Maybe He’s looking out for the radical right Islamist Extremists, how would I know, I’m not God and don’t claim to be. But I do know that it is not my job to judge God. It’s His job to judge me.
It is the job of an intelligent mind to judge everything! (Most definitely including our own selves, our own motives, and our own beliefs.) Nothing is too holy to be examined; nothing is to sacred to be criticized. Why should God be exempt from the rules that I apply to everything else?
One key reason for this is: there are “false gods,” and if we were prohibited from “judging God,” we might not make the investigations needed to expose them.
An intelligent mind also knows it’s limitations and does not past judgment before all the facts are known. I’m not saying that Al Qaeda was justified in attacking the World Towers, but their war against U.S. isn’t over. Suppose a sadistic God decides it would be better that Al Qaeda won their war against the U.S. Surely, it’s a possibility since most of you believe God is sadistic.
I’m betting there are a lot more of us who think God is imaginary than think a real god is sadistic. Now, the CHARACTER in the Old Testament, at least, sure…
And nobody here is claiming to be or thinks you are claiming to be. But you’re speaking in God’s defense to some extent (although you still haven’t come up with an answer for things like natural disasters, I notice). If he’s looking out for the terrorists, the answer to the thread title is absolutely “Yes, God is a sadist.” Worse than a sadist, in fact. And you say you don’t know what God thinks about these kinds of fanatical nutjobs, but I bet you’re not living your life the way they do. Why not? You evidently don’t think that’s what God believes. You must have some notion of what you think God is and what he wants people to do even if you think we can’t understand the reasons and the whole picture. You don’t sound like you think the whole thing is a crapshoot. Am I wrong? Do you think we’re just all doing our best and your God will take that in the spirit it’s intended regardless of whether we’re curing cancer or bombing schools?
That might sound good to you - it sure doesn’t to me because it implies a total abdication of intelligence and responsibility - but anyway, I am sure you do have opinions about God that could be called judgments. If you didn’t, you couldn’t try to follow any teachings or philosophies, and you’re at least nominally a Christian. And a god who doesn’t give a crap about people isn’t worthy of any kind of worship anyway (and wouldn’t require it).
I like the New Testament, I do not believe God is a sadist. However, I consider God my superior and hesitate to pass judgment on him. Once again, it is his job to judge. I like relying on 2000 years of history, tradition, and spiritual guidance that is in the New Testament. It is superior to any of the world views and other religions that I know of.
I did not say the New Testament is perfect, but it is sufficient to provide me with spiritual guidance.
But you think there are things he wants and things he doesn’t, right? And you disagree with some of the things other people believe about God?
The facts are *never *all known. Not when the judgement matters, anyway. When will it be the time to pass judgement on your god ? When will “all the facts” be known ? Tomorrow ? Week after ? Q3 2016 ?
If the answer is a self-satisfied “in a googolplexplex years, when the Universe dies a heat death and time itself ceases existing”, then the answer is beyond meaningless.
The Bible talks about relationships and knowledge. How many people are ready to pass judgment on their Father. Not only is he the Father, but He is the Heavenly Father with superior knowledge.
Also, it appears that people are looking for a “scapegoat.” Imagine a world without the New Testament God. Perhaps, Al Qadah somehow becomes a world movement and triumphs. Does the World become kinder and gentler? I don’t think so.
The Al Qadah Trading Company in Dubai?
There’s no reason to think much changes. The God of the Bible is an evil god (and happens to be the same god as Allah, it’s just the Arabic word for “God”) and both Christianity & Islam are evil. I find them much less different from each other than their respective followers like to think.
I beg to differ. The world would absolutely be different.
Without the New testament there would be no Christianity (and therefore no Islam and thus no Al Qaida).
A world where Christianity and Islam never happened would have a different history of some 2000 years.
Not saying people would be less or more violent but we would certainly have different nations, languages, cities, cultures and beliefs.
I don’t know that much about Islam, so I will not venture an opinion there.
But I don’t find the Christian God as evil. To me I don’t look at Theology or Philosophy in isolation. I look at the people who espouse these beliefs. Without doubt there are some evil people who are Christian but by and large they are good people that are trying to do the right thing. They are people that feed the homeless, they are people who visit friends in the hospital and they care for the sick.
I’m not saying you need God in your life in order to do these things, but it does look like Christianity has helped them.
In large part because you are willing to twist the definition of words like good and evil so far that they have no useful meaning in order to claim that your god is good, as we’ve seen in this thread.
That’s irrelevant as to the question of whether or not your god is evil. The good or evil of your god is determined by its attitude and actions, not by how the people who claim to follow it act.
Christianity has spent 2000~ years making people act like monsters, and continues to do so. A few soup kitchens won’t make up for that.
That is not accurate, all I have done is made the assumption that I don’t know everything. And then I posed a hypothetical, and you guys told me it was evil because you know more than I do.
I LOLed.
I’m not sure which of your questions was hypothetical. You’ve been stating your own opinions. On the other hand I notice you’ve ignored some questions that you might not have good answers to. Let me try these again:
There are people who say their god supports the killing of nonbelievers, the oppression of women, racial and ethnic hatred and wars of all sorts. It’s obvious you don’t think that. What do you think about the god they are describing? How would you describe that god?
Who or what benefits from natural disasters like landslides or tsunamis or earthquakes?
These are good questions. There is a huge number of religions in the World and the amazing thing is that most of these religions have similar basic guidelines. And I consider most of the guidelines good. But there are charismatic leaders of all faiths that have managed to distort God’s messages for their own ends and have caused a lot of evil. Case in point is Osama Bin Laden.
Natural disasters obviously are bad, but it is up to us to help people rebuild. I’m a believer of, “it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
Thanks. So you say these are distortions (I’m not sure that’s true, but I won’t argue about it here) and that they have caused a lot of evil. So how would you describe the gods these ‘distorted’ people are praying to and whose will they are trying to enact?
You’ll find few people who think we shouldn’t help other people rebuild after disasters, and I am not cursing the darkness. But if someone is going to tell me that natural disasters and other awful tragedies are the work of a god that loves and cares about humanity and has a grand plan for everything, I think it’s totally reasonable to ask what kind of love that is and what the plan is supposed to be. It seems to me you’re acknowledging that a lot of tragedies don’t benefit anybody or anything and perhaps suggesting we just not think about it. I’m sure you can see why that’s not satisfying.
I curse the darkness…and light a candle.