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

Post Reply New Topic

I disgree with this. I don't think the concept of right and wrong is valid in nature. I don't believe that a creator would necessarily believe in right and wrong, why would they? What if it's an entity that creates and destroys...or creates things and lets them destroy themselves...without any purpose behind it? Just because it wants to.

Nature to me seems to be all about creation and destruction, but ultimately renewal and change.

What does everybody else think of the idea that there could be a God, or some massive intelligence that's in control of, and links everything...that just *is*? No right or wrong about it, it just exists.

Can't argue with that, the argument I've always heard though is that a *good*, loving God can not exist. Which I agree with. And if there is a God, I never saw the logic in worshipping one that really doesn't care about you.

Such a diety could exist, but it would be indistinguishable from one not existing at all, so we can just keep on living as if no god existed.

The opening argument is used specifically against the abrahamic god (as worshipped by christians, jews and muslims); which is described as being " all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good". A god by that description simply cannot exist in our reality.

Thousands of years of worshiping the "spirit in the sky" means we inherit the beliefs

Interestingly Norman Greenbaum reported about his song "spirit in the sky" "I’ve gotten letters from funeral directors telling me that it's their second-most-requested song to play at memorial services, next to 'Danny Boy'"

The problem here lies in the definition of "God".

If you're talking about a vague concept of a creator, or about mythology where the Gods are clearly flawed, then that argument holds no weight. But if you're talking about the God that a lot of Christians believe exists (all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving), then you start to get problems. A complete imbecile can design a much nicer world than the one we've got, without so much as touching "free-will".

Of course, you can debate all you want as to whether free-will is even a thing, since things like sexuality and socialization are necessities for most people, not to mention you can completely scramble somebody's personality with drugs or brain damage.

text removed

Last edited by B19 on 28 Dec 2016, 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.: off topic

"If There Was Really A God, Bad Things Wouldn't Happen"

talking specifically about the Abrahamic religious belief of the Omnipotent God Jehovah existing.
I would say that even from the beginning of man, bad things did happen.

In theosophy, Adam and Eve started the chain reaction for disobeying Jehovah's simple rules and eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and thus were thrown out of the Garden of Eden for their disobeying his rules.

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge and more importantly breaking God's rules was the first bad thing to happen.
This first bad action started a long chain reaction and in theory, this is why we find ourself where we are now.
And the bad things that happen are arguably our fault, because we still have not learnt to live by Gods simple rules.

It is interesting to me how this "Loving" God in the old testament tells the people that this land is promised to them. There is this inconvenient fact that there happen to be people living on this land. So this peaceful loving God commends that they attack these people and massacre every man woman and child to take this land that is rightfully theirs.

I don't understand a god that says love me or I'll kill you. Believe in me or you go to Hell. What kind of choice is that? And we are guilty for no other reason for being born and the only way we can be saved is to believe that a man who walked around in Palestine 2000 or so years ago was executed. Tough luck for the people who lived in China or the Americas or Africa or Islands who had no way of knowing that. That is until the virtuous followers of this loving God invaded and conquered them and converted them with the sword.

If it turns out there is such a thing as "God", I'm certain we'll find its interest in humanity has been grossly exaggerated by its representatives on Earth.

If God is not interested in us then why should we be interested in him?

What would be the point of worshipping, or even of believing in the existence of such a deity?

Agreed...and with debates about "God" and/or certain matters of personal morality aside, there is where I begin...and with a great emphasis upon the "we" of that equation: People are dying of starvation because we who have food are not feeding them; people commit suicide because the remainder of us do not validate them; wars exist because we start them because we want things at the involuntary expense of others.

...then why are we shown how to love one another?

Funny this topic came up. I was thinking about how the Epicurian argument against God only works against a concept of deity that's by nature personal and highly invested in humanity. Otherwise it could be a consciousness spread across the universe that might love us, at least in a relatively passive manner and not be able to stop evil or even have much control over matter - one can say 'Well, then by definition it's too weak to be God'.... well, that's fine but... if it were a truly vast thing existing as the substrate of human consciousness it would still be a big deal and it would be important to know that it existed for the sake of how we operate. Similarly classifying it as not-God would have no bearing on whether or not it existed.

I was just on Facebook and saw a lengthy post from a gentleman who talked about being a very firmly avowed and aggressive antitheist, had an NDE, and from what i gathered of his responses it was his own experience - not a repost.

Such a deity would be important because we have to deal with our environment and to live gainfully in this universe. If life beyond body were more than self-comforting delusion and the probability seemed highly likely that one would be absorbed into the depths of such a being shortly after death you can see where knowing that being's personality and being squared away with it somehow would be imminently practical even if it utterly failed most people's definitions as an all-powerful creator.

To peel away some of the cultural baggage try replacing 'deity' with 'law of physics'. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics for example doesn't particularly care much for us on its own and we'd tend to doubt it's capability to care for us, it's just that we haven't had the kind of political climate around laws of physics that we have around religions and to be fair the laws of physics have been significantly more available for study. Similarly, if the panpsychist take on consciousness ever pans out we'd be dealing with a vast sea of awareness that's along for the ride with matter and the universe but with little evidence that it's of much power to intervene aside from expediting intuition in conscious beings who can.

I won't try to affirm that what I said above is right, just that there are a lot of angles to be considered with this that seem to shut down when the words 'god' or 'deity' make their impact on the conversation.

Agreed - it's morally insane.

The one thing I'm happy about at least is how quickly the internal logic of such views fall apart and how, with the advent of the internet and the like, good ideas seem to gain increased leverage over merely ensconced ones. Lastly I'd add that we're coming to see that mystical experiences have a way of varying from person to person to such a degree that a person's seeing hell full of sinners in a vision or meeting Jesus is counterbalanced by all of the other kinds of visions people have of comparable value and yet from completely different or sometimes no religious narrative. They may deal with universal truths in particular manners, much like there could be a father or mother principle in consciousness that could be very Jesus-like or Mary-like both in nature and nurture, but the cosmic game of 'gotcha' that Sam Harris recently described so well in his analogy of giving idiots a super-complex and unsolvable puzzle and punishing them with eternal torment for not being able to do what they didn't have the capacity to do - I'd say at this point we can rest assured that that's wholly a human cultural creation and we have the vast inconsistencies of both scripture and revelation to attest to that.

If you don't believe in God there is no such thing as something bad, good or wrong. I'm speaking as a human being here. If God doesn't exist the things you define as right or wrong are values that are shaped by your environment like society and your social environment.

However, I do believe in God. We can see in the Bible that the Creator (God) made us people with a free will to choose between Him or to choose against Him. So he created mankind with a free will, with the task to rule over this Earth. Now a free will itself isn't enough for one to choose, you have to create an opportunity for one to put his free will to use. The Creator did this by creating the 'Tree of Knowledge of good and evil'. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Well first of we must look at God from a biblical standpoint, He is omniscient and omnipresent. God already knew from the beginning that Adam end Eve would eat the fruit. He didn't interfere because He created us with a free-will and gave us the oppurtunity to choose for or against Him( even though every choice that isn't for Him is wrong). I think I sort of have an idea of why God gave us this free-will in the first place. You can compare this to us human beings since we are made in his image. Would you really be satisfied if someone was programmed to love you? Like a robot? I would much rather have someone to choose to love me instead. Even though this may result in the person not choosing to love me.

After Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, mankind is seperated from God's perfect love. This caused mankind to fall into sin. Every bad thing that happens in this world roots back into the core problem called sin. But God made a promise that He will have a decendant from Eve to overcome the serpent ( the serpent is Satan, who deceived us into eating the fruit and now is ruler over this world). So technically speaking Adam and Eve were the first Christians. Now the redeemer that God promised is Jesus Christ, He died on the cross for the sins we commited that seperates us from God's love. That those who believe in Him may become sons of God, and have everlasting life.

Now things in the world these days haven't changed. God still gives you the free will to choose for or against Him it's your choice. But I tell you this everyone who calls for God's help will not be left in the dark. I wish I could get in more detail with you about the entire story and answer all the questions you have about God, I'm sorry. Feel free to hit me up any time you like. I would love to answer all your questions about God.

Now everyone here have a wonderfull day, and my blessing

Is killing the firstborn son of every household in a city good or bad, right or wrong?

Is throwing homosexuals off rooftops and stoning them to death good or bad, right or wrong?

Whether or not we believe in a god or gods is immaterial. If you wish your god to be credited as the source of morality, present your god.



Free will does not require permission.



Rather undermines your claim of free will then. An omniscient being necessarily negates free will as your path is already determined.



As does this. As the omniscient creator of Adam and Eve, he created them specifically to suffer. You appear to be arguing the case that "Without God, bad things wouldn't happen", at least in the context of the OP's human-centric premise.



If "He" created us, he interfered from the very outset. If your contention is that we wouldn't exist without your omniscient creator, "He" is responsible for the actions of each and every one of us. Could your god have chosen to not create us?



I have no problem accepting the fact that biochemistry is responsible for the feelings which others express as love for me. Under your model I would have to accept that such people were destined to "love" me as part of some divine plan. I'm not sure how this differs from programming.



I much prefer to accept the story of the Garden of Eden as an allegory. It makes a great deal more sense. The "God" you describe seems to be seeking slaves, not sons.



I have only one. Can a god destroy itself?



Have a good one yourself.