kanicbird worships a deity who is, frankly, pure unblinking evil. Who sets up Byzantine schemes for the fun of it, who delights in the suffering of his creations, who deliberately arranged things for half of his creations to be mentally retarded, who permits a tiny minority of his children to be saved because that makes it worse for the rest, who thinks nothing of raining flaming hail to punish them for doing something he forced them to do, who makes bets with his arch-enemy over the conduct of his best servant in full knowledge that, in the course of the wager, the servant’s children will all be murdered, and so forth.
kanicbird lives in a world in which my former alter-ego Fabulous Creature is God.
How would a person know if God called them? What work would they know was what a God wanted? If God knows all things ahead of time then He would know that some would not hear His call, and it would be like punishing a deaf person because they couldn’t hear. Either God doesn’t know every thing or he likes to play games.
Some brides now days keep their own name and in some cases (though rare), the couple decide to keep the woman’s name.
No one can in truth say they “know” what God wants. Just what their own desires tell them.
Of course the Lord of Hosts likes to play games. He commanded David to take a census, then punished him for it. I think what happened there was that David had figured out a way to stay out of trouble, so God manufactured a situation just where he could (a) punish the son of Jesse and (laugh at the look of betrayal on his face.
Sorry about that. But I just had a revelation concerning Kanicbird that I had to share.
The funky shit (there is no other phrase that expresses it so perfectly) that he posts has made me question my own faith a thousand times more than anything any atheist has ever said to me.
To wit- If he really believes that funky shit, how can I be sure that my own faith is not just a similar delusion?
I just cannot believe that people are still trying to argue with him. I mean, I know I was bad for arguing with ivan astikov in the gun threads, but either kanicbird is the most devout fundamentalist on the boards or he is the greatest troll ever. Either way, it’s like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree.
Untrue. From the beginning of time, the Lord of Hosts decided which souls (the vast majority–something like 99.9999999999999% – he would condemn to everlasting torment, and which he would bring into Paradise with him as accomplices.
[Universalist Hat]Nonsense. God is too good to damn anyone, and it is therefore our obligation to behave toward each other befitting our Saved state.[/universalist hat]
The Universalists can never win. At least not the Unitarian Universalists. They’re a bunch of pacifists, and you know who’s afraid of pacifists? The same people who are afraid of the Nobel committee: nobody.
I’m not sure what I’d say if I were wearing my UU hat. I suppose, limiting it to the subject we’re discussing, that most UUs are all about works over faith. Inasmuch as one can say most UUs are about anything.