Why Earth?

[sylvan3]

(Genesis 22:1-2 NLT)

"Later on God tested Abraham's faith and obedience. "Abraham!" God called." Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son

[ayin jade]

You view God, who is so much more than humans can understand, and try and judge Him through your views, your ways. You have decided He cant make sense, because you judge Him by your ways instead of looking at Him through His ways. You rely too much on the "infallibility" of mans logic, and not on the Lord.

[Guest shiloh357]

(Genesis 22:1-2 NLT)

"Later on God tested Abraham's faith and obedience. "Abraham!" God called." Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son

[sylvan3]

(Genesis 22:1-2 NLT)

"Later on God tested Abraham's faith and obedience. "Abraham!" God called." Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son

[Matthitjah]

Grace to you,

I have explained that the concept of God is illogical and, therefore, silly. I have explained that the God as portrayed in the Bible has human attributes that make the concept in which he is presented ludicrous (e.g. he gets angry, he has to kill people, he has to have human and animal sacrifice). I am disparaging the concept and giving you the reasons why.

Great, you've got it all figured out.

So why are you here?

Peace,

Dave

[SoulGrind]

You see, many people who do believe in God (such as yourself), tend to forget that those of us who do not believe in God were like you at one time (believers). We were born Christian. We were born looking for God. But someone, or something in our lives presented rationality to us and our lives have been changed ever since. How do you explain this? Coincidence? Luck? Pure insanity? Or something more.--just plain reason?

I stopped believing not more than a few years after I stopped believing in Santa Claus, from which some comparisons can be made. The whole Biblical story just does not make sense to me. I am amazed at people who can read that book and not see the total ludicrousness of it, sorry to say.

First and foremost, you were not born a Christian. None of us are born a Christian. If this were the case, Christianity would be the predominant religion on the planet - which it is not. Secondly, if we were all born Christian, all humans pre-Christ (BC) would have been Christian - an imposibility as there was no such thing as "Christianity" as we know it today. There was Judaism.

Secondly, you were not born looking for God. No one seeks God. God calls us through various methods. If this were the case, we wouldn't have athiests - athiests do not seek God - they do not believe in God. How can one seek for something they do not believe in?

No I say. We do not seek God out initially. God seeks us.

"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

[Luke 19:10 - KJV]

You say someone or something presented rationality to you? Are you referring to finite, fallable man and all his finite and fallable designs presented rationality to you? Hmm, interesting...

You also say you were a believer. But in a second breathm you say the whole Bible story does not make sense to you. So if it does not make sense now, I would presume is has never made sense to you, therefore, how could you believe in something you did not understand?

Did you even try to understand it? I bet you're going to say, "YES!"

"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."

[Proverbs 3:5 - KJV]

Only through faith (just takes faith the size of a grain of mustard seed) and prayer and fellowship of other believers can you ever hope to truly understand and comprehend the Word of God.

I am sorry, but you're arguments do not hold water for they lack logic and reason (and yes, there is logic and reason within scripture and I'll be happy to point it out to you should you so desire).

As for your (lack of) understanding pertaining to God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son. It's not very hard to understand really. This was a test of Abraham's faith.

If Abraham had not taken his son to be sacrificed, he would have failed the test of obedience to God and Abraham would not have been made the father of many nations.

But since Abraham went without question, God found favor with Abraham, spared his sons life and provided an alternative sacrifice.

And yes, God already knew the outcome. But Abraham did not. Not only was this a "test" (all be it a feeble one for God), but it was a way to show Abraham that God has found favor in him. It was an exchange of trust.

You remind me a lot of the Ethiopian Eunuch mentioned in the book of Acts...

"And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.

And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship,

Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet.

Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.

And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?

And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him."

[Acts 8:26-31 - KJV]

Sounds to me like instead of bashing Christianity for your own shortcomings in wisdom and understanding of scripture (the Bible story as you so elquently put it), maybe you should have been a bit more tenacious in your attempts to understand by seeking out those who do understand and having them explain it to you. This is what other Christians are for - fellowship, church, pastors, elders, deacons, prayer partners, etc.

I wish you the best,

[Guest shiloh357]

He's not omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent? Is he a three omni? Maybe I have too many omnis.

God is not "omnibenevolent" That is something you are making up and then arguing from as if it is established biblical fact. That demonstrates a degree of dishonesty in your approach. For some reason you pretend that you are operating on a higher moral standard than God, yet it is not beneath you to attribute qualities to Him that He does not possess. That is why I don't really take you seriously. When you have to make things up and pretend they are true, it destorys the credibility of your position. It amounts to nothing more than lying.

Futhermore, as for the three "omni" attributes... You seem to act as if God is bound to operate only within those specific parameters, and if God does not do what YOU prescribe He should have done, then you postulate that such attributes do not exist. So if God does not live up the preassigned values that you demand He must operate by, you presume that He does not exist. There is no point to even trying to address such a ridiculous, nonsensical position. It is like argueing with a teenager.

I have explained that the concept of God is illogical and, therefore, silly. I have explained that the God as portrayed in the Bible has human attributes that make the concept in which he is presented ludicrous (e.g. he gets angry, he has to kill people, he has to have human and animal sacrifice). I am disparaging the concept and giving you the reasons why.

You have not explained anything. You have on the basis of faulty premises and made up "facts" tried to assign false values to God in order to perpetuate your views. You have not explained much of anything, and offered absolutely no intellectually satisfying evidence in support of your postion. It is just a bunch of adolescent stubborn objections to what you don't understand, and don't have any intention to understand.

[secondeve]

Shiloh:

All human beings, according to the Bible, sin or have sinned: not one of us is innocent. So it is possible to argue that God punnishes every person on the planet for their sin. However, if this is true, then it must also be the case that, at least to human eyes, God's punnishment is not always in proprtion to the sins of the recipient.

Take, for example, infanticide: the practise of killing unwanted newborns. Having been in the world the shortest amount of time, but being born in sin, if God is both loving and merciful as well as just, their punnishment for what they have been born with should, perhaps, be lesser than death.

Child rape is another problem: some children do terrible things, but if God sees all and knows all, and if he does not prevent the rape and murder of a little girl, can we call him loving at all? It might be argued that God "has a place for her in Heaven," but this still does not seem to justify the need for such a violent, horrific death.

Children die in Africa every day of malnutrition, poverty and disease: these children probably don't know God, and so, upon death, will be sent to Hell. You and others have said that, because acceptance of the redemptive blood of Christ was the method chosen by God for human salvation - and because he cannot go back on his word - all who have not accepted Jesus will go to Hell. This list, by default, includes millions of children, doomed to eternal torment because, through no fault of their own in, I would say, the vast majority of cases, they have not been able to know Christ.

Starving children in Africa, Muslim children who have been raised by misguided parents - or so Christians believe - in the wrong faith, are dying every day there is war in the Middle East as the result of bomb blasts, hunger, suicide bombings and bullets. They will all go to hell. Hindu children living in poverty in Mumbai go to hell. Stilborns to Western mothers, forced late-term abortions in rural China, girl-babies killed in India: every non-Christian child who dies the whole world over goes to Hell, and if this has been true throughout all of history, then one might readily assume that Hell - or parts thereof - is filled with children and babies.

If God has any measure of forethought, then he would have known, when he made acceptance of Christ the stepping-stone to Heaven, that Christianity would not be the most adhered-to religion in the world at any time up to and including 2006; that for almost 2000 years, the majority of the world's population would go to Hell for failing to meet this requirement. He would have known that billions of children would end up in Hell, from having the misfortune to be born in places all over the world which, up until a few hundreds years ago, would have no contact with Christianity whatsoever, or if they had, it would not have been the religion taught to children. If he has any measure of love - of compassion - then how could he sanction this?

Edited July 13, 2006 by secondeve

[secondeve]

Hey Butero, nice to hear from you again!

I think that first point of yours did get addressed in this thread - I won't go through it again because almost identical arguments have cropped up in two other discussions, and I'm tired of saying it over If you're interested, you'll read what's been written, and if not, that's fine and none o'my business.

My reason for making that last point is, at base, that I don't understand at all how Christians can accept such different, even contrary attributes in their God and not wonder if such a being could logically exist. We call someone a loving person if love and compassion dominates how they are most of the time: they can be other things, too, but if we say, 'so and so is a loving person,' we tend to mean that more of their personality is concerned with caring than all the other parts. Actually, that sounds too mathematical: I hope you know what I mean, though, because I can't find a better means of expression.

With God, though, God has been described here as wrathful, loving, merciful, just and holy. Depending on which Christian I talk to, it seems like God's primary attribute changes - almost always in accordance with the characteristic that Christian values most highly themselves, or, if not that, the one they think most befitting of God as they undersatand him from the Bible. It doesn't seem to be uniform. People stress his mercy and love; others, his holy wrath and justice. A person could exist who was loving to his family, just in his decisions, wrathful to his enemies, and devout in his prayers, but as we would be hard-pressed to say which attribute was more dominant in composing his overall self, we might settle on another word or phrase - perhaps complicated, stern, moody, harsh, fair, wise, or something else entirely. But these are all human emotions, and while I see people readily apply love (and sometimes hate) to God, they are unwilling to anthropomorphise him further. It seems, then, when people talk about a loving God, the God who slew the firstborn children of the Egyptians is a different entity; a just God is not the same as the one who punnishes seven generations for the sins of one father; a holy God does not, as in Deuteronomy, create evil; while a wrathful God does not ask us to turn the other cheek. It seems that these attributes are all present in the Christian God, but the problem is, they are contradictory. If a father beats his son but is good to his wife, do we call him wrathful or loving? Normally, they are juxtaposed; human beings are capable of both, and so we judge them "on balance." But God, if he exists, is ultimate: how could "on balance" apply to him? And so, it seems, to make up for this diversity, Christians each pick an interpretation that suits their personality - almost like choosing from one of four Christian Gods, each of which has a dominant aspect and three lesser ones, rather than the more problematic four dominant qualities.

Does any of that make sense?

[Guest shiloh357]

Shiloh:

All human beings, according to the Bible, sin or have sinned: not one of us is innocent. So it is possible to argue that God punnishes every person on the planet for their sin. However, if this is true, then it must also be the case that, at least to human eyes, God's punnishment is not always in proprtion to the sins of the recipient.

Take, for example, infanticide: the practise of killing unwanted newborns. Having been in the world the shortest amount of time, but being born in sin, if God is both loving and merciful as well as just, their punnishment for what they have been born with should, perhaps, be lesser than death.

Child rape is another problem: some children do terrible things, but if God sees all and knows all, and if he does not prevent the rape and murder of a little girl, can we call him loving at all? It might be argued that God "has a place for her in Heaven," but this still does not seem to justify the need for such a violent, horrific death.

Children die in Africa every day of malnutrition, poverty and disease: these children probably don't know God, and so, upon death, will be sent to Hell. You and others have said that, because acceptance of the redemptive blood of Christ was the method chosen by God for human salvation - and because he cannot go back on his word - all who have not accepted Jesus will go to Hell. This list, by default, includes millions of children, doomed to eternal torment because, through no fault of their own in, I would say, the vast majority of cases, they have not been able to know Christ.

Starving children in Africa, Muslim children who have been raised by misguided parents - or so Christians believe - in the wrong faith, are dying every day there is war in the Middle East as the result of bomb blasts, hunger, suicide bombings and bullets. They will all go to hell. Hindu children living in poverty in Mumbai go to hell. Stilborns to Western mothers, forced late-term abortions in rural China, girl-babies killed in India: every non-Christian child who dies the whole world over goes to Hell, and if this has been true throughout all of history, then one might readily assume that Hell - or parts thereof - is filled with children and babies.

If God has any measure of forethought, then he would have known, when he made acceptance of Christ the stepping-stone to Heaven, that Christianity would not be the most adhered-to religion in the world at any time up to and including 2006; that for almost 2000 years, the majority of the world's population would go to Hell for failing to meet this requirement. He would have known that billions of children would end up in Hell, from having the misfortune to be born in places all over the world which, up until a few hundreds years ago, would have no contact with Christianity whatsoever, or if they had, it would not have been the religion taught to children. If he has any measure of love - of compassion - then how could he sanction this?

1. You are operating from the falacious premise that the above reflects "punishments" for sin. They are the manifestations of sin.

2. You are operating from the false premise that hell is "punishment" for sin. It is not. It the consequence for rejecting God's love. God does "send" people to Hell. God is not vindictive. His justice has been satisfied and He is not holding anything against anybody. Hell is where you go by default. It is not a matter of God saying, "You rejected me, so here is what I am going to do to you."

3. The problem with your approach is that it is really selfish at heart. What the world wants is sin without consequence. The world wants to be able to live as they choose, but not have to suffer the consequences for their choices (unless the consequences are good). They expect that they should be able to sleep with every person they want, and God (if He is loving) should not allow the existance of HIV. They should be allowed to ignore the poor in the world, and God (if He is loving) should just make poverty go away. Man expects that He should be able by whatever moral code He wants, and God (if He is loving) should not allow crime to exist. It is a complete irrational concept. We should be able to live as we want, and not be accountable.

You want to live as you choose and then treat accountability and consequence for any bad decision YOU make, as meaning that God is either not loving or is not omnipotent or something like that. By your definition of "love," God should be your maid who follows you around and cleans up after you every time you make a mess of things.

The world does not want God except when He serves a useful purpose (like ridding the world of all evidence that mankind has screwed everything up). The world wants God out of government, they want God out of shcools, they want God out of public life altogether. They want God to shut-up and go sit in a corner until they need Him, and then they only time they need Him is when they want to complain about why He let this and that happen. God is just a convenient scapegoat. They want God out of their life, and then blame that same absence for their stupid, irresponsible deicisions.

Denying God's existence is just a convenient way of skirting around having to be accountable to Him. It doesn't matter what God does or does not do. It is easy to find fault with Him. The issue here is not a genuine concern about God's morality, it is just a way avoiding the accountability for sin.