In response to an article about the earthquake in Chile, one commenter said:
"God of mercy have mercy on your people."
Why do you need to ask/tell your merciful god to have mercy?
According to normal Christian belief, natural disasters are gods way of punishing us in bulk for our evil sins. You believe in a god who kills as many people as he can whenever he doesn't get his way.
This god does not deserve any worship or respect.
Believers, wake up and smell the pizza. Your "merciful" god is slaughtering people by the hundreds. Your Mormon prophets are doing nothing to protect you from it. Can't you see the huge religious fallacy here?
This god is only merciful when you are groveling at his feet and kissing his ass. No, wait a minute... he kills believers too.
You all worship a sick being who is seriously attention deprived.
13 comments:
Christians believe that every one of us deserve to die and go to hell... God isn't in the business of killing and sending as many people to Hell as He can, but just the opposite... God has been actively involved in attempts to save man from a fate he more than deserves. It's just a matter of perspective.
This video helps clarify the proper perspective, I'd like to hear your thoughts 411.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD1yv4J6ohE
Thanks!
-PaulO
Interesting video. He suggests that if we ask "if god is all powerful, etc, why does he allow bad things to happen?" VS. "Why does god allow me to live today after all the terrible things I did yesterday?"
He is going on the premise that just for being born, just for being human, that we deserve instant death. I believe that is a sick and twisted belief.
If god did create me, then he created me the way I am. I am the way I am. That is NOT a justifiable reason to deserve death. Why would god create me and then tell me that I am a worthless pile of sh** just for existing? I can't and won't believe that. I can't and won't worship a god who tells me that.
I would rather go to hell with my head held high, than to heaven cowering before a dictator.
"The last breath I took, I borrowed it from Him. But I can't give it back. And if you borrow something and don't give it back, then you're stealing..."
Are you kidding me? Now I am a sinner just for breathing?
No thanks. I could never worship a being who turns me into scum just for breathing.
411,
I am a Bible-believing Christian, so that's where I'm coming from on this.
God created people to have a relationship with them. But He didn't want mindless robots to love Him by force. He needed to create a people with free will... With the option to not love Him, to not obey Him.
In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve. God told Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and Evil... But as we know, Adam did eat it. At that point. sin entered into the world and everyone born through the seed of Adam was born into a sin nature.
Now even though we are born into sin, God would not be just in sending people to Hell who did not break his divine law. This takes care of situations where babies or mentally incompetent people die and would not go to hell because they lacked the capacity to break the law in the first place.
But we know that everyone who is of the age of accountability has broken God's divine law in some way. The point isn't to dwell on how unfair it is to send someone to Hell for telling one lie, but to realize that we can't be good on our own. We need Christ to conquer the disease we were born with, the sin nature.
God does not send people to Hell for just being human, but he needs to satisfy His law by applying the penalty of death to the transgression of sin.
God did create you, but not always the way you are. We live in a fallen world. I don't think for a second that God created mentally ill people or murderers or anything other than perfect people... however I know these people exist, so I'm forced to accept that people are the result of a perfect creation plus a fallen world... Resulting in every conceivable outcome we have today.
I'm sure you know the "stealing breathe" comment was more of a joke than anything else ;) God does not send people to Hell for breathing.
"I would rather go to hell with my head held high, than to heaven cowering before a dictator."
I've accepted Christ as my savior and I don't see a dictator at all... What dictator would create beings with free-will in the first place? A dictator wouldn't do everything he could to save you from reaping the consequences for what we've sown... I see a perfect God, more merciful than I could ever have asked for. I will be going to heaven one day, with my head held high, knowing that God sent His own Son to die and pay for my sins.
In the spirit of love,
-PaulO
Wow Paul, It's refreshing to read your comments. You are a completely venom free individual. I respect that, it's rare especially in the christian community to meet someone that spends their time being caring and loving vs. the typical "YOUR GOING TO HELL" Christians I am used to dealing with.
Thank you for being you.
Brian
Paul,
I agree with Brian. You have a very non-threatening approach and I feel that real understanding and progress is being made here.
I can't help but think how much a forbidden-fruit-that-if-you-eat-it-will-allow-sin-and-evil-to-enter-the-world sounds just like a fairy tale. In fact, it's not dissimilar to Pandora's Box.
And even though we might have our free agency, our only two choices are to 1) submit to god, or 2) go to hell. It might not be a dictatorship so to speak but it does look a lot like blackmail.
The whole fall of Adam, to me, is just laughable. If god didn't want them to take the fruit, why did he put it right in front of them? If he wanted man to live in a continual state of perfectness, why did he even bring the fruit into the picture in the first place?
It seems to be nothing more than a clever story.
It's amazing to me that we live in a time where we can land a man on the moon and yet, at the same time, believe in magical fruit and other crazy stuff.
I appreciate that guys,
From my experience of both of you I can say the same thing, that goes for Seth R. as well. I feel like I've met a great bunch of people who, as you said, are starting to make some real progress! That makes me extremely grateful.
I hope I understand where you're coming from 411, I've never been an atheist, but I've had plenty of friends who were... Of course Atheists come in as many flavors as any other world-view so I won't assume to know what or how you believe.
I agree it does sound a lot like a fairy-tale to me too! But the reason I believe it's not is in part, because I believe the Bible to be God's Word. As well as the awe I have for how perfect this "fairy-tale" plays out :)
The two contentions I got from your last response were:
1)God gave us free will to make a choice with only 1 real option.
2) Why make failure so available to man?
Both of these are excellent points... points more believers should be asking themselves, instead of hiding from the scary answers ;)
My understanding of these two questions is that they hinge together. In order for God to have a "meaningful" relationship with one of His creation, it needed to be up to the creation to love Him. He could have put the tree under lock-down at the bottom of the ocean in a self-sustaining bubble and told Adam that it was there but to not eat of it, but then it wouldn't have been a viable option either. God would only know if Adam truly loved him if the tree was within arms reach. Otherwise Adam's love for God would have been circumstantial.
This brings us right to the second (first) question about even though God gives a choice, the choice is so completely bogus, that we're forced to only choose one. That's true, but the brilliance of the scenario is that even though we could look at the options on paper and choose Eternal Life every time, that's exactly the opposite of what we do in life, day-to-day... Our Spirit wants to glorify God and live with Him forever, but our carnality (Mind Body Will and Emotions) are against God. So we see that there are two choices, two real choices, but while you may think the only real choice is Heaven, you are choosing the only real choice to be Hell. This paradox in itself seems more than any fairy-tale I've ever read.
Being a Christian, or Mormon isn't easy... In fact it may be some of the hardest walks in life, but on paper, we know it to be the only "real" option we have... Or we could spend our short 70-80 (969) years on Earth doing what we want for a reward that we don't think is real.
I can't see any other way God could have done it, or been as gracious as the Christian account. That being said, I do not accept it on merit alone, the truth could be that a horrible God created us and only wants to kill us, if I were to find that out I would believe it. I wouldn't be happy, but I can't escape truth.
-PaulO
Truth is a hard thing to escape.
All of my life, I believed the story just as it was told. I defended it. I debated it. I never questioned it.
Then I got to a point where I had to ask myself if I believed because I really believed, or because everyone around me expected me to.
When I realized that I am atheist, it was when I answered all those questions honestly. Not what I wanted them to be, but what what they really were. For example:
Can a virgin be pregnant?
Can anyone walk on water?
Can dead people come back to life?
If I had answered all these questions before, they all would have been "yes". But once I started being honest with myself, I realized that all the answers are "no".
We know what it takes for a woman to become pregnant. And since we understand, on a cellular level, the mechanics of reproduction, the way the Bible describes the conception of Christ can't possibly be true.
The same is true with the physics of walking on water.
To be an atheist is just to be completely honest with yourself.
I completely appreciate your approach, I wholeheartedly agree that we should question our beliefs.
But just to be fair, I believe I'm being honest with myself as well... I don't know Seth or Brain well enough, but would hope and believe they are honest with themselves as well. So atheists aren't the only ones who are searching for truth and being true to themselves.
On a lighter note I thought it would be humorous to give plausible naturalistic answers to your three questions:
Can a virgin be pregnant?(In Vitro)
Can anyone walk on water? (Ice)
Can dead people come back to life?(happens more often than you think)
Now I know all three of those answers do not apply when tried against the biblical accounts, so your logic is still sound... as long as you rely solely on "naturalistic" possibilities.
The main question I had to confront is "Should I believe in the supernatural?" In investigating this question, I've learned that every "World-view" I've ever learned of incorporates supernatural in one way or another... In this case, Atheism claims that there is no God. But at the same time they have to account for existence. How did matter come from non-matter, or if matter is "eternal" how long did it take for us to get here today, having presumably crossed an infinite amount of time (which is impossible). Or if time came into existence at some point, then how, and more importantly, when?
When I considered leaving my "fairy-tale" religion, I didn't want to join another fairy-tale you know? :) Right now, the best answer for creation I get from atheists is "We don't know". So my response is that I would rather seek out the most reasonable fairy-tale with the most supportive evidence to base my world-view on.
I believe Christianity is true, I believe there are many false beliefs held by many Christians, but that I'm at least on the right road, the right path to get me closer to the truth I seek.
Respectfully,
-PaulO
Many people view atheism as a view point with no happy ending. If there is no god, then how did the universe come to exist? How did life come to exist? What is the purpose of life?
The easy way to answer is to say that god did it. But to me, that seems like a cheap answer. Any time we "don't know", just give god the credit.
I've written about this before, but what we take for granted today, people living 1000 years ago would have viewed as supernatural.
For example, Moses produces water from a rock for the Israelites. But now days, water comes right out of the walls of our homes upon demand. What was once a miracle, is now common place.
People used bed pans to warm their beds on cold nights. Now, we flip a switch and the bed gets warm and stays warm all night.
Even the most wealthy used to have to travel across bumpy roads and stormy seas. Now, we can cruise along the ground at 80 MPH and, if we have a really long distance to travel, we just take an airplane. The most common people in our society enjoy luxuries that even the most wealthy could not even imagine.
What is my point? Progress. What we didn't know yesterday, we know today. What we don't know today, we may know tomorrow.
Science has not yet pinpointed the exact origin of life. But I believe that someday it will be common knowledge.
Many atheists have to just accept the answer of "I don't know". There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, an atheist doesn't have to be right or wrong. If I am wrong, then show me so that I can improve my understanding.
While we are all on a quest for truth, the atheist viewpoint is that 'right now we don't know so I'll leave it at that'. An atheist would rather admit that "I don't know" than to just choose the best fairy tale.
"God did it" in and of itself is a cop out, agreed. If you see a watch and ask how it was made, then some dogmatic watchman's apprentice says "A watchmaker made it, and that's the end of it."... It wouldn't really do the watchman, the watch, the apprentice, or the inquisitive searcher any good at all.
I also agree emphatically with your point on progress and technology, I can't help but be reminded of an episode of "Bewitched" where the husband is sent back in time and they accuse him of being a witch simply because he used a pen that didn't need to be dipped in ink... ;)
One can't really argue for or against "I don't know"s but I just want to illustrate the point I'm trying to make regarding the character of the questions being asked:
There are things that do not currently exist, inventions, discoveries not yet known. But if we try and project ourselves into the future, there are things we can imagine, things we can decide are probable, or improbable... For instance:
-A spacecraft that can move at or beyond the speed of light: I would say this is very likely to be possible, we just keep improving our technology and we can achieve this.
-Time Travel: This one is tricky, but I wouldn't place it outside of the realm of possibility.
-Artificial Intelligence (Matrix-like): Very possible.
-Creating matter from non-matter: I have no reason to believe this is or ever will be possible.
-Ending or Beginning Time: Maybe, but probably not.
Creating life from non-life: I think AI will be the closest we can come to achieving that.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that "I don't know" is ok, it's valid, there are so many things that I don't know about, even things I don't know I don't know yet, I think... ;)
But it's sounds more and more like someone who accepts a faith based on reason. There's a point where the reason and evidence stops... That's when faith kicks in. So why do you personally prefer to place your faith in atheism instead of a seemingly endless sea of religions ;) (Yes it's supposed to sound that ironic)
I don't want to put my faith in the best fairy-tale, but every walk of life requires supernatural, as well as faith.
I don't think science will ever be able to rationalize creation aside from the need of an outside "instigator", or some form of ID. All you and I can do on this point is speculate, but I hope I'm not alone in seeing the apparent impossibility of rationalizing creating something from nothing... that's all :)
I'm a bit tired at the moment, please forgive any lapses in judgement or presentation, I should have gone to bed an hour ago :P
Running out of valedictions,
-PaulO
"...every walk of life requires supernatural, as well as faith."
Can you give me some examples?
Haha, well it is a universal statement, so we can't prove it by listing where it's right. Universal statements can be disproven with just one example of the contrary.
I picked on Atheism in particular because it's most commonly preferred by those who reject the supernatural. That's why I brought up the problem of creating something from nothing... Even if someone can create something from nothing you wold still have an instigator, and seeing as the "Something" we are referring to is the beginning of the universe, that instigator would have to be supernatural. This all goes without saying that no one could make something out of nothing, for nothing would be used... therefore no one made it ;) The only way this could happen is if we created some sort of space with nothing in it and then waited for a molecule to just appear without any instigation... But once that happens people wouldn't know the "cause" or they would say it was "uncaused"...
Lol, this is all getting really deep but let's take a look at the world's top religions and see which doesn't necessitate supernatural.
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
I'm not a scholar of religions, so if you do find one that doesn't include supernatural or faith I would be more than happy to retract my previous statement (And possibly spend a lot of time researching the world-view in question)
cheers,
-PaulO
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