If there was really a God, bad things wouldn't happen.

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Look I'm not here to proof you wrong or anything related to that. I'm just here to share information about the Word of God. And if the God described as in the Bible seems evil to you first of all makes me sad and propably makes God even more sad than I am. Than again there is still hope even the most brutal murderer, atheist or sinner whatever you are can become a Son of God. Where there is life there is hope.

Btw, have you read the whole thing? Because it seems you are just taking one sentence out of the story and answer that. Even though there was a perfect explanation for it.

Yes, I have read the whole bible in the KJV, NIV and NRSV as well as the JPS Tanakh. It was a special interest at one time.

I trust that God, whatever God's nature may or may not be, doesn't mind the rational working of my mind or the way I use it to contemplate and question such issues. I very much doubt that my questioning whether or not the actions described in the 10 plagues story can be seen as evil would make God sad. I don't think it should make you sad either.

Edited to add:
"Doubting Thomas" as in "don't be a doubting Thomas" was once an epithet meant to silence questioning. In the story in the Gospels however, Jesus does not rebuke or punish St. Thomas for being himself. Maybe there was a lesson intended in that relationship, too?

The bible and other holy books are human works, religions are human creations.

They may or may not be divinely inspired, but God has not revealed his purpose or intent in some instantly comprehensible way, like a guardian angel who will engage each person in metaphysical discussions when their hearts are troubled about God's nature, purpose, intent and so on.

In the absence of such compelling communication from God or direct messengers from God, all we have is each other's narratives about God and in them we find human language with human definitions. I don't see that we can either not judge the stories we read or not use the only definitions we have while doing that.

Quite so.

It's quite ridiculous to suggest that one cannot judge a god in human terms, whilst doing precisely the same thing by defining what a god is.

This literally reads as justification for the murder of unbelievers, and also undermines any argument for free will.

"Doesn't matter what I command, I reserve the right to mess with your decision-making and punish you regardless."

If that's your moral standard, I'm quite content to opt out.

I might go back and read the whole thread, but I wanted to respond to the OP first.

Sure, I can imagine a god who just lets things be. I used to love the idea of Crom, Conan's god in the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. You didn't so much worship him as just knew he was watching without interest and was never going to help if asked or even especially care what happened to you. I guess the Cimmerians had such a religion.

Some strains of gnosticism also have a related view, that the world was created by accident and god has no idea what he is doing. That much seems obvious to me from simply paying attention, so I take that view in general.

Look ofcourse everyone has his questions. But I think that if you have these questions you should ofcourse adress them with respect to the person. As far as I'm concerned I've not once heard Thomas say God was evil.

Rationality is only a human concept describing one's state of mind or functioning of it. Often described as using reason or logic in thinking out a problem. However the things we see as reason and logic are subjective and absolute. This can only conclude that no such thing as rationality exists. People say they look at 'proof'. But there is no such thing as 'absolute proof'. Not even the Mathematical proof is absolute as it only concerns the quantum and not the quale. Rather 'proofing' something is only coming up with the best possible explanation to describe a matter. But the possible explanation we come up with are only limited and most of the time get disproven as time progresses. Maybe proof is something that is generally accepted as being true? I don't think so. Since history tells us otherwise. But how do we know history as it's told is true? We only assume it's true because that's what we are told not necessarily meaning it is actually true. Conclusion: Proof is when someone sees something as sufficient data to be 'true'. This ofcourse being subjective because the data one sees as being correct differs from person to person. Meaning rationality is more of an opinion than anything else. Self-proclaiming 'rationality' strikes me as quitte odd since you have no proof for the things you say you are. Sounds like contradictery to me. Than again that's just my opinion not necessarily saying that it's true. I hate this paradox

The stories are interesting and have provided moral guidance, but they have nothing to do with God. Religion and the bible are human creations.



Can you quote where I defined what God is, I'd love to know.

That was actually meant as a general statement, as the notion is a commonly employed 'defence' against criticism of scripture or belief.

That said, you did define "God" as being above human morality. You also chose to capitalise "God", which is a human convention for proper nouns.



You also defined "God" as something which evil has nothing to do with, in your response to Adamantium.

Describing the shape of the water it displaces is still defining the object.

ok

Last edited by Yo El on 26 Jan 2017, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Why don't you try adding something to the conversation instead of analyzing possible interpretations of previous posts ad nauseam.

I think adifferentname is just trying to carefully parse your language to better understand what you mean and also explaining that process.

What do you mean when you say God?

I'm glad I didn't read ten pages already with no agreed definition of god.

Well, I know there is something going on that is greater than humans, but I don't really understand it. I guess I see God as the organizing force of the universe. But again, it is hard to understand something that is greater than yourself.

Free will is only the option to choose freely. This has no relation to concequences of someone's choice. Which God has clearly revealed beforehand. It's like someone choosing 'freely' to stab himself and than blaming someone else for passing away even though he said beforehand "Don't stab yourself or you will die". And I don't see how this is justification for the murder of unbelievers because God already revealed to us it's wrong to murder someone even in self-defense. And ofcourse you could use this is as an argument for 'Than why does God murder people?'. Well I don't see it that way. You see that God most of the time provides warning before action. Ofcourse ignoring the warning has concequences. And even if he doesn't provide warning it would still be just. If he decided to kill me right now even though I'm trying to serve Him(which I'm doing a terrible job at it) He would still be just. Since I have sinned( penalty=death). I'm evil, and not because some book said it. I knew perfectly well what I was before I even started reading the Bible. I'm wicked and selfish no joke. And so are you, no exceptions. Ofcourse the amount of evil we express differs from person to person. A lot of things has influence on this but the foundation for evil already lays there. Everyone can become a 'Hitler' or 'Nero' or 'Stalin' under the right circumstances. And thats why after they did study about Hitler's background, people say things like Hitler wasn't as bad as I thought. You should actually turn it around, we are worse than we think.