A Baha’i perspective (just in case you were wondering):
God is sanctified beyond anything we can do. Nothing we can do can harm or help God; nothing we can do will make Him happy or unhappy. The Holy laws aren’t about God, they’re about what’s good for us, and will further our spiritual development. God does not love us because of what we do or don’t do. He loves us because He’s God; we don’t have to do anything to earn that love. That’s called grace.
As far as burning in hell, we believe that hell is a state of being in the afterlife, and being separated from God. We cannot attain the presence of God until we are spiritually perfect. That perfection cannot be achieved in this world, but we can begin the process here, and finish it in the next world. The Holy laws are about beginning that process.
Having said that, I will say this: if the only reason you asked the question was so that you could scoff at anyone who tries to answer, please don’t trouble yourself on my behalf.
The reason for the question was to find if that line of thought had occured to the religious.
If we can do nothing to make him happy or unhappy ,why try. Praying and going to church are then not for god. He could care less.
What is the point then? Try meditation .
However, if you’re a non-believer, then this is all meaningless to you, which is okay by me. I happen to be married to an atheist, and we get along just fine.
If that’s REALLY the reason for the question, you’re the one with an ego problem. You seem to think you’re a genius who’s stumbled onto a great insight nobody else has ever thought of. And now that you’ve revealed this great insight, you expect everyone to slap themselves across the forehead and say, “Whoa… he’s right! Let’s abandon our most cherished beliefs because some guy on a message board thinks they’re silly.”
You greatly overestimate both your originality and your powers of persuasion.
I was about to put some effort into giving you a well-thought out answer, but then I saw this and remembered that you are incapable of comprehending a spiritual person who is not a fundamentalist. I find it amazing that you have participated in so many discussions on this board with the likes of Liberal and cosmosdan, yet still cling to the notion that all theists are cut from the same cloth.
I hope that one day you will stop arguing against this strawman. Until then, I pity your willful ignorance.
I was raised religious. I fell away many years ago. I found inconsistancies in teachings and in the actions of the church that I could not reconcile. I am not flippant about it. I think faith needs to be examined on a personal level very deeply. I could not find answers in the church. I could not believe because I was taught to. I required more and have never come close to finding it.
Most people I know are catholic because that is how they were raised. They get pissed if you try to ask questions, just like many on this board. Serious inquiry is impossible . That is being proven.
Physically humanity may only be a tiny portion of the universe, but spiritually we are, to the best of our knowledge, the only spiritual beings entirely within the universe. Since God is a spiritual entity who transcends the entire physical universe, one would expect him to assign importance based on spiritual characteristics rather than physical ones. Therefore it makes perfect sense that God lavishes far more attention on the human race than on the gazillions of stars and uninhabited planets or the reaches of empty space.
In any case, there’s nothing egotistical about believing the truth.
< snicker > A “truth” with no evidence, that to all appearances we just made up, and just happens to make us out as the pinnacle of the universe. No ego involved there at all.
So, your god is a very wasteful god, creating billions of galaxies with no one home? If you think that, then that is egotistical, since you believe god created the whole shebang just for us. If you don’t think that, and think we are special, then you are egotistical for considering us loved above others.
The third choice is that we’re not special. If you believe Adam and Eve sinned, and had a choice, then maybe somewhere the Fall never happened - call that planet Perelandra. It must have happened, given the plethora of worlds. Maybe the love you think God has for you is the love of a mother for a challenged child. Maybe you shouldn’t feel so proud about it.
Just to go on record, I don’t believe we’re the only intelligent life in this universe. It doesn’t make sense that with all the galaxies, each with billions (sometimes trillions) of stars that there isn’t another sentient race out there somewhere. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only theist who believes that. Does that make me egotistical?
What, exactly, are you accusing God of wasting? I don’t see any waste here, because God’s powers of creation are infinite. Subtracting anything finite from infinity still leaves infinity. Thus, creating billions of uninhabited galaxies doesn’t reduce God’s powers of creations, so none of His power was wasted.
And it would be meaningless to say that He wasted the galaxies, since they would never have existed without them.
(Or consider this analogy. Suppose a computer programmer allocates 500 KB of memory but only uses 10 KB of it. Was the remaining 490 KB wasted?)
I’ll believe that Perelandra “must have happened” when I see it.
In answer to the first sentence, there’s no maybe about it; we know that’s the case. As for not feeling so proud about it, I don’t feel proud about God’s love and I don’t know anyone who does. Likewise, no one feels proud that the sky is blue; it just does.
So why did God create us? For amusement? To increase the amount of love in the universe? To get off on worship? No matter what the billion or so people praying to any particular god do, hundreds of billions across the universe can do better. If humanity is positive in any way, more worlds with other humanities will be more positive.
Sure it would be. More memory draws more power, which wastes electricity. If the program weren’t perfect (and no program is) the extra memory can be used for enhancements. I’m assuming you can’t buy less - if you can then you’ve wasted money. On the other hand, if you can buy less faster memory for the same price, and memory speed is a bottleneck, then you can have a faster system for the same price.
If you believe that the Fall would occur universally on each of a billion worlds, that pretty much proves that God made it impossible for us not to sin, doesn’t it? That says more about god and his flawed creation than it does about us.
That’s nice. Well, who made us challenged? If a mother deliberately smoke, drank and took drugs during pregnancy, and got a damaged child as a result, the love of that mother for that child doesn’t excuse the fact she made the child that way.
I for one welcome serious inquiry and intelligent thought provoking questions.
I’ve had lengthy discussions with several atheists on this board that I’ve found to be challenging and interesting in the way they made me examine my own beliefs.
Sometimes it’s the technique, the tone, and framing, of the questions that make them intriguing enough to answer, or dismiss as a snarky put down that ends with a question mark.
Of course when religious people get snippy and ask about motive of the question instead of respnding to it, they come on as defensive. I ask because I am curious to see how others managed to get through these problems. Because I could not. These are some of the problems that turned me away. I ask to see if you have found a personal or organizational response that satisfies you, or if you hold your fingers in your ears and say god can do whatever he wants. That does not work for me.
Really? When? If need be I can send him my e-mail addy of phone number so that he can get in touch…but I wouldn’t know where. Perhaps with a hit of LSD or whatever hallucinogenic drugs kids are doing today…
Truth is god has not made himself known to us. If that occured we would not be having endless debate and there would be no atheists.
Boink ,ears are open. Accusing me of not listening does not further the debate. I was a catholic once . I have had plenty of religious education and training. It did not answer my questions. If you got answers fire away.
Same here. What gets my goat are smug answers as the one I responded to. Obviously said poster has faith in some god or another. No problem with that. But I’d invite him or her to look-up the meaning of the word faith. Definition number three in particular.
As you said, if it wasn’t for that, there’d be no debating this topic.