God is responsible for everything???

according to many people of religious faith God tends to be the one who is causing everything to happen (well at least everything ‘good’ that happens), when someone gets over a serious illness OH YEAH GOD HEALED ME!!! or when someone gets shot in the head, WAIT…no, God didnt do that one right?
so did God not create retarded people and handicapped people either? did he just create the normal, happy people? Yehah right God doesnt cause the bad things he just the one who fixes them right? well why did he create them in the first place? oh he didnt humans did? well he created humans didnt he? oh yeah but he wasnt the one who tempted Eve to eat the apple or some BULLSHIT??? he is the pre-determiner who decides all i thought!!!
doesnt make one bit of sense in any way whatsoever.

I used to believe in God, was raised a Catholic, but why would God take my 1-year old little sister into the depths of my pool and never give her back. that happened when i was in 8 years old.

bout 4 years later i realized the God people describe to me would never do that. that is when i first stopped believing in God.

but eventually i figured that doesnt actually disprove that God exists in anyway. If God exist then he would just be very different then they describe him in religious traditions. God would have to be more like a clockmaker. who watches this clock tick away but does not interfere.

still even with that assumption i detach myself from belief in God.
not angry at God (as some people would tell me I am) because i dont believe that there is a God.

it’s funny there is an alcoholics anonymous but not a godaholics anonymous.

Each version of god takes different refuting to disprove. The christian god cannot be infinitely benevolent or wise if he justifies burning those who disbelieve into the lake of fire for eternity. (the greatest, unforgiveable sin is to doubt the holy spirit. which funnily enough is also the case for Islam, mormonism and judaism.)

the jewish god, can’t be real because god wouldn’t choose “one people over any others”… this would certainly mean that god is the biggest bigot in the universe, and only cares about their outcome…

The Islam god can’t be real, because an all loving god, wouldn’t choose Mohammed the conqueror as his prophet. An all loving god wouldn’t demand to not befriend christians and jews. (etc, etc.)

What makes these three gods (and those of hinduism) any more real than Zeus, Odin, Thor, Osiris, and Ra?

What makes Jesus more real than Dionysus, Mithras, or Marduk?

one thing. Simply because we say so. There is no more proof for Jesus than there is for any mythic hero. There is no more proof that any god exists more than any other god. When you have three (or more) religions all claiming that they have the divine truth, either one of them is right or all of them are wrong. Given common sense and a reasonable look at all of these beliefs and how they compare to long dead beliefs… Isn’t it more likely that god isn’t like what they are describing? That they don’t have an exclusive “righteous” path to god?

scythekain, hi again.
An interesting post.

I think you miss the point about the middle-eastern monotheistic religions. When you get down to it, they share the same morality and a similar view of God. Pagan religions might have an element of this, but aren’t their gods more like exalted heroes, fighting giants and such?

I’m sorry to hear about your sister, Mr Kebop. These things happen. But think that she is now – with her childhood inocense – most likely in heaven with the Lord. Why her and not another, I don’t know. But our acceptance of God’s will can hope-fully bring us closer to our Father in Heaven. God bless.

Mr. Kebop,

What would be the purpose of a universe without free will, totally predetermined to happen in a nice, neat, convenient way by some master programmer? What use for humans? What room for creativity? What reason for us to experience anything? I’m not using this as an argument for God’s existence. I’m just suggesting that if we leave behind our childish notions of an anthropomorphic God, and consider other possibilities and definitions of the concept, the universe begins to look a lot more interesting.

Jerry,

that will always lead us to the same place.

[i]my god determines everything that I do, then I am not free…

my god let me free to do whatever I want, therefore he is better than yours…[/i]

how would it be possible to conciliate god’s existence with freedom of the will, i.e, the freedom of the will of the ones who believe in him, remains a mystery…

In short, freedom is spirit; and spirit is of and for God. So following God IS freedom, and anything else is material entanglements.

Freedom is living according to the truth – it is the truth which sets free.

a being who you’re obliged to follow in order to achieve freedom…sets you free?

wonderfully understandable.

I agree with Jerry: “I’m just suggesting that if we leave behind our childish notions of an anthropomorphic God, and consider other possibilities and definitions of the concept, the universe begins to look a lot more interesting.” Although I think anthromorphism is valid as well.

I’m saying that the right will sees God as the end and rejoices in that, and other wills are frustrations of that or subserviant to that.

God is love; and loves run the universe. So in that way, God is responsible for everything. (Hate, I suspect, being from frustrated love.)

Okay, I’m going to comment on my own post; although I think this deserves a new topic, it fits on this one.

What is hate? Is it the absence of love, or due to an absence of love? Does it exist by it’s own metaphysical essence, or does it exist in relation to something else? Is it part of God, or is it only found in men? In Scripture, it says, “Fear is the opposite of love,” but hate is often said to be this. Also, I have been told that in Scripture, where God is said to “hate” it really means “to love less” – I suppose, because God is love.

Can some smart and holy person give me some insight on this?

I don’t know about holy, but I try to be as intelligent as possible. (Not currently succeeding. My homework is kicking my butt)

Most people use hatred as a label for a certain set of behavior between humans. I don’t know if similar behavior could be shown in other animals. However, with humans, it’s used to reference the drive of one person or group to destroy or hurt another person or group, usually associated with feelings of malevolence and rage.

I think it’s a bit more concrete than a mere absence of love. I have an absence of love for things (humans, animals, ect) that I’m not aware of or don’t pay attention to (though I may be able to muster some if it were brought to my attention). That’s just indifference. That’s not the same thing as what would drive me to hurt and destroy them.

Perhaps hate and love are mutually exclusive by definition, if you define love as a drive to benifit or improve someone else and hate as the drive to hurt, hinder, and destroy someone else. But loving less just means that you’re not overly motivated to benifit someone/something, not that you’re out to hurt them.

Exactly. It’s irrational and paradoxical. It can’t be explained or reasoned out. That doesn’t mean that God can’t exist because it’s unexplainable. It just means that God never claims to be a rational God, i.e. doing what we humans expect Him to do.

Psalm 119:32 says “I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free.” A free man, doing what a being other than himself tells him to do? Is that so strange?

Only to an egoist. Only to someone who thinks that freedom is doing something other than what he is told to do.

If you had found the Truth, and you had been set free, would you run away from it and do what it says not to do? Or would you stick to the path, rejoicing that you’ve found it?

They do share the same morality, they are all for killing the people who don’t quite follow the religion correctly. They are all for dietary rules. Many Pagan religions had gods similiar to the middle eastern religions, but the middle eastern religions partake in hero worship all the same. Samson, Moses, Joshua, Mohammed, Jesus, Paul…

They are all heroes, martyrs or some other thing that propagates a stronger belief in your said religion.

Your right about that, god is completely irrational. Why would he not tell the jews about his triune nature, and then send them all to hell when they don’t accept christ as god? It’s OPPOSITE, of everything GOD has told them before christ came.

Commandments:

Though shall worship no god before me.

Laws:

If your son or daughter starts following a different god (like that preached by jesus) take them out to the town gates and stone them.

Psalms:

There is ONE god.

Then jesus and the holy spirit come down and expects all the jews to instantly convert to this new religion?

Let’s talk about freedom… God commands you to sacrifice your son, to prove you beleive him. Do you do it? I say to follow god’s orders is to be sadistic, and slavery. If your boss asked you to kill your children would you do it?

Here’s another brilliant example of the loving god. Instead of just forgiving mankind of sin, you have to believe in the mythic hero christ who god had killed for a blood sacrifice for sin.

Ancient gods are sadistic. I’m not a sadist, thus I can’t follow them. My free will makes me choose the most moral path, and following a sadist is not the most moral path.

Lets talk about hell. Do you think an all loving, infinitely wise god could send us mere mortals to hell for all eternity? The most unforgiveable infraction is doubting the holy spirit. You could kill your family, than give your life to christ and be forgiven, go to heaven… doubt the holy spirit? Sorry one way ticket to hell.

I wish we knew more about God…At least then we coulod make a informed decision on whether to serve Him or not. Right now He is a puppet, being what a individual human"preacher" explains Him to be. Maybe there is a reason behind all the violence. How can we second guess a being who is all-knowing? I would just like to know “why”, have it explained to me in detail, then try to make a judgement. IMO

The bible says the sins of the fore fathers will be passed down through the generations.

This can be for psychological or genetic condioning.

As far as healings go. They do happen. Lets not confuse how people will use faith for the unknown. Yet to the say the unknown is all random science is to ignore the felt effects of God. They feel God spiritually, and know that only other great things such as healing could be from something as strong as the God they felt.

Is free will really free will if a God controlled it?

This is anti-common sense. People LEARN how to act bad, just like they learn how to act “good”. I’ve seen kids that naturally show empathy and love towards others regardless of skin color, race, weight, etc. Children learn who to hate.

Read some recent neurology books. All “felt effects of god” are nothing but a synapse firing in your brain. And I’m not even saying that meditating or praying to reach that center is a bad thing, but can we really say that “god” built our brains to feel god? Or is it more likely that the we learn how to feel god?

No, physically. in the brain.

Again this isn’t a condemnation, but all said effects of God are psychosomatic. I say we learn how to take advantage of that, and you’d have awesome pain management.

scythekain, you make synapses fire in my brain also,
but I believe you exist.

Scyth, everything you just said proves God for me. If God acted like I thought he would, telling His people what THEY think they need to hear, or doing what THEY think they need, I would run from the notion of God as fast as I could. Because, you’re right–it doesn’t make sense at all that God would change the rules, or order someone to kill their son–but God never claims to be a God who follows the moral rules or humanity, rather we are to follow his.

And do you even know what it means to “doubt the Holy Spirit”? I certainly don’t, but I’m no expert.

common sense. dealings in reality. Let me lead you through the steps:

1. you interact with other people in reality outside of the internet. You interact with those same people in the internet. Thusly you know that a person in the internet has a real persona.

2. you meet someone you don’t know on the internet. Someone like me. You know from your previous dealings (and maybe just from extrapolated logic in general) that there is a real person behind my fuzzy eye rolling penguin avatar.

3. You meet other people like me in real life. Hence your synapses needn’t take a huge leap in faith upon my existence. You rely fully upon logic.

HOWEVER. If I tell you something extradorinary… is your immediate response going to be one of belief?

let’s take a few examples.

1. This past weekend I drove my car onto interstate 42. After driving 1500 miles, I hopped onto hyperstate 69, and traveled 238900 miles to the moon. While there I visited the moon landing site. It was fantastic! luckily I brought my camera and took some photographs of myself on the moon.

2. While on the moon I found a unicorn ranch. I rented a unicorn for riding and took it back to earth in my trailer. Would you believe that when i got home the unicorn gave birth? I’m thinking about starting a unicorn ranch! That will be fantastic!

3. Sunday rolled around and I prayed to my god, Thor. He granted me strength and wisdom to get through the week, and then after eating a Eucharist in the name of Odin, I left the local church. When I got home I found that Loki was there tempting me to sell the unicorns. He told me he’d give me 100 dragons for my 2 unicorns. It was a very tempting offer, but knowing the wily ways of Loki, there was no way I could give in to him!

Now ask yourself. Are any of these fantastic scenes believeable? Why not?

What makes YOUR god, anymore believeable than a trip to the moon?

What makes the eucharist of christ more important than a eucharist for Odin?

What makes Satan more real than Loki?

yeah exactly, thats why if God exist he would have to be the clockmaker not the programmer. i agree completely