Are you sure? I can give you tsunamis and tornadoes (because I don’t know a darn thing about them), but aren’t many carcinogens man-made? Wasn’t a person responsible for the initial spread of AIDS? Isn’t it the continued ignorance and carelessness of people that makes AIDS still such an epidemic? Are you sure that the things people do that result in global warming don’t have anything to do with droughts?
I’m exaggerating for effect, and I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of bad things that are just chalked up to nature; I’m just saying maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the role of people in a lot of these kinds of things.
No, when I believed in God I believed in the idea of a greater plan. I wouldn’t dare try to say what “most theists must believe,” but I came to believe that the purpose of prayer was to help me understand the will of God – not change it.
I was taught that free will worked in such a way that people made their own choices, and consequences or rewards of those choices later presented the individual with more options in life (whether these new options were negative or positive depended on what choice was made). God didn’t (doesn’t?) interfere with the choices that were made, He simply knew (knows?) every possible outcome of every possible choice. The best way to describe it is a person choosing between 5 doors, where something lies behind each door. As he chooses a door, all the other ones are locked and he can’t go back, and he wouldn’t ever know how another choice might’ve turned out. God, OTOH, knows what was behind every door, and knows every possible outcome, but didn’t interfere with whatever decision you made. In this scenario, the entity is trying to convince you that God, in fact, does not have this ability, and is also not omnipresent.
This simply means that if God exists, living outside His prescence would result in a feeling of emptiness. This is why the entity is asking for your help in undermining Him, and eventually getting rid of Him. What I’m trying to say, is that an individual will only feel emptiness outside of God’s existence as long as God still exists. When He doesn’t anymore, that feeling will go away.
What you describe is omnipresence. Everywhere at once, all-seeing, all-knowing, etc. It’s not omnipotence, which means “having virtually unlimited authority or influence.” Telling me that God is not omnipotent is meaningless – even if He is, He never uses that ability, but there would be no point in a God who was both omnipotent and loving and who enabled free will.
My loyalties lie with a loving God. Therefore, I would not help the anti-God in any way, no matter what the consequence.
“God” must be a loving God, because he let me live my life, suffer my consequences, experience great hurt and pain without ever preventing it, because from all of that I have learned so very much. He/She/It never treated me as though I couldn’t handle it. Ant-God steps in to offer me a life of bliss for helping him? Screw that. I value my experiences. And now I must live a life of torture or seclusion, or whatever punishment for not helping the anti-God. shrug I’ll do what I must. I’ve never learned or discovered much of anything being happy all the time.
Anyhoo, to bring the OP’s hypothetical to a slightly more realistic plane, consider yourself the leader of a small nation. Neighbor A, who has already invaded and conquered other nations (and rather horrifically) demands your cooperation in attacking larger Neighbor B, with whom you’ve had no previous contact.
If it was at all possible, I’d try to undermine and destroy A before committing myself to attacking B, since A’s aggression is proven and B’s is not. This may take the form of dragging my feet in helping A (but not doing so in a obvious manner that prompts A to overthrow my nation) while secretly feeding useful information to B.
*Presence.*Can a mod correct the spelling in the title? And the past tense of the verb lead is spelled led. The word that’s pronounced that way and spelled lead is a metallic element.
I’m still not getting how this annoying entity proves to me that God exists. But even if he could convince me that there’s a God, I’d have a lot of questions before making my decision. On the face of it, anybody who uses a horrible threat to try and gain my cooperation is an enemy.
The senerio is inconsistnent. If there were a “not all omnipotent god” (NAOG), with his whoevers, locked into an eternal struggle with an anti-god (AG), AND the actions of ordinary humans plays can change the balance (at least those who can finish their laundry), this wouldn’t be the first we’d hear about it.
With AG going around threatening and bribing, surely NAOG would have to do the same. Look at the US vs. USSR and the client states. We’d be back to the Greek days.
