God, you fucking tool!

The BBQ Pit
1

OK God, I’ve had it with you toying with us humans, like we’re some kind of erm… toy. Just who do you think you are? Eh?

In this thread, you explain how you created the day and the night, and created earth and the sea. Great. You got off to a good start.

Then you come with the vengefulness and the righteousness, and the lightening bolts from the sky. OK, as the all powerful, I can understand you wanting a little respect.

Then you think “Hmm… these humans are getting a little too sure of themselves. I think I’ll send down my boy to sort them out. I’ll convince them that they have to join his club, otherwise they’ll burn in a lake of fire forever. I’ll call the club… Christianity. BWA-HA-HA-HA!”.

Good trick, you took a lot of people in with it. It’s by the by that Christianity has been connected in some way with the murder of thousands of your people, over the centuries. That’s just the price you pay for organized religion, right?

What really gets me, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, is when the people that put all their trust and faith in you, believe in you and pray to you, are screwed the minute they turn they’re back. Is this what is meant by God fearing, I wonder?

In short, I have a problem with too many things to list here, but the following are just two examples, and I know they fall under your jurisdiction as all powerful being and creator of the universe:
[ul]
[li]Cancer, (the lottery with a 1 in 5 chance of hitting the jackpot)[/li][li]Aids (which indiscriminately strikes down everything in it’s path)[/li][li]Earthquakes (do you have to keep moving bits of the Earth around?)[/li][li]Floods (which wipe out thousands of the poorest people every year)[/li][/ul]
And, number one bad joke played on the human race:
[ul]
[li]Hate…leading to…Murder…leading to…Conflict…leading [/li]to…Wars
[/ul]
Need I carry on?

Don’t be coy, you know as well as I do that the above has affected (and will affect) countless numbers of god fearing Christians. You take people in, you get them to put they’re trust in you, and you inflict unimaginable suffering on us in return.

If you would be so good as to get your ass in here and address these issues, on behalf of all mankind, I would be forever in your debt, and I will never doubt your intentions again. Many thanks.

2

Okay, I’ve had enough of this crap. There’s a lot of talk on the SDMB about the treatment of newbies, and I think it’s time I spoke up.

samarm, what the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re pitting somebody who hasn’t even had ONE post!

I suppose next you’ll be accusing him of having sock puppets all over the place in the form of religious posters.

This is just going too far.

3

:: samarm is fried by a bolt of lightning ::

4

Although I can appreciate the sentiment expressed, I’d recommend the book The God We Never Knew by Marcus Borg. He talks about a panentheistic view of God that is different from that of the more widespread idea of a supernatural diety prominent in Christianity.

The Supernatural Diety is easy to dismiss as irrelevant at best or even EVIL as you’ve framed this. However, a panentheistic view of God is easier to reconcile with reality and reason. Of course if you don’t believe in spiritual things, then it’s all irrelevant.

YMMV, of course.

5

If both Jesus Christ and God sign on as SDMB users, couldn’t it be logically and theologically construed that they are sock puppets of one another? :slight_smile:

Then again, perhaps the SDMB rules are set up too simplistically for Holy Trinities.

As for the OP: eh. I’m an agnostic myself, but I know many a Christian. Some of them quite close to me, and most of them quite smart people. The Old Testament aside, you’re assuming all evil in the world is God’s work. This is not necessarily every Christian’s line of reasoning. I know plenty of Christians who differentiate between forces of nature and biology on the one hand, and acts of God on the other.

So, exactly whom are you flaming here?

6

And, naturally, now I’ve got that old song stuck in my head.

I won’t believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no
devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You’re always
letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you
drown. Those lost at sea and never found, and it’s the same the
whole world 'round. The hurt I see helps to compound that
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is just somebody’s unholy hoax,
and if you’re up there you’d perceive that my heart’s here upon
_my sleeve. If there’s one thing I don’t believe in

it’s you… Dear God.
*

7

Wouldn’t God be more of a lurker than a noob? I mean from all accounts, he’s probably been around for some 4 thousand years, give or take.

8

As it happens, God is banned.

9

Well, Coldfire if he created the Universe and everything in it, then he created evil, too.

10

Sure. But that just underlines my question: what kind of God, and conversely, what kind of Christian is samarm pitting?

11

I think someone is on the way to explain the concept of freewill and divine grace and all such

12

I believe all the evil in the world is God’s work. God is the creator of life, the creator of the world we live in. He created man and woman in his image. If I was on the project at the design stage, I wouldn’t have said “Hey, let’s build a little self-destruct mechanism, and put it into these humans”.

Human’s do bad things… very bad things, but ultimately there is only one person responsible for the way we are. That’s my belief.

I’m a borderline atheist / ignorant Christian (for want of a better word). There are times in my life where I feel that a belief in a higher power could get me through some rough times. I have a willingness to believe in God, but I am dissillusioned.

When I see the news on TV, or read the newspaper, I sometimes stop and think “Why does it have to be this way?”. This thread is just my way of venting some of my frustrations (and perhaps provoke some healthy debate), I guess. Hmm… maybe this should be in GD, but without the “fucking tool” bit. Oh well.

13

One of the many things that prompted me to ask these questions was the recent shit slinging in the pit between the double act of Joe_Cool & Jersey Diamond vs The Rest of the SDMB.

If the views expressed by those two are representative of Christian ideology, then I want no part of it.

I stayed out of those threads, mostly because it didn’t concern me. However, I was disgusted by the way Christians can call homosexuality a sin, and then go on to preach about forgiveness. Is this really the way God intends it to be?

14

From what I gather, a true Christian might consider homosexuality a sin, but he or she should not judge the sinner himself (or herself). That is up to God. Any Christian who DOES judge another is breaking some biblical rule Polycarp will provide shortly. :slight_smile:

15

You’re wrong, 2trew. But, ironically, this appears to be GOD’s last post.

Yours for strict accuracy, ;j
Poly

16

Invoke its name, and it shows up. :smiley:

17

manhattan, Polycarp, thank you for pointing out the error of my ways. I went off half cocked, and I’ll try not to do it again.

18

Actually, Coldie, the option is open – but has some grave consequences (kind of like you have the privilege of trying to walk on thin ice if you care to risk the near-certainty that you’ll fall through into freezing-cold water).

The command is, “Judge not, lest you be judged” – and shortly thereafter Jesus says, “For with the judgment you mete out you will surely be judged.”

Most Christians believe that they are sinners saved by the grace of God, and that’s not figurative language – it quite literally means that they deserve punishment for the evil they do, but He graciously substitutes His own Atonement for the sins they commit. As such, we’re beneficiaries of His mercy, for whom there is no judgment pending – unless we decide to set ourselves up as little godlets and go around judging what other people are doing as though we were perfect and capable of weighing their sins. (It’s human nature to do so, but we’re told to avoid it insofar as we’re able, and to repent of it when we fall to doing it, like any other sin.)

It needs to be noted that this differs from identifying what Scripture calls sin in general terms and letting the Holy Spirit tweak the conscience of the individual guilty of it, or of the loving correction we Christians owe each other as brothers and sisters in Christ – recognizing that we each are not perfect, and trying to help each other along. Joe Cool and I engage in this frequently, because our understandings of what God expects of us are so different – but always with the idea that we’re each noodging our brother towards what God expects of him, not in condemnatory terms. Libertarian perpetrated one of these on me for my “Decemberist” Pit thread, and I recognized it for what it was; that’s why I thanked him.

19

Considering what you just said and the old proverb, Coldfire, follow the link I gave – you’ll be amused! :smiley:

20

Polycarp: You say that if Christians go around judging what other people do, then this is a sin. To judge someone based on their sexuality, therefore, is a sin - isn’t it? Doesn’t this contradict the whole “God did not want man to sleep with man” theory, that I hear Christians coming out with when the question of homosexuality is brought up? How is this kind of sinning different to what the scripture calls sinning?