|
Navigation
The Rational Response Squad is a group of atheist activists who impact society by changing the way we view god belief. This site is a haven for those who are pushing back against the norm, and a place for believers of gods to have their beliefs exposed as false should they want to try their hand at confronting us. Buy any item on AMAZON, and we'll use the small commission to help improve critical thinking. Buy a Laptop -- Apple
|
God and Human suffering explained
Posted on: June 23, 2011 - 4:19pm
  Offline
God and Human suffering explained
I am at work and found this site will edit post when @ home 7pm eastern, thanks for patients
|
|
Copyright Rational Response Squad 2006-2021.
|
I am new to this sight tried to figure out how to edit my original post did not work out so I am just going to continue here. Many people ask if God is a God of Love why so much suffering.
Well first let me say this post is being posted by a Christian so I am only addressing suffering and God as it relates to Christianity. I do not presume nor would I to speak on behalf of other religions.
When God created Adam and Eve He gave them free will, so they were in a state of being without sin and of free will, they also could have lived forever. Now I say that as to explain what is my understanding of the Biblical account of creation.
So when Adam and Eve sinned against God they were to be punished (death) for their actions. However God in his infinite mercy saw, that to destroy Adam and Eve and start over as it where would be to destroy all their unborn descendants. Therefore God never rescinded the command to be fruitful and multiply (he allowed their decedents to be born). God loved me (a descendant of Adam and Eve) so much as not to punish me for their crime.
Now quite naturally the children of tainted sinners could only produce tainted sinners. So God again in His infinite mercy came into the world in flesh to save the relatives of Adam and Eve. Now you may ask what about pain and suffering get to the point. Here goes when a person dies and goes to heaven they have no recollection of pain and suffering from this earth and are in no suffering. Also if God intervened at some point to stop all the pain and suffering in this life he would have to judge the world. Therefore the Bible teaches God is long suffering that all may come to repentance, God puts up with our in humanity to each other so that many can be saved. the Apostle Paul says the suffering of this life is nothing in comparison to the next (paraphrased). So because God is outside of time 1 day is like a thousand years to Him. It is only a short span in which His plan will be fully realized. sick and dying hurting people of this world will never know they ever suffered. Threrefore God in His perfect Love gives many the chance to be saved.
I was wondering if you could tell me where genetic erosion of telomeres comes into the story? People age and die as their protective telomere caps wear out, not because they are servants of iniquity.
I also wanted you to clarify 'infinite mercy' and explain how 'infinite mercy' requires there be punishment? Infinite mercy must make god very, very merciful indeed. I'm only slightly merciful and I would never kill anyone unless they tried really hard to kill me. How could I be more merciful than god?
Then there's your tacit acceptance of evolutionary mutation. How can tainted sinners naturally only 'produce' tainted sinners? If adam was perfect his progeny would have been just like him unless he had evolved to be evil and passed this trait down through the generations? I've always thought ancestral sin proved evolution and I'm glad you think so, too.
Your plan sounds very nice if it weren't for all the incinerating infidels. But I guess this means christians won't remember the sinners they knew on earth and won't care they are burning thus will live happily in paradise for all eternity?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Here is some more reasoning based on my own desire. There is a can of spam orbiting jupiter and we just haven't seen it yet but the label reads "Ingredients: processed god jesus and holy spirit, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, sodium nitrite" because that's what I think.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
If someone made a 'wrong' choice while exercising biblical-style 'free will', there is no way that could naturally be passed on to their children. A tendency to make bad choices could be passed on, but that would mean their will was no longer 'free'.
A punishment of death for disobedience, not even a 'capital' crime, shows zero justice or mercy, let alone 'infinite'. Hitler's deputies would have been instantly pardoned under such a regime, since they "were just following orders". It is totally tyrannical and arbitrary to punish someone for 'disobedience' - any punishment should be based on the context and expected harm caused by the actual refusal to follow the commands. God is NOT 'good' or moral, based on this story.
And 'taints', which sound like acquired characteristics, are not passed on, according to genetic science. The only attributes which are passed on are the characteristics they were born with. It would actually require divine intervention to render their descendents 'flawed', IOW, actively punishing the children for the sins of their parents, which is an evil act. Just as, as AtheistExtremist pointed out, God would have had to actively modify the design of our genetic mechanism to make us mortal. More evidence of the evil nature of God.
So this story shows God to be an evil dictator being, deserving contempt rather than worship.
If we were originally intended to live forever, we should eventually have to stop having children, since the Earth has finite space and resources, so they would have to be instructed to stop 'multiplying' at some point.. We already have way too many people.
I trust you have taken these issues into account...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
You obviously missed the first glaring nonsequitur, of infinite mercy, after the desire to execute Adam and Eve for exercising the freewill that was 'designed' into them.
Right out of the box, the whole story is a house of cards, and completely, and utterly nonsensical.
An infintely capable 'designer' who fails at designing something to behave as intended, is obviously a logical contradiction.
Ipso Facto, 'God' is a logical fallacy.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
pmatt,
a little technical note here - if you want to compose your post in a separate editor, try to use a plain text editor, like Windows Notepad, not a Word Processor, like Word, otherwise you can have problems on this site.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Maybe he is a fledgling god and quite new at all this. Perhaps we should cut him some slack, I'm sure he will do better next time.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Personally, I don't think the problem of evil/suffering is a very good argument to use against Christianity. Since many Christians already teach we are sinful and deserve hell and suffering, there's an easy way for them to answer that question. They teach that we are born sinful so we need Jesus to make us worthy enough enter heaven. Many protestants teach they are not saved by works at all. It's much better to try get Christians to define what their god is and say what is the foundation is for that definition, rather than trying to argue why this character in the bible acts the way he does.
Genetic Erosion -The Bible says we were created in God's image. After the fall the Bible says Adam's son Seth is after Adams image not God's. Also biblical definition of sin is death and sickness. Adam was perfect but through sin lost perfection therefore he could not reproduce perfection. Example a black and white Zebra can not produce Red Zebras
Infinite Mercy- Biblical definition of mercy is Loving Kindness- Now is it Kind to punish your children when the they do wrong or not. God punished Adam and Eve. Then the bible tells us they are saved through Child bearing in other words a Savior would be born related to them (kinsman redeemer)
Incinerating of Infidels: If you are drowning and I throw you a life per server and you say go away I do not believe that thing can save me and then drown, who drown you? Me or You
Sorry for the run on sentences
I DO think it is a very valid and great argument against the god of Abraham. That is not to say that Christians wont twist their brains to hold onto such an immoral god concept. I agree they will despite what you tell them.
But there is no logical way around this god concept.
ALL, in the word "Omni" once attributed to a deity claim, creates moral contradictions.
No parent in their right mind would allow such harm to come to their child if they could prevent it. God should have less of an excuse since it can do what it wants.
Imagine if you interviewed a baby sitter. What if that baby sitter said they baby sat 100 kids. And said they stopped a child rapist only a third of the time and allowed the rapist a third of the time to harm the kid, and let them escape, and then only captured a third of them after the fact? Who the fuck would hire such a baby sitter. What if that baby sitter admitted that non of the child rapists had no weapons and the baby sitter had a 357 magnum?
"God can do what he wants"
"God works in mysterious ways"
Are cop out excuses to what is clearly an immoral concept.
There IS a problem with evil as long as the believer wants to attribute unlimited power to a god.
Now, having said that, it is NOT the core reason , just one that addresses the morality of such a being. The core reason to reject any and all god claims is the simple fact that thoughts do not arise without a material process.
But I think it IS extremely important to point out the problem with evil when someone postulates an "all powerful god".
I have yet to see any credible argument for a god when it comes to human suffering.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
1. Interesting - so Adam's sin caused the eye to need the brain to make sense of the inverted image that the eye receives? Sin caused humans to have to eat through the same whole we breathe through (causing possible choking hazards)? Or was it a crappy original design?
2. (If you have kids) If your child broke one of your rules yesterday did you punish him for it today? Do you intend to punish your child for that infraction tomorrow? If your child questioned you would you lock him/her in the closet and torture them daily?
3. If I'm drowning and you throw me a life preserver and you keep it just out of my reach until I agree to give you all of my money, kiss your butt and become your slave for life - did you help me?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I don't think you realize how many of us here have spent over decades and even lifetimes thinking about these very issues. You are NOT dealing with amateurs here.
Here is a question I read postulated by an atheist to a theist I ran into in my early days online as an atheist in 2001, one I don't think most believers have ever pondered.
IF YOU were a god, would you allow the brutal suffering humans have ALWAYS had to endure?
Would YOU allow childhood cancer, child rape, child prostitution, child famine? IF you had the absolute power not to allow it in the first place?
NOW mind you, I am not talking about what you say your god does or will do. I am asking what you would do if you set up the game and rules? What would you do if YOU were God?
IF you are moral, your answer would, or should be "no" if you were a god those things would not happen.
AND humans aside, what about the suffering of animals?
Animals in the wild spend all their lives trying to avoid being eaten by others. Yet you'd never let your pet dog or cat suffer the same fate.
I most certainly would not if I were a god, not allow the suffering your fictional super hero watches and allows.
The bottom line is that NONE of life needs comic book super heros vs comic book super villains to explain.
Bad happens in life, and there is no magical man in a white robe or magical man with a pitchfork causing or allowing this.
Nature is and human behavior is, and that is all there is. A tsunami is not caused by Posiden and Thor does not make lighting. If you can accept that a Hurricane is not caused or allowed by Allah, or Vishnu, then you can understand why the good and bad that happen in life do not need your fictional god either.
YOU have a lot of studying and reading to do if you expect to compete with us on this board. The argument you present here is a typical 101 amateur argument.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Biblical free will- In context I was speaking of Adam and Eve's free will and their disobedience. We descendants of them are born into sin and can not exercises the same type of free will our judgment is predisposed to sin. Therefore God provides a Savior for us
Death for disobedience- God pronounced death but provided a Savior for Adam and Eve (and all descendants) therefore justice and mercy is provided. Physical death is not a big deal for the creator who provided life to begin with He can transform (which he does) the life of a believer into something better. As I originally stated without memory of suffering.
Divine Intervention- We have sin because Adam and Eve sinned. You say God would have to have intervened not so. Sin is spiritual not physical therefore it is passed through the Spirit of man. The bible says lying is a sin do you know anyone who has not lied (sinned)?
Population- yes the world would have been totally populated but the bible does not tell me what would happen after that. If I where to speculate God could make more earths.
Actually, there are a bunch of things found in evolutionary biology that would never have existed if a real engineer had done them.
The retina of all vertebrates is installed backwards. The light sensing cells are behind the nerves and blood vessels and thus in a good bit of shadow from those structures. Some apex predators have found a way around that by having an additional reflective layer even deeper in, thus allowing the light sensing cells to get a bit more efficiency. Thus the reason why the felidae have eyes that seem to shine in the dark.
The cranial nerves are also arranged poorly. Your optic nerves travel under your brain and go up the back of your skull to enter the brain at the rear. Why not just put the visual cortex in front?
Speaking of which, there is one cranial nerve that is really poorly routed. The vagus nerve (which is what you use when you flex your lower lip to whistle) runs down your neck, into your chest and winds around your aorta and pulmonary arteries before heading back up the neck into your lower jaw. Kind of a waste of good material to make it that long.
Of course they all make sense if you accept evolution. The vagus nerve in particular is found in fish. It heads almost straight from where it comes out of the brain to the lower jaw b ut it passes through the same area as the gills to get there. Through very gradual change, it was not really possible to reroute and thus giraffe have the same routing as humans.
So when Adam sinned, did god punish the giraffe for the event? Or did evolution just happen the way that we are sure it did.
=
If I were God- Yes I would allow suffering because as I explained without allowing Adam and Eve's descendants (including murders and rapist) to be born then I could not be born and I would have no life. Mercy life after death no remembrance and eternal existence is true Love and Kindness.
As far as existence of God I am not debating that issue (too easy). I am explain how God deals with mans inhumanity to man and why He allows it to continue.
God is above morality because he can give live and take it as the creator of it. So is it immoral to allow a child suffering with cancer to die and go to heaven and no recollection or to live forever in pain?
So God needs humans more than they need God? Makes sense given that God is a human construct. That's probably why you won't debate God's existence - it's too easy to believe what you're told than to think for yourself.
Your "God is above morality" statement is little more than the "might makes right" argument. But I will ask this - was it moral for God to give the child cancer to start with?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
There is a HUGE difference between the biblical version of obedience and the obedience we submit to when pulled over for a traffic ticket by a cop.
Your God can do what he wants. A cop cant beat the shit out of us. Your God does not allow for arbitration. Adam and Eve as the myth goes were not asked for their input.
However, if one does not like a traffic law, while they cant flee from the cop when they get pulled over, what they can do is work within the system and city council to appeal to the law makers to change the law.
THE difference between your fictional book of myth and it's horrible sense of morality, is that in western secular society, we have the opportunity to CHANGE through civil legal means, the things we don't like.
God does not work like that. It is his way or you are fucked, which is what happens in the myth of Adam and Eve. And the worst part of that myth is that they still got punished even though they had no idea what crime they had allegedly committed.
You cannot bargain with this God. You cannot impeach this God. You cannot change his laws if you don't like them. You cannot elect someone else as your leader if you are not satisfied with his results. He has no term limits.
Yet if a cop breaks the law we have the opportunity to hold them accountable.
I don't know about you, but I don't like dictators.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
'Sin' is a behaviour or an attitude and CANNOT be 'passed on' to your descendents. An inclination to do wrong or commit sin is NOT compatible with biblical free will. It would have required God to change our makeup explicitly, and so deliberately remove our capacity for 'free will', so making us predisposed to 'sin'. He cannot then hold those descendents responsible for their actions.
If your father decides to commit murder, that decision does not make you in any way necessarily more likely to commit murder. Your knowledge of his action may indeed make you less likely to, in reaction against it.
Any predisposition to 'sin' that was not 'wired into' Adam and Eve by their creator would NOT be passed on by any normal mechanism of inheritance that we now possess. It would HAVE to be inserted into our 'makeup' by God, therefore it is not OUR fault.
You are just making naked assertions to attempt to justify the claims of the Bible narrative. You are not providing any remotely logical 'proof' that it was justified.
This based on FACT not theology.
To punish their descendents for their actions is totally immoral. To punish them for actions you designed them to be unable to avoid makes God's crime even worse.
To kill hundreds of generations of people before sending them a 'saviour' is also inexcusable.
Death IS a 'big deal' to those who it is inflicted upon.
If there is a creator, the evidence is more consistent with one who created us as playthings to torment for his own gratification. Why should we be grateful for being brought into a life of suffering??
The 'saviour' did not undo the unjust actions of his daddy. He just made some claims that we would wake up in another place, with no proof. How does that undo allowing generations of people to suffer disease and disability and other forms of suffering that most could not avoid in any way?
Life has not changed since that 'event' - it just introduced yet another irrational belief system for ever more people to die in wars over. People still suffer and die due to the diseases God introduced to the world, along with the tendency for this world to cause further suffering and early death through natural disasters.
So its ok if he just erases our memory of that life of suffering? Then what was the point of inflicting it on us in the first place?? And why can he only do that by having his 'son' undergo some meaningless ritual of mortal death for a day or so then come back to life??
Sounds like we should envy those who lose the ability to remember their life through injury or Alzheimer's before they actually die. God is apparently giving them an early reward.
You are simply wrong in every respect.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God, which is defined as a 'sin', which is NOT the same as doing something 'wrong'. It is a totally made-up idea that a sin is something that can be passed on. A sin is an action. There is nothing to be passed on.
There are many examples of people who are far better people than their parents.
Lying is not inevitably 'wrong'. If you tell a lie to a person who is intent on causing harm to someone else to prevent them finding their intended victim, that is not wrong. Like most actions, even killing, simplistic rules like that are not adequate as moral guidelines. The rule should be 'first, cause no harm, or allow avoidable harm to be caused'. Why is that not enshrined in the Bible, rather than the Ten Commandments?
If you mean that such an action somehow causes some permanent change in the person which is somehow passed on to their descendents, that is a process that God would have to have specifically designed into us, so that our children could suffer for our actions which would not otherwise have affected them.
There are plenty of examples of people who have been far better people than their parents. 'Spirituality' is simply not passed on that way.
Now you are just fantasizing. Exponential growth will fill up any Universe in time. If our population doubles in, say, 100 years, we would fill up two earths in another 100 years, then 4 in another, 8 in another 100 years, 1024 earths in 1000 years, a million in 10000, and so on.
You have just been repeating the same old stuff which people have had to come up with to reconcile the idea of a good God with the reality that actually exists, rather than admit what has now, with our enormous progress in knowledge and understanding since the time those stories were written, become blindingly obvious that either there is no such being ( His existence is certainly not logically necessary) or that he is not 'Good' in any meaningful way - it is also not logically necessary that any Creator being be 'good'.
You, meaning people in the Abrahamic tradition who seek to explain the world by invoking the idea of a Supreme Creator being, had to invent the idea of 'sin', as more than just doing wrong, as something spiritual, that it can be 'passed on' to our descendents. You have had to invent the idea of a 'saviour' to undo the harm of 'sin'. When you have to invent such things, which are not demonstrable realities in themselves, in order to explain some doctrine, you are effectively admitting that it does not make sense in itself. Especially when reality is nowadays far more simply explained if you remove the idea of God entirely.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
There are many problems with that simple statement...
Saying 'Adam' was 'perfect', is merely hyperbole, and subjective.
Being that 'Adam' has free will, and that animals are not bound by any morals, he could have been killed by a man eating carnivore before he had a chance to reproduce. Not a very intelligent strategy if the intent is to populate the earth with descendants of his.
Being that by definition, a god is justified in punishment, it would be entirely 'logical' to destroy a flawed 'Adam', and create a better 'Abe', that would not be prone to the same 'malfunction' that 'Adam' sufferered, which would lead to this god's 'intended' objective of populating the earth with 'perfect' beings.
Again, painfully obvious evidence that the 'omnipotent' quality is a mischaracterization.
It is a special pleading fallacy of the highest order to nakedly assert that the creator of the universe is 'good' simply for having created the universe. This assertion is beyond absurd.
There is no reason whatsoever, that the creator of anything is immune to having flaws, as there is nothing that could prevent 'said' creator from designing things to behave as intended.
As the 'story' goes, the Christian god is not able to simply communicate, correct, reprogram 'Adam', or destroy his defective creation. This means that he is severely impotent, if he cannot correct a simple design flaw.
The fact that this god would want to punish for eternity, his creations for flaws in his own design, and creation, is completely illogical, and emotionally corrupt.
This is a genetic fallacy.
It is a complete fallacy that a homosexual man's offspring will necessarily be homosexual.
Try again...
We know what those words mean. However, the god of the bible is a poor example of 'loving kindness', or of 'infinite mercy'.
To characterize him as either, is a complete non sequitur.
There is no crime a mortal can do that is infinite. Therefore, the concept of an infinite punishment, for a finite crime, is absurd, and completely illogical.
Being that death is simply getting to heaven quicker, it would seem to be doing the 'victim' a favour, if one was to kill another.
Being that some will claim that the memory of the suffering experienced on earth, is erased in heaven, the biblical concept of causing harm and suffering to someone on earth is trivial.
The concept of vicarious redemption is 'morally' and intellectually bankrupt.
Not a parallel analogy. Simply living by one's desires, while causing no direct harm to others, is hardly a crime.
In any event, your analogy of offering a 'life preserver' to a 'drowning' person is a complete strawman.
A 'drowning' person who is lucky enough to find some other floating object that happens to be in the water, would not die. But, in your scenario, the reason they would 'refuse' the life preserver would be that they did not accept the 'terms' with which is was being held for extortion of their 'soul'.
Poor rebuttal.
You talked right past BobSpence1.
You never touched his points with these responses.
On the scale of popular apologist rebuttals, you're barely pulling about a 1 on a scale of 10.
And I'm feeling generous today...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
Welcome to the forum.
By not starting over, isn't he destroying those individuals and their descendants?
Why is that?
Do they have free will in heaven?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
So I guess what you are saying is what we knew already. Humans are evil and deserve eternal incineration. We are so evil that it takes all of god's 'love' just to tolerate having us around. In fact our sin is so hateful to god that he's unable to look at us but must view us through a mist of jesus' blood. Why does god want to spend eternity with such disgusting objects, pmatt? And why is the greatest achievement of a mighty supernatural being simply the human oxytocin experience?
I think Bob already made this point but obviously acts are not passed down genetically so if Adam was perfect as you claim, his offspring are not going to suddenly turn 'evil'. They would be perfect, too. This suggests a couple of things - either Adam was made evil by god, or that sin is an arbitrary system of labels that's applied to a range of culturally unacceptable things in an attempt to insert new wrongs into the human pantheon of instinctive dislikes. You see, humans generally don't like to hurt one another. That's what mirror neurons are for. They allow us to experience the pain other people are going through.
Now, most people, pmatt, don't gad about massacring each other - in Australia murder runs at about 1 per 100,000 people which is rather low considering god folk say murder is the defining feature of humanity. Sadly, rape in my country is pretty high statistically, at 75 per hundred thousand tho' this may relate to high reporting rates. The point is that humans aren't all that evil. In fact when it comes to doing actual harm to others we are pathetically ineffective. Most of us are wracked with regret over family disagreements or a dispute in traffic. We might get disconnected in cities with millions of inhabitants but put us in a small group in the woods at night and human strangers start sharing fires and red wine and looking out for each other's children and it's no great sacrifice. We love doing it.
Now, there are a range of theological 'sins' typical people indulge in - these include such ghastly crimes as having sex with other humans, using the word 'bloody', and just generally following personal whims on a sunday mornings instead of torturing god with dreadful songs. You see, pmatt, just labeling some sorts of human behaviour immoral (I mean typical behaviour like drinking beer on Friday night or looking at Internet porn) does not make this behaviour unethical. You'd have to prove those acts were actually harmful to others.
And you can't compare correcting children by sending them to bed in daylight with eternal immolation for a selection of arbitrary wrongs, the central 'evil' being the belief that an invisible holy spirit is a bunch of bullshit. It sounds to me like you are indulging in moral relativism where murder is wrong and hate is wrong and killing is wrong unless god does it to those who don't believe in him. So what I want to know from you is this. If you were in heaven and god had his arm in a sling after slipping on his golden staircase and he asked you to press the ignite button on the lake of fire after billions of human beings had been driven into it, would you press the button?
Could you, pmatt, burn another human being?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
It's how the cart pull's it's self or rather appears to. It takes human reasoning to explain human reasoning.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
There's no sense in the Adam and Eve's Tale if you try yo explain the Human Suffering. Since it has been demonstrated this myth was take from a Babylon's Oral Tradition we can't take it like it was a fact!
It doesn't make sense to affirm that they passed the "sin" to the mankind since their "sin" was to get knowledge. It's very clear the person that created this tale was a ruler like a King who intented to stop the possible rational thinking of its people. C'mon! When people think rationally the changes comes! So, a ruler will create such a story to create fear and ignorance.
Nowadays, it's illogical to believe in Adam and Eve and their "sins" because if "god wanted to make a perfect thing because from him nothing that isn't perfect can come" why wasn't he able to create perfection since the very beginning? Too much contradictions! So, read carefully the Bible my theist protestant friend and you'll become an atheist soon.
Debate is the best way to share the knowledge
Well, that's the whole snafu.
Ostensibly, because there's no one to answer to, a god can justify anything. It's his sandbox. It's barely a moral dilemma to destroy 'Adam', and create 'Abe' instead who would be 'perfect' and 'multiply' into millions of 'loving' servants.
Adam isn't perfect? Scrap him.
It makes no sense to let him multiply, and then get eternally pissy about it.
There's nothing evil about killing Adam, as he created man eating carnivores, and man is part of the food chain.
The problem is obviously that these people desperately want to believe there is an afterlife.
Take away that hope, and they're lost...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
If Adam was 'created after God's Image' (whatever that really means) then anyone created after Adam's image would also logically be also in God's Image.
If I make a copy of something, then a copy of that copy, the second copy is also like the first thing, unless the copying process is really bad.
To kill Adam is not killing anyone, since if you aren't born yet you aren't yet alive to be killed.
Letting him have all those descendents and then punishing them with suffering and ultimately death is killing them, you silly person. Killing Adam immediately, then starting again would have been infinitely more merciful, and have caused infinitely less suffering - assuming, of course, this incompetent god got it right the second time.
Bringing any being into existence just to suffer and be punished is not the act of a merciful God, it is the act of a sadistic psychopath.
Your 'arguments' defy all logic and reason.
Coming on here with these arguments is just proving to us yet again how dumb and immoral the whole story is - you are doing your 'cause' more harm than good by dishing up this old nonsense.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
pmatt,
some more questions: Do 'spiritual' taints get passed on equally from both parents? Are they combined in some kind of blend, so if one parent is 'tainted' and teh other is not do they get half a taint, or is a 'taint' like a dominant gene?
If some act can cause the taint, is there no possibility of any action removing the 'taint? Say, living a totally self-less life of dedication to the poor and needy?
And how did Jesus help? We are still 'tainted', 'sin' is still around as much as ever, people are still suffering and dying, all we have is a promise that we can get resurrected like he was supposed to have been, in some sense, and live forever with God with whole swathes of our memories erased, as some sort of compensation, if we 'accept' him.
Has god neither the power nor the will to undo the effect of that original 'sin' more directly, and so end all this suffering and death?
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Bob, believers of ALL labels of all religions, look at outsiders and think, "How can they not believe in my god?"
It never occurs to them that times have changed and our modern understanding of reality is leaving their myth behind.
This person will simply do what all believers of all god/s do. Instead of considering that they might be wrong, they cling to their superstition because the idea of having a magical invisible friend over powers your objections to even the moral aspect of their fictional character.
Science to me is the quickest way to expose the Wizard of Oz. The moral objections are simply one more nail in the coffin of their myth.
They simply cannot justify an "all loving" god which would not explain why he sits and watches and selectively gets involved. This character as depicted, going by the omni-attribute can only be described as malicious.
It is a head character that acts like a street mugger.
God,"You have two choices. You can give me your wallet, and I'll let you live. Or, you can keep your wallet and I'll blow your head off".
Or an abusive spouse.
Godm "You have two choices. You can stay with me, and I will let you live. Or you can try to leave me and I will hunt you down and and beat the shit out of you"
Even WITHOUT the scientifically absurd claim that thoughts can exist without a material process, this is also another reason to hold nothing but contempt for such an immoral concept.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Aside from all the special pleading fallacies of Christian apologetics...the predominant things I hear about Jesus, were that he lectured about morals, and made claims that he was the 'genetic' offspring of an immaterial being that is outside of space/time. Non sequitur much??
The question I never see Christians pose about the contradictions of scripture is why is it that this supposed god could have blundered so badly, if he was the supposed designer of us, to 'create' us with all these mechanisms in our makeup that make us prone to 'default' towards 'sin'?
Then of course that leads to the non sequitur that we are created in this (perfect) god's 'image'.
Why label anything as 'perfect' when anyone can see that things could have been immune from flaws or errors? I mean, who the fuck are they trying to kid?...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
The core of the misunderstandings, deceives and the persistence of the religions is in the contradictions they create in order to manipulate the people. Most of them cannot find that origin error so they continue believing. When you start thinking by yourself you see it clearly: it's impossible to talk about a merciful god when he made Adam as an "imperfect being" Making more than one try to create a"good being" is a proof of that contradictions.
Debate is the best way to share the knowledge
Holy non sequitur fest batman!
Hello OP, welcome to the forum. It has been a while since I've seen such a logically poor argument. Aside from the fact that the key terms of your argument are ambiguous, such as infinite mercy, tainted sinners(what's the difference between a tainted sinner and a non tainted sinner?), free will, to name a few; your argument is not even self consistent, let alone contingent on reality. Your various inconsistencies have been pointed out by the other posters, but I mean, as a whole... wow. It's mind blowing how little critical thinking has gone into your argument. Have you thought about any of these things at all? The entirety of the idiocy is nothing short of amazing.
As Bob has already stated, you are doing your position no favour by posting such poor arguments.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
The idea that God would still blame US, the descendents of Adam and Eve, for THEIR 'sin', is one of the most offensive and illogical ideas in this story. It is totally immoral, just like the ethnic wars that have broken out throughout history, where both sides are often motivated to avenge what they see as the crimes of the other side's ancestors against their own ancestors. Those wars are inspired and perpetuated by the kind of thinking embodied in the Garden of Eden story, another moral failure, in addition to the 'you must obey the boss regardless' message.
Those core messages of the Bible are offenses against both reason and morality.
pmatt, you should be deeply ashamed to be trying to justify such evil nonsense.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
this is a delicious tidbit of silly. You wouldn't try believing any of this unless you were concerned about being boiled alive forever.
I'm not sure how unsullied freewill facilitates endless cell regeneration but it sounds mighty odd to me.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck