My views on religion in general.

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The idea of a god is plausible.

The idea of a PERFECT god is what isn't.

Most likely, whatever god is out there, probably has a view issues of his own. He probably has his own favorites, his power is NOT unlimited, and he probably oversleeps when he's supposed to prevent an earthquake. He probably gets a hell of a lot of complaints from those angel people, and probably forgets to make a new planet a bunch. He probably gets pissed off whenever the guys down under screw up whatever plans he has, or when he gets beat by that 5 year old Starcraft prodigy he had no idea would grow THIS fast.

Humans are allowed to have individuality, so why can't god? I'm not going to go into the mono/polytheist argument though.

That said - the reason no plausible "proof" has risen up is probably because that's the point. Either he knows his own limits and can't answer too many people at once, or he's trying to avoid the corrupt bastards of the catholic church again. Or he could be an Aspie and doesn't like getting bombarded with requests. Regardless, religion is SUPPOSED to be without a plausible evidence - the entire POINT is for it to be a blind faith.

I've avoided naming a particular religion (Although I am a christian myself) because what IS wrong is most likely the interpretation given by humans. Chances are they're all incorrect to some extent, and some of them could possibly be red herrings that he's just throwing out there to experiment.

Your thoughts?

Well, here's the problem: How do you define "perfect"? If you hold a flawed human being to a standard by which you declare everything perfect, then you'll fail to see God's perfection. It's all about perspective, and a single perspective isn't all that revealing. Only an omniscient God can see everything as a whole. It takes an humble heart to recognize that the reason God appears imperfect is because we are imperfect ourselves.


How do you know this isn't all on a perfect God's terms?


Um...that all depends. Humans do have individual personalities--we are all apart from each other, and God is LIKE that in the sense that He possesses personality. But individuality? I don't want to get into mono/polytheism if you don't, but an "individual" God compared to...what? If God is One, you have no basis for comparison. God cannot be "individual" if there is no pantheon to be included in. If there are many gods, then you can say whether God ranks apart from the others or if God is just a cookie-cutter and has no distinctiveness from any other gods. If all gods are the same, then functionally they all act as one, which suggests that God is One anyway.


I disagree. For faith to be blind implies that those with faith are naïve or gullible. I don't believe that any God with a sense of justice would expect to have followers without evidence. For most thinking people to have faith in something, they need some means of substantiating what it is they put their faith in. For the ancient Israelites, they had a physical manifestation of God's glory right there in their presence. You couldn't say "there is no God" because He was right there for everyone to see. The purpose of the wilderness experience was to show that God was reliably true to His word and always would be. And in spite of having God visually in their midst, there were those who chose to disobey. Which only proves that merely having evidence isn't enough to force belief. Faith is something a person must grasp by their own will do do so. God can't do it for you.

But then you DO have those who choose to believe what the evidence points to. Our current state of affairs as Christian believers is not a blind faith. The Bible is a record of our history as a faith--it is a documentation of the evidence we once had. It's recorded testimony. We either choose to believe it or we don't. One would think that plausibility would be enough to accept the testimony as-stated, but it isn't. Our experiences are (again) colored by our expectations and our limited perspectives. And God won't MAKE you buy it if you don't want to. Even if you take empiricism, evidence does not require two separate people or groups of people to draw the same conclusion. Black holes, for instance cannot be directly observed, so we have no idea what they really are or how they are formed. We infer that they exist, and we have some guesses at what would cause them to form. And as long as that kind of doubt exists, there are any number of seemingly plausible explanations. Now, you can call Occam on it, but then you have a disagreement on which explanation is truly most parsimonious--and even THEN that explanation might not even be reality. Even conclusions drawn from material reality require faith on the part of the person or persons making that conclusion. Religious faith is no different.


Who is throwing out red herrings? God? That would make God appear to be unjust. There is likely a better explanation more in line with what is known about God through His nature.