Is the J-C God evil?

Great Debates
121

““Like, say, choose good over evil.””""

If that is your concept of free-will, then the Bible sounds like the book for you! You’re saying that unless the universe is _SO _ constructed that a person MUST …choose???.. (I can’t even concieve how to write it, it’s so insane!!) to spend their life in brimstone and hellfire, eternal damnation and seperation from the most powerful being in the universe (which is defined as suffering, incidentally, in that same universe) … anyways, unless a universe is SO constructed, people cannot have free-will? That is sick and twisted. You know what? Why doesn’t God just do us all a favor and sacrifice himself before creating such a S*!T hole? Exactly how do you think a person who knows EVERYTHING in the universe, just decides… Hmmm shrug “Y’know, I’ve thought about this alot, eternal damnation just sounds better! I’ll start killing people today!” Part of free-will is having the KNOWLEDGE to make educated decisions. Do you really think that anyone who dies here on earth has a fraction of the knowledge that God is rumored to posess? HELL NO!!

-Justhink

122

You say this from your perspective. God says his piece from his perspective. Now, if that God existed, why would you be inclined to disagree with him? Wouldn’t his very existence negate the impossibility of error in your own perception of him?

123

The universe is constucted so that I MUST… eat… so why should other propositions regarding the necessity of making a choice be so quickly dismissed?

124

I know, the question wasn’t directed at me, but I think I’m pretty much on the same side as MrVisible here. I was raised in a Southern Baptist, pulpit-pounding, Bible-thumping, sweaty, scary hellfire-preacher kind of church. In my mid-20s, I switched to a Bible teaching church, with a very calm, ostensibly rational style. I attended there for about 4 years, I think, as a young adult. All along, I read and studied the Bible on my own, too. Cover to cover only once, the New Testament several times, and bits and pieces countless times. For the purpose of study and learning, and for the purpose of bolstering my faltering faith. The more I studied, especially in the rational, academic style, the more my faith faltered. It’s all just too implausible for me.

I went in caring, trying to believe, trying to understand. I came out laughing at the unenlightened. Now I don’t laugh so much, out of an effort to be polite, but I still can’t believe it. Worse, I think it often hurts those who do believe it, and worse still, it hurts those who don’t.

125

““The universe is constucted so that I MUST… eat… so why should other propositions regarding the necessity of making a choice be so quickly dismissed?””

To survive. You must eat to survive (in theory anyways). There is no law that says: “YOU MUST EAT”. With God we are talking about ULTIMATE TRUTH. If human beings have learned anything in this existence; it’s that TIME is required. Time is the great equalizer… nowhere is this more readily aparent than in the aquisition of experience, perspectives and knowledge. Do you really think that if God hadn’t snatched up the fruit in a panic “So that we may not become like him”, and let us be eternal; that the nature of universal truth itself given the expanse of eternity, ultimately has someone just sitting around (everyone ‘omni-scient’ by this point) and all make different decisions about whether to chill with God or join the great boiler room of eternity? What you fail to take into account is that GOD is not limited by the very limits he imposes upon us (he did have a choice y’know.). It does happen to be Biblically consistant that people who are given eternal life, cannot have it revoked (i.e. Satan); so obviously God doesn’t have to worry about us killing him. You know, I find it pathetic that God actually thinks we’d kill him or run him out… the human species (if actually reaching him in a Babellian sense) would be so much more cognitively advanced than God, that they’d feel sorry for him. I truly think that you underestimate what is required to enter God in the sense of Absolte truth - you can’t just build bricks… we’d only reach the moon (there isn’t that much earth y’know!). Babel is nothing more than a symbolic story of achieving truth through the will and desire of people to discover it. What we see enacted repeatedly in the Bible is Gods interfering at all the critical points when humans are begining to gather the depth necessary to walk through the ultimate purifier of truth. To suggest that people can just “walk up to God” without seeing truth, or that if they actually do arrive, that they’d be murderous is to deny any positive existential sense of meaning for this existence! Also, what’s so praisworthy about a God who doesn’t even make his creations better than him? Clearly, with all the obstacles he creates in the Biblical sense; we’re required to be a greater embodyment of truth than God in order to reach him. Maybe he just just running and Artificial intelligence with evolutionary algorythms that would help him with his mental illness; and it’s our job to come rescue this cowering, paranoid and delusional cognition.

-Justhink

126

But that is clearly a choice that must be made, and in fact I make that choice implicitly whether I realize it consciously or not. We make such choices all the time.

For the rest of your post: you certainly have a certain description of God in mind. That god is not all powerful if, by definition, you would look down on him (or if there existed some mode of existence you could achieve from which to look down on him). So I don’t know what you’re getting at.
But every assertion you make contains the assumption that you can be right in making statements about a being that does not exist in the same way you exist, and which (it is said) knows all that can be known, and created the very universe in which you reside.

It comes down to: would I call this particular God evil? The question contains a contradiction. If he didn’t exist, then he is hypothetically evil. If he did exist, my understanding of good and evil is incomplete or flat out wrong, and so I must reserve my judgements.

127

Do you believe that if any sentient being is all knowing; that they can and/or will choose hell? God is our only example of an all-knowing being (he casts away people who want to talk to him about something different than what he thinks, or sets the clock on them so as to force the impossibility of making an educated choice (which clearly GOD did).

On your topic of ‘free-will’. Do you seriously believe that free-will means: If you know absolute truth, that it isn’t really evidenced as absolute truth unless some people choose to go to hell?

-Justhink

128

“”""“You say this from your perspective. God says his piece from his perspective. Now, if that God existed, why would you be inclined to disagree with him? Wouldn’t his very existence negate the impossibility of error in your own perception of him?”"""""

Oblivion > Eternal damnation.
Oblivion > “Everyone thinks like I do, without the tools that have, or the are eternally damned”

God is always asking people to sacrifice for him (as if Christ who knew he’d be ressurrected in three days was really making a sacrifice, they had to try and make it dramatic by having him do the whole “god why have you forsaken me” bit.); I don’t see God making any sacrifices for anyone.

To me, eternal hell for any of your creations = kill yourself or don’t create it. If God doesn’t have that very basic sense of morality and/or sacrifice, than I can state that God has no clue about the nature of our reality and that being the case; I’d rather spend an eternity in hell than spend one second with him in la-la-land.

God unfortunately doesn’t offer choices…
Eternal hell or eternal heaven; no option of oblivion, no option to not play his game, no tolorance for the actual freedom of choice implicit in choosing NOT TO EXIST AT ALL. Would it hurt gods little ego too much to see people head for oblivion over his crap shoot?
Heaven forbid that God actually become accountable to the free-will of his own creations, he might actually have to gasp clean up his act! He might actually think about himself, “Wow, these people really don’t approve of my game… they’d rather be in oblivion than even recieve my grand prize of heaven; hmm… maybe something’s not quite right here…” There can be no greater sin, no greater violation of trust; an act irreconcialable in damages, absolute in selfishness… than to pluck someone from the realm of oblivion, who never wanted to BE, and give them choices:

a.) Be with me
b.) Be with hell
c.) No other choices

That is soooooooo screwed, demented and downright visciously malevolent.

It’s like: “God, I appreciate it and all, but can I please just go home… back to the breast of oblivion?”

God: “NO!! You heathen! You’ll burn in hell for that! Blashemy! Unacceptable! If everyone went to oblivion that wanted to, heaven would be empty! Unacceptable! You will be happy! I command it, you will wash my feet with a smile of genuine joy for all eternity and forget the sufferings forever! That will be your punishment for such insubordination, you will forget that you EVER knew what you now know; and in doing so, you will be my ego-slave; ignorantly happy to be so, for all of eternity. Eternal damnation is too good for you. Welcome to my real punishment… MWAHAHAHAHA!!! Welcome to the my magic mushrooms of heavenly eternal bliss; where you will actually smile with an inner warmth of content when you watch your mother writhe in the eternal agony of seperaration from me. Watching this, and knowing your being held here against your will is my eternal righteousness, and from it, comes the source of all my bliss! Just thought I’d let you know, before the mushrooms take effect… MWAHAHAHAHhhahhahhh…”

-Justhink

129

Sorry for the brief hijack but…

Am I the only one having trouble with Justhink’s posting style? Admittedly, I still use * to indicate bolded words on occasion, a habit from my old days of text-based email readers like Pine. To see them everywhere, along with _ for underlining, plenty of oddly-placed parentheticals, CAPITALIZED words all over the place, and not much if any division of ideas into paragraphs…well, it’s making it pretty much impossible for me to wade through his posts and find his thoughts. His 4:25 AM post is pretty readable though, so I don’t know if this is his consistent posting style or not.

Oh well, perhaps it’s a Usenet thing to post in that style. Yet, I’ve heard somewhere that when people see a long, unbroken paragraph we are increasingly likely to simply skip past it. I just thought I’d mention that, as it may be causing some thread readers to miss the points being made in those posts. You are of course under no obligation (as I understand it) to make your posts easy on the eyes Justhink, I’m just offering my $0.02.

130

Now, Justhink, from your comments in the private phenomenon thread I know you to be an intelligent thinker as I would characterize one (albeit somewhat eccentric, maybe). I would presume that you refuse to follow God because of that as much as I would assume that those who do follow him do so because of that.

This appeal to God’s force as the primary motivation to follow/not follow is pretty much a strawman of the most serious kind for all the Christians I know and interact with on this board, and for all the atheists and agnostics I know and interact with on this board.

And you want to offer your system of valuing good versus evil over an all-powerful being’s? And, what, me choosing yours is supposed to be the rational choice? I agree with your valuation… in a universe that wasn’t created by this being. Which, I hope I needn’t add, is the universe I think I live in now. But then that makes arguing whether God is evil like arguing whether unicorns are white. We both agree they don’t exist, so who cares about the rest? Its all nonsense.

As if you can accept every little bit of the bible as damning evidence against God except the notion of his supremecy which is supposed to present some sort of obvious contradiction. Well, here’s a contradiction: some puny mortal asserting values and making ontological assertions in the face of an all-powerful being. Really, that’s silly. And I don’t want to say you’re arrogant for thining you’re better than [this] God, but that whatever standard of decision-making you have, it doesn’t seemed to be based in reason.

When I am presented with something that fundamentally goes agaisnt the very core of my worldview the whole thing is in question. I mean, isn’t that the point for making such fundamental assumptions?—to create a worldview? And you expect me to believe that if one of your fundmental assumptions were wrong that your worldview still stands as solid as it did before?

I am sorry, but I don’t see it.

131

Hitler gave NO ONE a choice.

132

It is my understanding that Satan was created by God, he was perfect, TIL unrighteousness was discovered in him.
He willfully rebelled against God (the first revolutionary) and lost.

Yep, God is evil all right-He lets people be in Heaven forever.:rolleyes:

133

What choice did those Amelekite kids being put to the sword have again?

134

vanilla,

Yep, God is evil all right-He lets people be in Hell forever.

135

In the fictional universe that was created by that mythical all-powerful being, he gave people free will, and they took for themselves knowledge of good and evil.

There are no limits on what that knowledge may be applied to; no matter how powerful something might be, its actions determine, to someone with the ability to judge good and evil, which side the being is on. When humans gained the ability to tell good from evil, even their creator came under their scrutiny.

So, saying that God is evil may be indiscreet. It may be foolish. It may be incurring the wrath of an all-powerful deity. But it isn’t irrational, or contradictory.

Perhaps that’s why an all-powerful being would create intelligent creatures, and then give them free will, and then dangle knowledge of good and evil before them? Perhaps our ultimate purpose is to sit in judgement of our creator?

It seems just as likely as having an ultimate purpose of singing psalms and shining halos.

136

Damn, Drastic beat me to it. :smiley:

137

Squish, you absolutely have the right to avoid what you call ‘junk mail’, that doesn’t mean you’re going to stop receiving it.
As for

**
all I have to say is ** Proverbs 22:6**.
I can buy all the cook books in the world, if I just read and don’t do what the chef has directed, my recipe will not come out like all who has followed. Altering the recipe will also give you a different outcome. You cannot have an almond cookie without almonds.

I think you are confusing ‘God is evil’ with ‘God is just’. He doesn’t condemn anyone to Hell. People condemn themselves to Hell. He gives you a choice. Why is that so hard to understand?

Why worship God ** MrVisible? Because He first loved you.** So much that He gave His only begotton Son to die on Calvary so you may not perish but have everlasting life.
No one loves you more than God. No one knows you better.

138

I think I understand now.

It was necessary and good to have babies smashed apart on rocks in order to make cookies.

I withdraw my objection.

139

What Jersey said.

Amen

140

Methinks you need to go back and read the thread. Read it. Learn it. We’ve gone on for pages now about why it’s so hard to understand, and harder still to accept. Read the thread.

So, even if I don’t believe in God, the fact that he sacrificed a guy in a horrible way means I’m immortal? Go me. (This has also been addressed at length in this thread.)

Here’s a checklist to determine whether you’re in an abusive relationship. Let’s see…

Seems like God has…
[ul]
[li]Ignored your feelings[/li][li]Threatened to hurt you or your family[/li][li]Manipulated you with lies and contradictions[/li][li]Refused to socialize with you[/li][li]Do you have fears of doing the wrong thing or getting in trouble?[/ul][/li]I’d get out of that relationship fast if I was you, hon. And get some counseling.