Prayer Not prayer

[kimba1]

The bible is a tool . How we use it is entirely up to us. Sadly  i learned some people are not reading it for themselves.

I actually met someone belong to a church which no one reads the bible and is entirely dependant on the minister for thier information. I was told this is not rare

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is not only not rare it is the usual practice.
Preachers normally only get the subjects for their sermons from perhaps a tenth of the Bible.
There are of course, books which preachers use to help them write sermons. Often these are used only by members of one denomination.

[Plane]

No loving parent would condemn his children to an eternity of punishment. Any deity that would do this can only be described as some sort of sicko sadist.

Would a loving parent, seeing his children in a burning house, try to open a door they could get out thru?

[Plane]

The bible is a tool . How we use it is entirely up to us. Sadly  i learned some people are not reading it for themselves.

I actually met someone belong to a church which no one reads the bible and is entirely dependant on the minister for thier information. I was told this is not rare

  I think it is good to read the scriptures for yourself reliance on someone else makes you dependent on their understanding , and their trustworthiness.

   Having a well trained guide is a valuable thing , but the responsibility for your understanding anything is with yourself.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Consider that your "loving parent" built the house and set the damned thing on fire.

Why won't you comment on the video?

[Plane]

  I am commenting on the video.

   The argument is repetitive and simpleminded.

     If bad things ever happen to anyone then God can't be real.

        Really?

          Scripture is loaded with people struggling with misery, God never promised you a rose garden.

       Sometimes the government is Ahab.
        Sometimes your brother is Cain.
          Sometimes your son is Absalom.
           Sometimes your thinking is as clouded as Nebecanezzer's.
         Sometimes your are beset by enemies.
       Sometimes your health fails.

        In what scripture is it ever said that only a life sans struggle is a good life?

       Just about zero human beings live unmolested by evil , some more some less.

       Why doesn't the ubiquity of bad things prove that the curse of Adam is real?

       God did make creatures that do not toil for their food, that live long with little trouble and that die when they do with little suffering usually, we call them clams.

         When you are complaining of the human condition have you considered that the alternative is unhumanity?

[Xavier_Onassis]

It my be repetitive, but it is not simpleminded.
The question is, who would vote for God as a head of state?

As I said, God, as described in the Old Testament and much of the New Testament, is some sort of neurotic jerk.

It is not required that people be raised by deranged neurotic jerks to realize their own potential.
Bill Gates' father was not a neurotic jerk. He was supportive and helpful.
\
 
God claims to be the ultimate authority on justice, but the way the world works is not just.
We do not require malaria, tapeworms, elephantiasis, earthquakes, sunamis and  such to be decent humans, or any sort of humans.

It is like saying "I am going to cut off one of your arms: trust me, it will make you a better person". BULLSHIT!
Malaria is a plague that kills more people than all the wars we have fought or ever will fight. It is not inflicted equally. It serves no purpose. No just deity would create malaria or do anything other than end it.

The "curse of Adam" is a crock of shit. A lame excuse for the existence of evil. A deity that pulls some idiotic trick like that is hardly anything you could call "loving".
It is just a stupid old folktale, based on nothing.

[Plane]

   I don't accept perceived unfairness as proof of Gods non existence.

    I don't even accept it as proof of unfairness.

       When Solomon wrote Euclasites, he was an old man and his teeth hurt, he did not leave any of these complaints out, he even concludes that living a human life is a miserable , vain exercise.

      Not that this is unfair .

       Paul goes further and gives thinks for some of the things that exasperated and hurt him. Paul points out that patience is built through frustration, almost all the good qualities of a personality are either results of adversity, or are improved through adversity.

       I therefore imagine clams to be shallow and shellfish creatures, because they just sit and filter feed without problems their whole lives long.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am not debating the existence of God here, I am stating that God, as described in the Bible, is a jerk.

Any omnipotent creator that invents diseases like malaria, elephantiasis, and all those other horribly disfiguring maladies can clearly be defined as nothing more than a sadistic jerk. For sufe3ring to be an edifying experience, it much be of the sort that the individual has some possibility of overcoming. Drug addiction, maybe, but not Altzheimers or cancer.

God, as described in the Bible would have his children taken away and would be incarcerated for child abuse if he were human.

I am really debating the actual nature of God, not the fictitious being described in the Bible.

No politician that dealt with crime and punishment as poorly as Jehovah would be thrown out of office before his term was up, and rightfully so.

[Plane]

Gods point of view is hard to deal with.

Has he no responsibility to mosquitos , who consider us a food or lice who consider us habitat?

Why does our opinion rate more than any other creature?

Right Wales must consider us a serious plague, Gorillas must think us a terrible pest.


If a vote were held could we depend on more creatures than rats and cockroaches to vote to keep us on the island?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Humans are described in the Bible as the main cause of creation.If God actually loves humans, then he would also have an obligation to not create malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes and malaria are not the only evil life forms that the Biblical God has inflicted on us, not even the most disgusting. Just the most deadly.

The whole idea of punishing the entire human race because at some ancient moment, a couple of humans ate some forbidden fruit is as unfair as you get. The only country where entire families are punished for the deeds of one family member is the DPRK (North Korea). So God as described in Genesis has as policy of criminology that is pretty much the same as Kim Jung Il and his chubby son Kim Jung Un.

[Plane]

Humans are described in the Bible as the main cause of creation.

Oh?

Why?


Psalm 8:4


When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,

4
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?[a]



5
You have made them a little lower than the angels[c]
    and crowned them[d] with glory and honor.

 
 

Hebrews 2:6

5 It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6 But there is a place where someone has testified:


“What is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    a son of man that you care for him?

7
You made them a little[a] lower than the angels;
    you crowned them with glory and honor

 
On the other hand...

 The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order. That kind of thing is characteristic of nature.
- J.B.S. Haldane

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/23/beetles/

[Plane]

Consider that your "loving parent" built the house and set the damned thing on fire.

Why won't you comment on the video?

What if he built the house and the child set it on fire?

All of these comments relate to the video, but the video is unfocused and wide ranging.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The focus was quite simple: if God were a politician, he would never be elected because of hideously poor management.
I suppose you could make up some bogus focus and claim that it  did not follow that.

My contention is that (1) the Bible is clearly NOT a valid description of and logical Creator or provider of moral standards, and (2) the usual definition of God as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and transcending time is both impossible and contrary to the obvious laws that govern the Universe.

And(3) God, as described in the Bible, is a jerk, and seriously psychologically imbalanced.

[Plane]

There are several premises I can't accept in there.

Firstly God needing our approval, this is like voting for your parents , or voting for the sun.

Your parents are who they are and the Sun is what it is , if your father is too short or the Sun is too yellow for you , that is just your problem.

Second that God owes us explanation more than he has given, or that we understand what is necessary to him.

It is not reasonable to say that anything that cannot be understood by a human being cannot be real. God did not create us omniscient, so understanding on his level is not a possibility.

What would a logical and valid description of a Creator look like? As soon as its depiction of reality became too complex for our understanding to encompass, it would stop seeming logical and if our logic was required for validity less valid too. But this is not a real limit to the nature of the universe, whether you do or don't accept God as real there can be any number of things that are real but do not have explanation available to us, if this is not so then please tell me what the logic of a Quasar is really.

Third that there are laws in the universe that are obvious. No most of the laws that govern the universe are quite subtle even those we have some understanding for. I do know , and I have seen demonstrated that radiated power looses concentration with distance at a constant rate  such that every doubling of distance reduces the power of the radiation by a factor of four. I get that this is true , but why four and not eight?

Fourth that human beings are not jerks, but that God is. This is just backwards, God would not be elected because we are a lot of jerks , meaning it is good that the role of  Deity is not elected, if it were we might elect Donald Trump to that office.