scythekain,
Don’t worry about it. Most of us are more than capable of being misunderstood. Half the posts on this forum are based on ‘what do you mean by what you’re saying?’ It’s just part of the difficulty of short-hand communication. The subtleties just don’t translate well in this type of venue. My twisted sense of humor has been mis-read so many times I’ve lost count. [shrug] I’m not bothered by that as long as my intentions are good, which depends on how much coffee I’ve had. 
JT
For me it’s how much sleep I have.
This really is the key question. What is the nature of the creator? Does the creator really know what s/he is doing?
People often believe in a benevolent, wise, compassionate, intelligent creator. Why do they attribute these characteristics to the creator? It could so much wishful thinking.
Would it be nice if the world was benevolent, wise, compassionate, and intelligent? But it isn’t so.
The world is neutral. It is neither good nor evil. We wish it were more good and less evil, and in moments succeed in making it so. Yet the world is non-moral. One of my few favoitre ideas from the Bible is that God sends the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. What if the creator neither love us nor hates us, but always just accepts us?
Human beings are moral. So in shaping our vision of the creator we give it a moral attribute. We anthropomophize the creator. Why would a moral God, of unlimited power allow suffering and injustice? A moral God wouldn’t, but what about a neutral God? The center of a human life is right here in humanity. Not in the sky.
Why would a being of limitless power share values that were anything like the values of humans? In the grand scope of things we have such little power and such a little time. Could a human share all the values of an amoeba? Or of an ant? Why then should we imagine that a supreme being would share our values?
Ah, the ant.
I like to think of an ant colony that was moved to it’s own enclosure to be studied by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol. It was covered to protect the cameraman and supplied with food. Following completion of the filming it was left abandoned to it’s own devices.
Many years later an ant philosopher considered the legends of a golden age when the presence of God was seen and decided that God must exist. He, of course, took into account the stories of Mana from heaven, strange signs in the sky, the establishment being theist and the facts that all about him appeared chaos and that there had been no signs of God for many, many generations.
What he didn’t know was that his god was a cameraman in the Natural History Unit who spent some of his time, when not filming, wondering whether there was a God.
One only has to look around to know that this earth is not the result of an omnipotent and benevolent god. Whether it has been the subject of the idle curiousity of a passing lesser god is another matter.
Hi JT,
I thought I would post the same answer as to another thread - I hope that’s allowed. 
I was reading Job last night and it occurred to me that he is damned angry. Boy, is he angry. But he isn’t angry because he doesn’t believe in God, but because he does believe. He is angry because he has put his trust in God and now he feels himself betrayed. He cannot deny God, he cannot simply become an Atheist and carry on with his life. He has invested too much. He has committed himself and made his decision.
But that decision hasn’t brought prosperity, but loss. He was once the opinion that God is with the righteous and therefore Job obeyed the Law, and God was with him. He was convinced that God cared for him and that he was in God’s hands, and every breath was granted to him by his creator.
He still is in the Book of Job. He says that the cattle can instruct those who haven’t comprehended the message – or even the birds of the sky can inform us. Nature understands, but humans don’t. Humans can distinguish the value of a statement just as they can distinguish one food from another – but they haven’t understood the grace of God.
God baffles us. God baffles Job. How can these paradoxes exist? How can God expect us to cope with such paradoxes? How can he sanction us in the way he does? How are the righteous expected to find orientation when we are sanctioned in ths way?
But does God sanction? Does he reward and punish? We believe he does. We even have Scriptures that tell us so! But does God really sanction? Was he first of all kind to Job and now he punishes him? Is that what the friends of Job are trying to tell him? That seems to be what everybody believes – how can Job doubt that God is good to the righteous?
If his friends are right, the Job wants God in the dock. He wants a trial and God is the accused! If the agreement is that God blesses the righteous and punishes the guilty, then God has some explaining to do! “Only grant me two concessions†he says, “Let us meet as equals and let me speak first.â€
But the confrontation in the tempest is unequal, and it becomes very clear that there can be no equality and there is no knowledge. There is no agreement, there are no sanctions. There are instructions and directions, but no sanctions. God needs no sanctions.
Job answers:
2 “I know that you can do all things, And that no purpose of yours can be restrained.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I didn’t know.
4 You said, ‘Listen, now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will answer me.’
5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees you.
6 Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.”
There are no sanctions and no need of sanctions – but there are instructions and directions. They indicate the will of God for Israel and the direction of the ‘chosen’. Anything else is diversion or perversion of what is good. Anything else doesn’t achieve the good that Israel wants for its people. It is as simple as that.
And today, when people are disappointed with God, it is the God of their dreams and wishes. It is the ‘old man in the sky’ or whatever other idea they have, but not the Mystery, the Eternal One, the Creator. We shouldn’t mistake the reams of paper full of words as ‘knowledge’ – the Words of God in Job are trying to prove quite another point: We know nothing about him!
Shalom
Bob
Hi Bob,
And so, “Be still and know that I am.”
JT
I may not be totally off my rocker. Well at least not about this question:
From: georgeleonard.com/yahweh.html
Is Yahweh a Boy?: The Concept of the J Text Deity in Genesis
"If we remove our unfounded assumption of a ruler god in charge, somehow letting all this happen for some inexplicable (“mysterious”) purpose, we can see that the J version is a story of inexperience and failure. If we do some “form criticism” and compare Creation–Fall with fables we know, we recognize a genre: the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
The sorcerer’s apprentice tries his hand. His creation, the man and the woman, more mature than he is, instantly conspire–he can’t control them, all his plans fall apart. Their children are the first murderer and the first victim. In a significant sexual twist, the Canaanite gods, older than Yahweh and highly sexual, notice his human women, come over and copulate with them, so that they give birth to a race of giants. Pretty soon the whole world has gone bad and the sorcerer’s apprentice is dearly sorry that he ever created it. He resolves to wipe it out and be done. The boy god, sadder but wiser, destroys his creation with a flood and starts over again.
Scholars speak of Creation–Fall as “etiological myth,” explaining why we have to labor for our bread, why women give birth in pain. We call it a “theodicy,” a justification of God’s justice. That’s anachronistic. The late Bronze Age and Iron Age storytellers chanted hundreds of years before anyone associated gods (of all people! and I say that deliberately) with anything like the modern concept of “justice.” (In both the West and Asia, it seems no older than the 500s B.C.E.) The only question evident in the text is, “Why is everything awful?” Not “Why is Yahweh just?” A large part of J’s answer is that the landless, homeless, pre-camel “ass nomads” whose plight this Sorcerer’s Apprentice tale originally spoke to, were the children of a lesser god."
MUCH more on the website
But what is more perfect then watching a being evolve to it’s full mental and physical ability to strive to be more like you
Just have the basics laid out and let them do the rest thus allowing them to understand things better
Example: I know you all know someone how just repeats what others say just to sound smart but the real challenge is to be taught one thing and be able to apply it to other things or to manipulate it into your own ideas
Gods just waiting for us to get there on are own. We have a puzzle before us we just need to fill in the blanks. How can you appreciate anything if you don’t have to work for it?
We are not perfect yet you can’t rush a great work of art