THEISTS — Think your god can beat up on our logic? Let NEOWOLF and our other bloggers hear and attack your assertions. No holds barred, but be civil and have fun.
THEISTS — Think your god can beat up on our logic? Let NEOWOLF and our other bloggers hear and attack your assertions. No holds barred, but be civil and have fun.
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Well let me start off by saying that I don’t know what gawd. So would somebody please give me an operational definition of gawd so that I can determine for myself that which is gawd and that which is not gawd.
what gawd -> what gawd is
What,
Don’t forget to ask them to also reconcile their operational definition of their God with the definition of “exist”.
That’ll make their noodle bake.
Thanks for opening the thread at my request. My focus was on the Judeo Christian god because that has been the focus of this website, the influence of Christian fundamentalists trying to make inroads into our government and into our lives. I made a challenge to JCC, because he insists on bringing his scriptures into inteligent debates, to come to a seperate thread where we could not bore free thinkers with irrelevent issues and have it out. JCC thinks that his bible is the word of the creator of this universe, handed down to us by imperfect humans, chosen by his god, but delivered in perfect form, so that every word can be trusted, and assumed to be the ultimate authority. My intent, though I do pity him, because at one time in my life I labored under an identical brainwash, is to use his bible to indict his god, stipulating the possibility of his existence for the purpose of smashing such an assumption. And to prove, even if he was real, that he is a hideous, self absorbed mass murderer, that not only does not deserve our worship, but deserves our distain.
Like I said, this is not free thinker material. It’s more like an exorcism.
NeoWolfe
JCC has already heard everyone of those arguments at one time or another, I’d hazard. S/he has never had to admit defeat on any single point, because as soon as it starts to go badly, s/he moves the goalposts or moves on to another point.
By keeping the assumed conclusion clearly in mind, s/he need not consider any contrary evidence you present as being valid, so good luck with that.
Call me a cynic, if you will. Religious apologists are that one black spot on the sunny meadow of my atheistic life.
Well, let’s get started.
In the beginning, Moses created God. That turned out well, because God turned right around and picked Moses because “he was the humblest of all men.”
And God created the heavens and the earth. But, in his rush, heavens and the earth were created before “light”. No surprise that “he saw it was good” when he finally got around to it, but Moses in HIS haste forgot to tell god to create dinosaurs and then wipe them out in global catastophe. But, it’s okay, god had it covered. He’s an extremely intuitive “girl friday”. Then god created the perfect man. Seperate from all other animals that lived on earth, he was born to live FOREVER!!! He was just like the angels, created perfect. The only thing that could go wrong is to make a single imperfect decision. Enter, “Eve”, she also perfect, wish I had a flick of that girl.
Then enter Satan, another perfect being, an angel. He tells Eve, “I hear you can eat of any tree but that one.” She says “yup”. Satan says god lied to her, “In the day of your eating of it, you positively will NOT die, but will become like god knowing good and bad.” A few verses later as Adam and Eve are hiding in shame, the angels say to god, “look at them, they have become like us, knowing good and bad.” And guess what, Adam lived to age nine hundred. So who was the real liar in the garden? But that is a stupid bible inside a bible question. Here’s the real one. If Satan was a perfect being, how did HE make an imperfect decision? How was he seduced by pride, or envy of god’s kingdom. And more important than that, if sin (like pride, or envy) killed all of humanity, why didn’t it kill Satan?
NeoWolfe
NeoWolfe
Don’t care. I still don’t know what a gawd is.
What,
I told you, this is not for free thinkers. It’s nonsense directed at a drone. Look in if you’re curious, but don’t look for profound revelations.
NeoWolfe
gawd = perpetual motion
NeoWolfe,
In many Christian sects, angels and humans are separated by humans having the “gift” of free will and angels lacking it.
My question becomes: if angels lack free will, i.e. the ability to decide a course of action, and Satan was an angel, according to their own belief set wouldn’t Satan have tempted Adam based on the will of God?
Further more, if Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil before eating the fruit, how would they have known that “disobeying God” by eating from the tree was a bad thing to do?
Seems like God set up humanity to fail right from the start. All of these observations come directly out of the bible might I add, save for the nature of angels. Admittedly, not all sects believe the same mythos regarding the nature of angels. Regardless, the second question still remains Christologically valid.
Your thoughts?
agnostks,
A valid point as well. But, most Christian religious sects consider that all living creation has free will. Often translated “free moral agents.” But, I asked a couple of JW’s one day at my door, If I built a car that could drive itself, and on one of its trial runs it drove up on a sidewalk and killed several pedestrians, would I bare any responsibity? The lady said yes, you would be “bloodguilty”. I asked, “Then why does god get off the hook for creating Satan?” They wished me a good day and left.
But, with that aside, the Bible says “the wages of sin is death.” My point was that if that is true, Satan, after committing the sin of pride, then the sin of envy, then the sin of lying, and mass murder to this day, why is he still walking around? Shouldn’t he be pushing up hell daisies?
And today, I wanted to widen the scope of discussion, while staying in Genesis, to the flood. Genesis says god came to regret having created man, because men were marrying women, and women being given in marriage, and that they had forgotten about him. They quit worshipping him. Note, if god is the loving father jesus said he was, what the hell use would “worship” be to him? I love my kids, but I can’t quite relate to a desire to be worshipped. I would particularly be humble on the subject if I had just stood by and let one of their older sibling sentence them all to slow death. But, the almighty didn’t sweep away humanity in the heat of passion, he made a calculated plan to murder every man, woman, and child on the planet except for his “favorite son”, Noah, who remembered god, the rest of the family got a free pass. Then the family collected from two to seven specimens from every land animal species on the planet. Damn, though, Moses forget to tell god about the other continents he created, and then things got dicy. God forget to launch an armada of ships to all the other continents to collect the animals who lived there. So, after the flood, the pitiful animal population of Mesopatmia had to repopulate the world across oceans and polar caps and become millions of entirely different species again. OH WAIT!!! I forgot!!! On the seventh day god rested, and did no further creating. So I guess those creatures must have naturely evolved. Damn, I said the E word. And according to bible chonology, the flood occurred four thousand years ago. That would be some high speed evolution.
Satan killed humanity, god violently murders not only humanity, but animal kind, and let’s get honest about how many plants would survive such an event. He left no doubt before the universe, a loving father is a much more proficient sociopathic killer than some rogue angel wannabe.
NeoWolfe
YOU are an ATHEIST
Make no mistake!
At 4:30 this foggy morning with dawn breaking while I jogged up and down the hills, it occurred to me that the world is ?atheist? (boing!). An atheist is one who doesn?t believe in God, but how about those who believe in their own illusion of what they call God? To believe in something that isn?t there as one believes it to be, is really no different than in one who denies it. Duh!
That called ?God? by any name, exists, but not as the faulty imagination perceives it to be. In fact, to even question or to believe, is archaic. Why believe that life exists when it?s obvious! No one ponders or believes in that! Is God separate from life or life separate from God or are they one and the same? Is death not transcending to another life form rather than to ?nothing??
The earth has been pummeled with wars and strife because humans don?t see the obvious God all around but instead choose to conjure up images of a false God and insist that ?they know?. To believe is to doubt. To doubt is to not know. To claim
to know is likely also a mental illusion to satisfy the fears of death and meaninglessness. ?Seek and ye shall find?, however, better yet, stop and witness as no seeking is necessary for that which need not be sought.
There is no Heaven/Hell/God as the minds of humanity, with its infinite cultures and religions, conjure up. Life, love, god is a moving river seeming to defy logic and yet seeming very logical to the questioning mind. Seeing is to experience and we all are having that experience moment to moment. Each one attracts life with awareness or the lack thereof as is chosen and yet life has it?s own choices beyond the ego of man.
To ?let go? and be free of ?mental constructs? that create false comfort, allows truth to come out of the fog. Is there anything wrong being an atheist? Or – is a question even appropriate? (stream of consciousness)
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Copyright July 8. 2008
Cain
Did you vote for BushCo. Dolt.
Neo…
I’ll be glad to discuss your questions so long as it doesn’t deteriorat into name calling and rants…
One foundational question I’ll need to have answered first…
Do you believe the universe had a beginning or is it eternal?
Cain,
You think you know me but you don’t. I am not an atheist. I am an agnostic. Just because I hate the fraud of religion has nothing to do with whether or not I can leave my mind open to the existence of a designing consciousness. Whether it’s the embodiment of the force of life, or some etherial being, or if it doesn’t exist, one thing is for sure, if the creator exists he doesn’t give a damn. He set circumstances in motion and sits back entertaining himself watching universal chaos unfold. Volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, he couldn’t care less.
But, I have to say that your post was extremely hard to understand. It was kinda like explaining what it’s like to drop acid. And my last post was not about explaining the universe, it was about blowing Christian fundamentalists out of the water. If you feel you’ve made a connection with the Supreme Being and aquired special understanding, start a church of your own. I understand the salary is outstanding, and tax free.
NeoWolfe
Phreedom (that was respectful wouln’t you say?)
You want me to express an opinion as to whether or not space and time actually expanded out of the epicenter of the big bang, or if time always existed. I ask you on which subject the answer would become, even vaguely relevent?
NeoWolfe
Comment from: neowolfe
It’s extremely relevent. It forms the starting point.
It’s a simple question. Do you believe the universe(time)is eternal or did it have a beginning?
I know you’d prefer to start with Genesis, but that would ignore one of the foundational blocks of how an individual forms their belief system…
The Exodus,
There was Abraham, the one to whom the land was promised by god (hence the “promised land”), there was Isaac, the miracle son, and his son Jacob, also called Israel. He had twelve sons. One of the brothers, Joseph, was sold by his own brothers to slave traders, after faking his death for their father’s benefit, and they sold him as a slave into Egypt. Through his ability to interpret dreams he became important in Egypt, and when famine struck up north, the family had a chance reunion. Realizing that Joseph was huge in Egypt, the whole family moved there. That’s how Israelli’s came to Egypt. Generations later, then came MOSES, THE INVENTER OF GOD, demanding freedom from the slavery that a later monarch had placed upon the race. Enter the “Ten Plagues”. god devasted the nation with things like locust swarms that ate all their crops, deprived them of drinking water, etc., and each time the bible says that god hardened Phoroahs heart to deny request to “set my people free”. In other words, god was making an example out of them, making a point, and while he was manipulating their ruthless leader, the general population are the ones who suffered. But, the big one is the tenth plague, when god sent his avenging angel through Egypt and killed every first born son of the Egyptians, including that of Pharoah. Again, the loving father shows his true colors. Deliberately provoke a confrontation, and then murder at will. Satan is a wannabe.
NeoWolfe
Is there a question in there?
Or are you expressing your frustration of not understanding?
phreedom,
You explained to me that YOU think it’s extremely relevent, but, your explanation of how the answer to that question hinges on anything about belief systems is so vague I wouldn’t know how to answer. How does the answer to that question become a hingepoint on anything we have talked about on this thread, or any other? That’s what you DON’T do is back you side up with reason.
NeoWolfe
Actually you’ve already answered it.
If one believes the universe is eternal, then that neutralizes the argument of who made “God”, because the same question can be used about the universe.
It’s clear that the universe had a beginning. If one has the courage to search for answers, then they must be willing to ask the difficult questions of who or what started the universe. For what purpose? And why are some of the answers so difficult to understand…
Neo…did you run out of things to get angry about?
Phreedumb,
No, I was barely started. But, one, I started working ten hour days an hour and a half away from home, and somehow when the day was done, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report had more appeal than throwing pearls before mental swine.
I requested this thread so that the occasional religious person that drifts in and out of this website would have a place to come and answer the tough questions. They have been conspicuously absent.
But, since we’re all here, let’s look at the next installment of, as you put it, my anger.
After Yahweh, murdered countless Egyptians (according to the story) and Moses led them out of Egypt, Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the ten commandments. He was gone so long that the Isrealites gave him up for dead. So they took all their gold and crafted an image of a calf to be their new god. When Moses returned and discovered what they were up to, the earth opened up and swallowed twenty thousand Israelites. Most loving fathers, at worst, spank their kids when they do something stupid. Yahweh, though, has a bloodlust, a need to use lethal force to make a point. Does he want our love, or does he need our fear?
Upon arrival at the borders of Palestine, Moses sent in twelve spies. My question would be why? Would the spies see something that god did not know? Ten returned with bad news, the land was occupied by giants, two returned with recommendation to attack now. Well, god was so pissed by those ten faithless spies, he cursed the entire nation of Israelites to wander for forty years in the wilderness. I call “bullshit”!!! Despite their numbers, a ragtag band of construction laborers were not ready to take on fortified cities protected by well armed and trained military forces. Two generations of having babies and raising them as killers, perfecting technology to forge weapons and design seige engines, could change the whole dynamic. Palestine was about to be taken by genocidal policy, scorched earth stradegy in it’s purest form.
Here’s my question: On one hand we have the creator of the universe, who at will has the ability to flood the entire planet, or open up the earth to swallow thousands, or slaughter the first born sons of an entire nation, and on the other we have tribes of people who have never heard of “Yahweh”, “Jehovah”, “I Am What I Am”. The option existed for this omnipotent being to send ahead a few angels to cause a set of circustances, such as crop failure, livestock disease, irrefusable opportunity elsewhere, to leave the land of milk and honey voluntarily. But, no!!! He decided instead to send the Isrealites on a campaign of military genocide, looting, pillaging, and slavery.
Please, indulge me, and explain this conduct by this loving father figure who sent us Jesus to save us from something we had nothing to do with.
NeoWolfe