As being raised Christian, I try not to hate God

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I don't hate God because I don't believe in him. That being said, if an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God did exist, I would love to hear what justification he has for the world being in the state it is.

It's pretty simple to come to the conclusion that the Abrahamic God must be evil. He allows evil to enable free will, so free will must be the greatest good. However, many exercises of free will apparently result in an eternity of punishment. This is logically absurd if we presume an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. It is easy to hate such a being.

Free will doesn't explain the evils of natural disasters, for a start.

And so you don't see natural disasters as possibly having a purpose?

How do you think an atheist handles a natural disaster? How do you think a Christian handles one? Do you think that some people could be influenced not by the natural disaster but how people respond to the devastation that is caused?

Christianity gives people hope - it's not a false hope. There's real hope in Christ even if a miracle doesn't occur.

Influenced to do what?

Believe that God has a role in bringing out the best in people even when the worst happens. Being able to see that HE actually exists. Being able to see that not everything in life is coincidence or circumstance but actually in some ways, predetermined despite our free-will and random events occurring like natural disasters, cancer, car accidents, other accidents, and murder/wars. That nothing is actually random but a part of bringing people to actually believe in him so that they aren't destined to go to hell, that they aren't destined to follow evil and/or just not follow God. We all have a sin nature and we need to be forgiven for these sins including the very rejection of God himself. God shows himself over time not thru one event or miracle. It's also not that he shows himself visibly but through prayer and thru his divine works.

How many people (and Christians) does God kill with natural disasters in order to bring more people to God? He killed 230,000 people just after Christmas in 2004 with a tsunami, how many believers resulted from that mass murder?

we are all just conglomerations of atoms that are eventually transformed in the fullness of time to other things and it is only your loss of identity that you protest i suspect.
that ego will also dissolve into the future with no trace so just forget it.

Doesn't make murder any less immoral.

Sh*t sometimes happens. Rather than ascribing all natural activity to God's direction, I personally believe the Deists to an extent are right on the matter of a clock maker God, at least in regard to the natural world. God wound up the universe' mechanisms billions of years ago, and let it run. Sometimes tsunamis, earthquakes, and asteroids are just the natural order of things.

Deists believe God doesn't care, but most Theists claim he does, that's who I'm talking to.

And I think he cares. But sometimes - admittedly, a lot of times - his logic is more than a little mystifying to me.

Didn't he wipe out the whole world in the story of Noah's Arc? Much of the Bible can be proven in science. There was a time where the entire globe was filled with water at least with waves. Also, at the end of the last Ice Age, there was some major flooding as the Mediterranean flowed into the Black Sea. There was unimaginable flooding that killed many people. There was such a severe drought that 64,000 years ago, we had less than 500 breeding pairs.

Long before we knew that the universe would keep expanding, the Bible stating the universe opens like a tent.

Yes, the Bible says the world was created in 6 days. However, we don't know if that's 6 heaven days or 6 earth days as we define it. It could have been a different dimension. Think about a galactic year where the sun rotates around the galaxy. The last time we were at the same spot, the dinosaurs weren't even in existence and we were just recovering from an extinction that wiped out 95% of the species on Earth according to evolution theory. It takes 230 million years to complete one galactic year. Thus, is the definition of the year the same as what we think.

Than there's the evidence of all these books in the Bible that can be substantiated and the level of education that pastors and priests receive.

There was no worldwide flood. The flood stories come from the Epic of Gilgamesh in Babylon (now Iraq), where the Euphrates used to flood every year.

The earth wasn't created in a week, you have to be creative to interpret that in any way that makes sense. In other words, it's nonsense.

Having some historical facts in a book doesn't make a book of mostly legends true. Literature back then wasn't concerned with facts the way we are in modern times. It was all about telling a good story that taught a moral lesson.

I'm not a classical believer
But sometimes there's that feeling, like this kid, the feeling "anyone out there??"
call it faith, but it's not so strong, not a fact, just a feeling,
perhaps call it "curious speculation"

that is surely true.

i, in my simple mind, look at it this way.....

the miracle that created energy in the first place must have been divinely inspired.

like someone else in this thread said, "God wound the clock and it's just running without any further control".

to me it is like God programmed the universe so perfectly that nothing becomes instantaneously chaotic, and no intervention is necessary for everything that will ever happen in the universe to unfold flawlessly.

and if consciousness is separate to reality, then we will be conscious forever meaning that when we die, we realize our consciousness did not, and then it will seem unimportant that one suffered in the life they left behind.

i do not believe time exists in the next world (of pure consciousness) and so it will take no time at all for your children and following generations to join the eternal pool of consciousness you are in. i believe "acceptance" and love in the next world will be dependent on your moral fiber, and your actions while you had a choice (while you were carnal).
so people who commit atrocities will be forever shunned.
i do not believe in reincarnation.


if you think about it, maybe you hit your thumb with a hammer when you were 8 years old and caused it to bleed and it hurt like hell for a couple of weeks, but now it means nothing to you because it is all in the past and such a long time ago.

if you could pay $10 to go back to when you were 8 and prevent your thumb injury, and then come back to now, you would most probably decide not to.

so when you die, whether you lived a life of extravagant luxury or whether you suffered the trauma of being a holocaust victim will seem insignificant. because it is not happening any more and it will never happen again.

if you pop out of consciousness and never are aware again, then it also will be insignificant as to the life you lived.