Webcomic on this subject.
Right, because God always enjoyed the killing part too much to let anyone else have a share of it.
Yeah, it’s not like the Abrahamic God is violent… :dubious:
There are numerous examples of God telling someone to do something violent.
Everyone is quoting this. Seemed like fun.
Lots of responses below along the lines of “there is no God, so . . . .”
Here’s a different perspective.
I am a believer. Christian, and which Christian sect probably doesn’t matter for this question. Not sure I believe that God does much literal “talking” to people. My denomination is extremely cautious when it comes to claims of having actually heard God (or Mary, or a saint) actually speak or appear to anyone, and doesn’t encourage a literal approach to the Bible.
That said, if I literally “heard” God speaking to me, I would question my own sanity. If it was more like inspiration, I’d still examine my thoughts very, very carefully to try to be certain that what was in my head came from God, rather than being a product of wishful thinking, or even delusion. If God was telling me to kill my son, or anyone else, or commit any kind of violence, I’d be pretty certain that what I was hearing wasn’t, in fact, the voice of God, since that would contradict everything I believe, and everything I’ve been taught, about what God is. Of course, if I was really insane, I might not be able to tell.
It’s never happened, and I don’t expect that God will ever speak to me.
God is, and will sound like, a Protestant from the vicinity of Lanarkshire, Scotland. Duh!!
The other one, you mean the spot?
That was the old nasty God of the OT. Once he did the Jesus thing, he turned over a new leaf. Unless you’re Catholic, then he’ll send you to hell for thinking Sister Maria had a great ass.
In the webcomic, did you notice the missing comma? God didn’t have proper syntax! aha! Proof! Um…
This. The possibility of “false positives” is too high. Hell, just look at incidents here on earth where people have convinced others that they are messiahs.
This many responses and no mention of Kierkegaard? Tsk tsk.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
Scroll down to section four, where the author goes into detail about Kierkegaard’s ethics and Fear and Trembling specifically. What’s interesting about the “How do we know the voice is God’s?” question is that it actually has Biblical precedent in the story of Isaac. How do we know God was the one who told Abraham to kill his son- what if it was the devil? What if God was testing Abraham? What if God did want Abraham to kill Isaac, and the angel who descended to stop him was actually an agent of Lucifer?
There are countless problems here, and for my money, this is perhaps the single most difficult question to work around in Christian apologetics- much more difficult than more common challenges like the problem of evil. If you want to adopt Kierkegaard’s solution (which I have a hard time buying into), the answer lies in a suspension of the ethical, and an embrace of one’s personal relationship with God as a means to moral truth. (Though I doubt that feel-your-way-around approach would appeal to the more scientifically minded members here, especially given what’s at stake.)
Well, firstly, not everyone is a Christian. And secondly, if He can change the rules one time, He can change them again.
“I am the Lord your God!”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Him too.”
“No,no, I meant what the fuck?”
“Hear and obey!”
“Uh yeah, sure, but just gimme a second”
Phones buddy.
“John? Do me a favor. Pick up something in your room, anything, doesn’t matter what. Don’t tell me what it is. I’ll explain later. Got it? Right. Hold the line,”
Resumes conversation with internal voice.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Lord. I’m sure you got all that. So what is my buddy holding?”
Pause.
“Bloody atheists!”
I would say that if you have any doubt whatsoever, then it isn’t God’s voice.
Now as Der Trihs points out, it could also be a perfect mind changing machine, something essentially infinitely more likely than god. Alternatively, it could be a mental illness, something even more likely. But if you have no doubt I suppose you have to follow it. It is the only ethical thing to do.
Sure, he’s calm enough in this current incarnation. But how do we know what God v3 will be like? He might go right back to the
smiting and blood sacrifices.
To me this is a pretty good answer.
I would state is as God is Love, but also God is our parent who listens to His/Her child when we ask in Love.
So if God states something that we personally find a unloving act we can say God I can’t do this act because I see it is unloving. A Loving parent would understand this and would not insist their child procede, then God would take their child out for ice cream that magically has no weight gain effect (yes really - it’s God what else would you expect :rolleyes:)
Why so? People have already mentioned the issue of free will. If god wants to preserve free will, then why wouldn’t he do so even when directly speaking to you?
And since psychotic murderers don’t doubt that it’s god speaking to them, one could argue that having doubts makes more likely that you’re actually hearing god’s voice.
In my experience, this is the correct response to the OP. In other words, the premise is wrong. Almost no Christians have literally heard the voice of God (as opposed to learning the will of God through The Word). So, almost all Christians are skeptical about those who claim to have done so. (Pat Robertson, I’m looking at you.) Now, this definitely presents a challenge to faith. And, in my case, it was the primary motivator of my falling from belief, first to agnosticism and later to atheism. But, beating up on Christians for believing the voices in their heads is a strawman.
There’s a funny story behind all that.
In the winter of 1842, Kierkegaard’s old school mate Adolph Peter Adler, a priest on the island of Bornholm, had an ecstatic religious experience. After that, Adler’s view of God, the Devil, the gospel, the nature of the cosmos and the role of sexuality all changed dramatically; his writing style became much more poetic and evocative; and during his sermons in the local church he began switching mid-sentence between his normal voice and a hoarse, creepy, whispering kind of voice, which he used to deliver what he considered particularly important points.
Soon enough, Kierkegaard found out about all this, and the two old friends sat down to talk it out. Adler failed to convert Kierkegaard, who walked away convinced that whatever had happened to Adler, it was not an example of genuine divine revelation. He therefore set out to write a book - “the Adler book” - which would clearly lay out the difference between false and genuine divine revelation, between mere “geniuses” and proper “prophets”, etc.
In the book, he wrote that Adler had confused
Soon thereafter, bishop Mynster had Adler defrocked and kicked out of the church; he died in obscurity and is practically forgotten today. If he’s remembered at all, it’s because of Kierkegaard’s anti-Adler book.
You mean He didn’t get it right the first time?