No guessing necessary. I’ve clearly stated that I don’t believe we can know God loves us, we feel it or believe it.
Players all have awareness of both themselves and their avatar, and they have utter control of some other avatar which is distinct from themselves. They are also expressly aware of this dichotomy, otherwise they would truly experience the suffering endured by their avatar, thus reintroducing the problem of evil and undermining the whole point of the RPG scenario.
I assure you, that’s not the experience I have of life. I have no puppet that I spend my time controlling; I am not a Player. Nobody else around me seems to be manipulating an avatar all the time either (give or take a coworker that plays WoW.) So I would have to say that your POV sounds 100% totally inconsistent with my experience of the world, so I would have to reject it out of hand, specifically because of that inconsistency with my observed reality.
Unless there’s some subtlety I’m missing?
You can tell how much he loves us by how many of his priests bang young boys. Make no mistake his priests love young boys to symbolize god’s love for us (that’s why the Cardinals all condone it). They are god’s emissaries on Earth after all and we just don’t understand because god is waaay smarter then some of us. Pedophilia is just part of god’s divine plan so who are we to question it? We never did until the end of the last century (it must be the work of Satan). In the good old days priests could core out kids to their hearts content if they were caught they’d explain it away with some gibberish about the sun revolving around the Earth or some such. Now they have to go through the inconvenience of being shuffled around the country just to prove god’s love for his people. What a travesty!
That’s a Catholic Church problem, not a Christian-wide one. Guys like Jim Bakker screw women not kids, for example. And even from the viewpoint of someone like me, who regards all religion as evil, stupid, or both, the question of whether or not an imaginary God loves us has little to do with what is obviously a matter of institutional corruption. The fact that it’s a religious institution may make such corruption near-inevitable and worse, but even if he’s real God had nothing to do with it.
Or are you asking why God didn’t intervene ? It’s because he doesn’t exist.
With ¾ of the worlds Christians Roman Catholics are the largest Christian sect in the world (1.5 billion: plenty of boys to love there). The Pope is Catholic for Christ sakes. The fact that other minority Christians sects eschew pedophilia only makes it clear that they know nothing of god’s divine plan. The action of these pseudo Christian sects border on blasphemy, just because god doesn’t exist it doesn’t mean it OK to ignore his love. 
What makes you think raping children isn’t part of god’s plan? He knocked up the “virgin” Mary how old was she when her bun started to rise? Did he marry her …no he pawned his kid off on some other putz just like an episode of “Springer”. We’re just lucky the bible left out all the Gary’s before he settled for a Mary.
Yes, your tongue is firmly in cheek, but come on, argument from popularity? Surely you can do better than that.
look, give the guy some credit at least. He didn’t do it as a swan, the way Zeus did. That feather burn must have really hurt.
Now, if you have something productive to contribute …
Der Trihs pointed out boy luving was only in the catholic church I just wanted to remind him they are the majority of Christians on the planet. The way he worded his statement seemed to imply “It’s only the Catholics (to me). The corruption of the church is god’s doing he placed humans in charge of it why not some hyper ethical creature like angels or hobbits we are talking fantasy right? With all the kneeling and bending over going on during services didn’t it occur to god that something might go awry?
I’m just saying god does work in mysterious (and sometimes felonious) ways!
No he didn’t. He said the big scandal was a Catholic problem, which does not mean only Catholics molest boys. Boy Scout leaders have been known to, so have teachers, so have those from any group or profession that has lots of contact.
In any case, the real scandal for the church was not so much the actions as the coverup, which allowed it to go on.
Largely true, but I think their cover up also probably caused it as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Catholic Church became known in the pedophile underground as a good place to hide, and therefore attracted them.
Wow. This is kinda funny. So you agree with this statement but still felt the need to post
and
and
aren’t you contradicting yourself?
It’s plain to see that although there may be strict rules of logic indivuals can and do have opinions about what adhere’s to those rules and what doesn’t. What “makes no sesne” to me is your motive for these redundant posts that don’t really address the point I made, which you seem to have understood and agreed with.
Let me get this straight. You’re saying it’s not logical because there is not enough known to apply logic? It’s not that it goes against the rules of logic, it’s that it’s beyond the reach of logic?
by your own example,
doesn’t “not knowing the divine perspective” mean what you’ve stated about as not illogical, and thereby make the lead statement false?
I’ve stated it several times pretty clearly. Sorry you missed it.
I agree it is common.
That’s why it’s so important that we look at it and deal with it to find the truth. How we interact with the world around us is based on what is going on in our emotions and thoughts. If we want to make the outside better we need to make the inside better. We need to look at what thoughts and emotions are motivating our actions and deal with them.
I’ve already accpeted the idea that Jesus may not have even existed. His story is just an extended parrable to help demonstrate certain principles. The term God for me represents some transcendent other that we are still trying to discover. Maybe quantum physics will help explain what the phenomonon is that we’ve been calling God all this time. It’s okay.
Those are just interesting ideas to wonder about and discuss and aren’t all that relevent to the choices we make day to day. Ultimately I choose love and truth because I see it as the best way to improve the quality of life, right now, this moment. For myself and hopefully for those I interact with. It’s not about some future reward or goal.
If atheists gathered in groups to sing songs of peace, justice, the brotherhood of man, with a joyful spirit, I’d be right there singing along.
We could sing, “What if God smoked Cannibus? Hit the bong like some of us?”
or “How Great thou aren’t” and I’d be okay with that. 
These last few days it’s occured to me that I may have become more of a diest than I have been. {shrug}
You may have noticed that I’ve been responding a lot to several posters. I’ve already addressed this in a response to Voyager which is why I didn’t elaborate.
When you incorrectly predict what my argument will be in that manner and incorrectly explain my mindset and what I will do as you did in this post to** begbert2** I call that mindreading rather than attacking my pov.
It was more of a statement than an accusation. Refrain from those type of posts and it won’t happen again.
I assume you are calling it as you see it. I will do the same, and that includes commenting on the overall tone of your posts when I feel it’s warrented.
That explains a lot. Your arguments are based on preconcieved notions and you react accordingly. Parsing definitions is an attempt to have clarity in the conversation. I think I made that point pretty clear in this thread but it wasn’t acknowledged.
At no point have I been trying to argue that anyone could logically demonstrate God’s love. I’ve made that quite clear. I agree that non believers are useing logic as a tool. Being imperfect humans they occasionally use it inappropriately. There seems to be a knee jerk reaction of denial when a someone with spiritual beliefs points it out.
It seems to me that if we can’t use feelings and positive experiences as examples of God’s love because it’s beyond the definition of what qualifies for logic then the argument that suffering logically points out that there is no benevolant God also fails.
We can ask “which is more logical and reasonable?” and it seems obvious that concerning the physical objective world and the limits of our knowledge Voyager’s post makes plenty of sense. Still, our lives consist of more than just our relationship with the objective physical world.
You said;
I would point out that you cannot realistically be certain what someone else needs or doesn’t need. I do think people can and do value love and truth without god belief. Great!! I also think that god belief can be the right path for certain people to lead them to valuing love and truth more than dogma. If that is there make up then perhaps they do need to believe in god.
My pov in this thread is just for discussion. A total what if. The beauty {if you’ll pardon my saying so} of the belief system I’ve come to is that it is totally applicable and relevant to the world as we live in it day to day. I feel it improves my quality of life in the here and now and hope it also makes me more of a plus for the people I encounter. If it turns out something follows after this mortal body fails, I think I’m on the right path. If it turns out that nothing follows I still feel I’ve made a more positive contribution than I would have otherwise. Win win.
Sure, sure. Just like how I don’t really believe the RPG scenario. I merely present it as a possible scenario, with the tacit invitation for people to examine it for flaws and inconsistencies that might give someone good reason not to accept it as a possibly real scenario, and for people to examine it and ascertain precisely what is and is not the case, assuming the scenario does in fact describe how things are.
Like, for example, I’m fairly certain that under the RPG, play, movie, and book models, one can determine that God does not love us, for anything resembling the usual definitions of “God”, “love” and “us”. That is what this thread is about, isn’t it? Whether it’s reasonable to believe that God loves us, for something resembling the usual definitions of “God”, “loves”, and “us”?
I’m still not 100% sure what your personal POV is, and I don’t dispute that (whatever it is) it makes you a better person, improves humanity in general, tones your thighs or builds a better mousetrap; all I’m concerned about in this thread is whether a given mindset makes it possible to reasonably believe that God loves humans in general, for usual definitions etc. If your POV does allow that, then it’s interesting and relevent to the discussion. If your POV is a close variant of the RPG, play, movie, or book models, though, then I don’t think your model allows us to reasonably believe such a thing.
Congratulations! Deism is a position I have no response to. It accepts the world and universe as it is, and is very good for those who are uncomfortable with a universe without a purpose. I’m not a deist because of lack of evidence, I can say, but it is really because of lack of emotional need.