God knew what direction mankind would go from the moment He created us. What I don’t understand is, why did He react as though He did’t know how things would turn out? Events such as the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah seem puzzling, considering that God already knew what was going to happen. Surely He was aware that all of the foul sinners that He was annihilating would get what was coming to them eventually, so why waste the energy? I also find it puzzling that God sent Jesus to spread the Message when He must have known that the world was going to get worse and worse despite Jesus’ efforts. He knew that the world would end in chaos. God saw how stupid his creations were when he flooded the world and destroyed Sodom and Gomaorrah because they just kept on doing the same stupid things.
It makes no sense to me that a Supreme Being would go through so much trouble to redeem the human race when he knew that it ultimately wasn’t going to happen. Supposedly we have free will, but God already knew that He was the only individual capable of delivering us from our stupidity. Why would He waste the effort? It makes no sense at all, especially for a Being supposedly capable of such infinite wisdom.
I’m asking you that if you don’t have infinite knowledge than how do you know it’s not perfectly correct what God does? It’s only you who sees it as impatient and flawed, but you don’t have infinite knowledge, so what makes you capable? We’ve been told we’re not supposed to know God’s mind, but we’re supposed to trust him, if he had told us everything would be apparent, then yes we would have this right.
That’s just the sort of reasoning that opens the door for all kinds of craziness. So even if I can’t comprehend the seemingly irrational behavior of a Supreme Being that may or may not exist, He may be up to something profound and I should just wait it out? This is what I find problematic with that kind of thinking:
#1 He may not exist, and therefore we are basing our beliefs on the weird behavior of a nonexistent Being
#2 He may exist and is behaving weirdly without any real purpose
Well, you don’t really know what plan God has, or if He really has one at all. You know absolutely nothing about God. Just as I (supposedly) can’t comprehend His irrationality, how can you even hope to comprehend what He’s up to at all? Maybe He’s going for something so completely foreign to your little human mind that labeling it as a plan is just your pointless attempt to make sense of it. Maybe we’re just a miniscule side project. You have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER. It’s funny how believers can claim that non-believers can’t comprehend God’s motives enough to judge His behavior, yet they somehow understand that He has a “plan” for them.
Both #1 and #2 are problematic. It would be nothing short of tragedy if humans have been trying to understand a being that didn’t exist for all this time. Look at all the nonsense that has come from it. #2 is problematic because, if God is just doing weird stuff with no purpose, well that can’t be good.
Here again you made the fallacious mistake of saying God is incompetent. You could be totally wrong because he could be totally competent, it could be the exact correct thing to do. I’m not sure if you are understand this concept, but please think about it.
The man on the mountain knows more about what will happen next than the man caught up in his village. This is basically what I’m saying, and you need to try to comprehend this.
Your reasoning is absolutely ridiculous. I am so tired of religious people acting like their faith is something so special. It isn’t. It doesn’t grant them them one ounce more understanding about what God wants or doesn’t want. It’s just a bunch of theatrics to try to hide the fact that they don’t have any more answers than anyone else. “Oh, I trust God, so everything He does requires absolutely no logical explanation! I’m free now to indulge whatever absurd ideas that pop into my head!”
Using Hitler is a bit cliche, but I don’t believe that Hitler was following a very rational gameplan. Now, does that mean that I can’t understand Mein Kampf as well as a genocidal Aryan superman? I bet you that all good Nazis thought trusting Hitler was the answer to all their problems. They didn’t need to have one solitary rational thought of their own because Hitler had A BIG PLAN! Trust der Fuhrer! Your trust argument is nonsense.
Religious people have been getting a free ride for waaaay to long with their “I have faith so I’m special” crap.
I have no idea what your comment about not putting my finger on what’s weird is about.
Club29:
Here again you made the fallacious mistake of saying God is incompetent. You could be totally wrong because he could be totally competent, it could be the exact correct thing to do. I’m not sure if you are understand this concept, but please think about it.
K: I make my statement based on how the universe and us
works. He did a incredibly bad job creating the universe.
And if we are the height of creation, you know he is a fuck up.
CLUb: The man on the mountain knows more about what will happen next than the man caught up in his village. This is basically what I’m saying, and you need to try to comprehend this."
K: I have spent decades thinking about god and he is still a
fuck up.
With great respect, your understanding of the nature of God seems to be somewhat limited.
Explain as exactly as you can what this term, “God,” means to you.
I know any explanation will involve you in great thought, complex and difficult analysis, and then the concept isn’t static but forever metamorphosing too, and therefore difficult to grasp, oh, there are so many things to take into account, so many things to get into your head, but please try and define, “God.”
Incredibly bad job of creating the universe? Lol, can you give me what would be an incredibly good job? And why this one would be better? How do you know we are the height of creation? Why is is so messed up even if we we’re?
You see, believing is God requires more logical explanations, and we have just as many if not more than atheist, you need to do some studying before you make a claim such as this. I can see a blind anger coming from you, what is it you really want to discuss? Just ask me.
Blind anger like blind trust? From what I gather from your responses, you belive that because we are not infinitely wise then we can not hope to understand God’s motives, and so we should just trust Him. That is an extremely overused answer from religious people. From my experience talking to various Christians (I am not biased against Christians over other religions, so don’t get upset), they usually have a list of quick and easy answers to counter non-believers. Now, some Christians have a longer list than others, but alot of the time they don’t need to use most of the list because the non-believer either doesn’t have any pre-rehearsed responses of their own or they just don’t feel like arguing. Occasionally, though, a non-believer will have an answer for every answer the Christian has. Many Christians that I’ve met can’t stand this. Some are open to different ideas, but a a good number just want to convert you with their pre-rehearsed responses. If those don’t work, the Christian gets flustered, like you’re wrong for not going along with their game.
A new tactic that religious folks are getting good at is the whole Intelligent Design approach. Most Americans aren’t all that educated in scientific matters, so this is a great area for Christians to use as a weapon in their conversion arsenal. How many Americans can counter a bunch of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo spouted by a Creationist when they have no background in the discipline. It’s a simply brilliant attack strategy. Atheists will never be able to counter that approach with great effectiveness because for most Americans it’s easier to accept pseudo-scientific Creationism than take a few real science classes.
What was my point? Oh, yeah: Christians are mostly a bunch of little conversion hounds with pre-programmed responses. They don’t really care what a person’s answer is unless it is “You are right! I want to be a Christian now!”
===========
While we cannot deny there is evil in this world, we are also aware that there is goodness in this world. We cannot appreciate goodness if there is no evilness. You blamed God for man’s action. Isn’t his great commandment Love One Another? What did man do? Genesis 13:13, “Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning against the Lord.” Man is the only one to be blamed for the evilness of this world, not God, not Satan, not Lucifer. Man. he has knowledge, intelligence, he has conscience. About the flood (cataclysm). There was a thread about who will be the parents of the next race? There is involution, evolution, devolution of great nations, past, present and future, as evidenced by the flood mentioned in the bible, atlantis (some say this is a myth), Lemuria. There will be some few chosen ones along with few lucky ones who will become parents of a new race of man. Noah was the chosen one mentioned in the bible.
Huh? I said God already knew what was going to happen, so why waste the time wiping out the population with a flood or destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. It seems odd that he would create humans just to destroy so many of them. Why create something tha you know that you will intentionally destroy? I’m not saying that God is to blame for the actions of humans, but He knew what they were going to do when He created them. Why punish them for something already forseen? The only other answer that makes sense is that God didn’t know what was going to happen, but that raises all kinds of new questions.