

There are ways to live a life with a faith based worldview, and even hold your head up high in doing so.  But Collin's way isn't one of them.  You meet and hear of so few impeccable theists.  I wish those there are would do more to make themselves known to encourage others.  But they probably feel estranged by the fundamentalists who dominate most traditions.  It would be much more interesting to live in a world with those guys to challenge us than it is to be constantly proselytized to by idiot fundamentalists who have so missed the boat.

[athrock]

Or it isn't.  You sit on one side of the line and I sit on the other.  Ne'er the twain shall meet, eh?  I have to ask, though...would you advocate that we kill 70k people if our government failed to conduct a census properly?  Will you advocate for the execution of children for the incompetence of a census taker or the crimes of their parents?

Show me that you have the courage of your convictions.  Condone those actions.  Or...... are you a fraud?

You keep assuming that 70K died simply because David conducted a census. And maybe that was true, but maybe there were other reasons for God's punishment of the people with the census merely being the final straw, so to speak.

There is no moral equivalency between God and a human government. Consequently, God may rightly choose to act in a way that a government cannot. After all, the government would be executing people who belong ultimately to God, and it has no right to do so any more than you have the right to kill your neighbor's dog for barking all night.



One other point: You do have a proclivity for name-calling, don't you? According to you, I'm a liar, a missionary, and now a fraud.

Are you this unkind to everyone you meet? Or is this a special hatred reserved for those whose religious views you despise?

If you and Minimalist are good examples of what atheism does to the soul of those who embrace it, I think you FAIL as ambassadors for your own alternative belief system. With atheists like you spewing your venom in forums such as this, there will be no shortage of people who want nothing to do with your kind of hate.

[Cecelia]

LOL. No, because unlike God, Sauron WASN'T a good guy all along.

The census may have merely been the final straw or occasion of punishment for a series of events or patterns of sins that God finally had to address. And yes, I can say that God's just is perfect because His justice matched the offense in ways that you cannot comprehend.

For example, everyone rants about the killing of the Canaanites...conveniently overlooking the fact that the Canaanites were truly horrible people...engaged in all sorts of perversions including child sacrifice to their idols, etc. Or they whine about the flood when God wiped out everyone but Noah's family...again missing the point that the sins of the people were a stench in God's nostrils. Or they point to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (recently uncovered by archaeologists, btw - another vindication of the historical accuracy of the Bible), and claim that God was unfair while completely ignoring the sinful lifestyle of the homosexual population of the cities that was the cause of God's wrath.

Like I said before, your emotional reaction to these stories is understandable at one level, but your failure to deal with the full set of data is the real reason why you can't understand why God acted as He did.

You can't just say "God is the good guy", and therefore excuse all of his actions.  You can't just say "Well his justice is perfect!" and expect people to buy your bullshit hook line and sinker.  You're just upset that people are questioning the actions of your precious homopobic misogynistic asshole god.  I get that you're also probably a homophobic misogynistic asshole yourself, so you identify with him and love that he killed the homosexuals and that he killed 70,000 people because a census was taken by their king.  You think that's perfect justice because that's what you're told to believe.  You don't ask any questions.  The truth is this just shows you aren't open minded at all.  You blindly accept whatever bullshit your holy book feeds you.  And then you expect others to believe the same.  And when they don't, you call it a 'failure' but the real failure is that you fail to see that if your God existed that he wouldn't be worthy of worship.   You have to prove that god is the good guy, and I just don't see it.  God is the Sauron of this story.  Ever watchful, and completely evil.

For the record, there's no archaeological evidence of God destroying the city.  If something did happen there, there's zero evidence that some asshole god did it.  Or that he did it because there were gay people there.  Apparently God decided not to destroy San Francisco for some reason.  Or any other place that has a lot of gay people, like gay bars.

[Whateverist]

One other point: You do have a proclivity for name-calling, don't you? According to you, I'm a liar, a missionary, and now a fraud.

Are you this unkind to everyone you meet? Or is this a special hatred reserved for those whose religious views you despise?

If you and Minimalist are good examples of what atheism does to the soul of those who embrace it, I think you FAIL as ambassadors for your own alternative belief system. With atheists like you spewing your venom in forums such as this, there will be no shortage of people who want nothing to do with your kind of hate.

[My bolding.] It just seems wrong headed to refer to a belief system which is devoid of all of the mutually exclusive and untestable beliefs in the supernatural as "alternative". It is all the groups which make one or the other of the woo woo choices who have the explaining to do as to why that one choice and not any of the others. We at least are even handed.