Hah. Obviously you have never had this video inflicted upon you almost daily by your toddler-in-training. It’s Potty Time is Evil in its purest form–Hell itself in a convenient box format.
Diogenes, maybe that’s what the Crucifixion was all about- Yahweh getting the smackdown & when He recovered three days later, He learned His lesson & has been much nicer & no less mysterious ever since.
G
Ha! You’ll debate yourself into being a Christian yet!
Well… since we are atheists… many of us havent read much of the Bible or given it much attention for a good while… so many wouldnt know much about the “God” of the Bible.
Why does it have to be that specific god too ?
Since no one answered your question I will attempt to do so:
If God exists and presents himself… besides seriously doubting it first… I would be pretty happy actually. It would mean that the horrible bloodshed, disaster and total fuck up that is Earth has some reason or at worse SOMEONE responsible for it.
It would redeem humankind and me of course from fucking up Earth. God did it for us... for his reasons.
Since I havent robbed, maimed, killed or done anything bad I would go to heaven probably too... nice... if it existed of course. So in the end not much difference I suposse.
Paraphrasing from Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
God exists on faith, if you have faith he exists then he does. Now if you can prove that God exists then he won’t. By definition you can’t have faith with proof. Having faith means you belive in something you can’t prove. Now you have proof that God exists so now nobody can have faith that he exists, and because God only exists on faith he can no longer exist.
So if you can prove to me God exists, then I don’t have to worry because he dosen’t.
I love Doglas Adams for making the hard things in life so easy.
And God vanished in a puff of logic.
Your deduction does not follow from your premises. The Universe could be contradictory and illogical. Logic could be faulty in it’s essence. God who created the Universe and Logic could have created them in any way he pleases, we have no authority to require human inconsistency of the diety or his creations. We should be very grateful for the consistency that does exist.
It might be easier to teach calculus and quantum mechanics to a dog than to teach a human to understand as God understands.
Also
For the Bible to be accurate it would take a Miracle. But Miracles are just what God does. So there is no such problem. Well, it isn’t the same problem you’ve posited. There are still disputations as to which text is the inerrant text. But the existance of an inerrant text is not a problem for the suitably religious.
Also, to AndrewT who quoted Epicurus. The Bible does say that God does Evil to the Children of Israel (I can’t find the exact citation). Good and Evil are both creations of God. Yet somehow both are “Good” in some sense that is not perceptible to humanity. One theory is that evil must be a genuine option in order for goodness to be real goodness.
One of the problems is that Goodness in a religious context is usually defined as God’s will, or as obeying God’s commands. Under the definition of God’s will, everything that happens is somehow good, and under the definition of obedience, God can be neither good nor evil.
There is no question among most Judeo-Christian types that hurricanes, earthquakes, diseases, infections, arthritis, crime, punishment, pain, addiction, fire, flood, famine, plague, beestings, heart attacks, cancer, software bugs and the common cold are the creation of God, and therefore in some sense Good. Even if they are also in some sense bad.
I would argue-YES!
And I’ll tell you why:in Genesis, God decides NOT to obliterate the human race…he tells Noah that he willnever again cause a great flood.
In the NT, God has decided that the old (Hebrew) Law is no longer necessary…he also lets slip that his followers need not expect any more (direct) communication from him.
So (to recap): God has indeed changed his mind; and he has restored (in a limited way), our Adamic pre-eminence over nature!
And, he has (apparently) left us alone, free to choose himor not!
I don’t see why we should complain about his course of action!
**
If this were the case then the whole discussion is pointless because we can know nothing.The only reason we can know anything about our universe is because it has constraints/limitations.
**
That makes absolutely no sense.Why would you bother posting such a thing at a message board if you cannot be sure whether you were actually typing a message or stepping on ducks?Trying to rationalize how rationality may not be possible or trying to make a logically consistent argument that logic may not work will not get you far.
**
The thing is, we CAN teach and understand mathematics adn physics.To equate an inability to understand God with difficulty in understanding QM, you must first make the case that God himself is likely.We have no reason to think so.
**
Allegedly.We have no more reason to assume this to be true than we have to assume that Ogres snatch children from their beds and eat them.This is a circular argument.
**
What you mean to say is that anyone predisposed to believe a given text is inerrant can find evidence to support this conviction and use bizarre rationalizations and twists of logic to keep doubt at bay.
**
Then you have painted yourself into a corner because according to the above rationale, “evil” is actually “good”.Hence there is no such thing as evil adn anything anyone does is actually good(child molestation, rape, murder etc.).
then again, we should not seek to prevent crime or cure disease since these things are necessary to our existence.The child rapist as as good as the pastor because they both provide valuable life lessons or “goodness”.
Then you need to do some research on the job of a scribe, and how much weight they put on copying the manuscripts, as well as see how the manuscripts found with the dead sea scrolls compared to the ones we have today. To know how religious they were would help understand why I believe this quote is false.
As for evil, I see now that the fight against ignorance takes so long, because no one plays on the same field.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? (Epicurus)
Why does God allow evil men and women to live? Should He instead kill them before they do evil deeds? Should He judge murderers and rapists now? What about thieves and liars, adulterers, fornicators, those who lust, and those who hate? If God judged evil today, all unconverted men and women would perish under His wrath. Thank God that He is patiently waiting for them to turn to the Savior and be saved from His terrible wrath.
As for the rabbit, this statement is made in Leviticus 11:6, where the Hebrew literally means “raises up what has been swallowed.” The rabbit does re-eat partially digested fecal pellets that come from a special pouch called the caecum. Bacteria in these pellets enrich the diet and provide nutrients to aid digestion. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Some lagomorphs [rabbits and hares] are capable of re-ingesting moist and nutritionally rich fecal pellets, a practice considered comparable to cud-chewing in ruminants …The upper tooth rows are more widely separated than the lower rows, and chewing is done with a transverse movement.”
And you worship this God? Out of fear? Nice.
A rabbit is not a ruminant, it just looks like it chews its cud. The author of Leviticus got it wrong. The Bible is not inerrant.
Nice try though.
The God of the Bible is an abomination. Be He the true God or be He not, He is an abomination. May he burn in His own Hell!
Nope, not out of fear. I’m thankful that I don’t have to pay the price for my sin. And it looks like Encyclopedia Britannica got it wrong too, but please give me a cite for where rabbits were called ruminant. Thanks.
BrainGlutton- see what I mean about the playing field with an argument like that?
Lev 11:6 The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is unclean for you.
All animals that chew their cud are ruminants. Rabbits chew their cud (according to the Bible), therefore, rabbits are ruminants.
As usual when debating fundamentalists, you wish to ignore the commonly understood meaning of the term, how it is used in every other instance, and say that it doesn’t count for rabbits. The meaning of the word suddenly, miraculously changes when we talk about rabbits.
Sheesh.
Just for the record, I was taught 30 years ago, when reference to this stuff came up, that the beast to which that passage makes reference, though rendered “coney” (=rabbit) in the KJV and hence translated rabbit in some versions, was in fact the hyrax (also called coney). Unfortunately, the hyrax is not a ruminant either, though one of its habits is to chew in a way reminiscent of a ruminant chewing its cud.
However, the questions “Is the Bibl literally true and inerrant?” and “Is there a real entity which corresponds more or less to the God it describes?” are obviously two distinct questions. “Finding Bible Errors for Fun and No Profit” is an interesting exercise; any number can play. But it’s not addressing the OP.
True enough, I’d rather use the originally understood meaning of the term. Got me there.
They are corollaries. The Bible is purported to be the word of a perfect God. If it is imperfect, then its author – God – is also imperfect, therefore fundamentally at odds with how he is described in the Bible. Nobody will worship a buffoon who cannot properfly classify creatures he supposedly created.
Ah, you’re an expert on ancient Hebrew now, eh? Cite please.
From the Desk of the Almighty
- I’m eternal, do you have any idea how long one of my “days” lasts? What you think I’m on a 24hr cycle?
- Cud is just my way of saying “carrot”. I’m God, I can do that.
- I just started the ball rolling, I don’t know where or if it’s going to stop or how or if it’s going to get there.
- That’s her story and she’s sticking to it. Do you know what they did to adulturous women in that day and age?
- That story is obviously just humanity’s first and somewhat awkward attemt to explain the world around them. Jeez, try to develop some perspective. I’ve never even read that book.
- What hell?
;j
I’m going to try to get back to the intent of the OP: What if the Bible was true. That isn’t the question that was posed, but it’s what the OP’s elaboration was getting at.
I see only two possibilities. Either we would be forced to conclude that the Bible really is as inconsistent as it appears, or that our yardstick for consistency is incorrect.
If the latter is true, then our logic is useless to us. If we cannot use our logic to answer questions, or to ask them, we are in a comletely helpless position. All thoughts and actions are futile, including being saved through Christ.
If, on the other hand, the Bible is truly inconsistent, then consistency has no real value in this world. If this is the case, then once again all thoughts and actions are futile.
There is an apparent third option, that the gyrations performed to make everything appear consistent have merit, and that the cultural selectivity that stresses certain passages of the Bible while ignoring others is valid. In that case, we would all be compelled to believe what the apologists have to say. I say this is an apparent option, because really, logic is once again thrown out the window, and we’re back where we started.