Fastfalcon

In response to the Sept 11 post:
I believe that God does exist and he loves us. Jesus said that God was the Father. Like any parent, God sometimes has to punish. Sept 11 was a wake up call for many people. It takes a trajedy to bring people to repentence from their sins.

Mageth

Hey, Jerry Falwell has joined us!

Parents don't (or at least they shouldn't) kill one of their children to teach the others a lesson. Equating time out or the revocation of priveleges to the senseless murder of thousands of people is sick.

If god wanted to wake us up, why didn't he reach down, pluck those planes out of the air, and deposit them safely back at the airport? Or cause the planes to pass through the buildings without damage? Now either one of those would have gotten my attention.

HelenM

Philosoft

Greetings & salutations RW,

Right. And I see a fundamental disconnect between God existing and God as non-physical which I think is borne out in your quite interesting initial post. Do you not see this as well?

<strong> I'll take what I can get.

<strong> I agree wholeheartedly.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

Philosoft

Stop right there. It is inconsistent to say an omnipotent God has to do something when it is logically possible for him not to do it. Either God has a reason for doing something, which is necessitated or facilitated by something else, or he is acting randomly.

free12thinker

What an inhumane statement. But thanks for sheedding light on the subject.

I love to hear about how a deity that so many adore practices the arts of sacrifice, revenge, and mutilation, simply because he can and we should know that he can. Thanks for the wake-up. I would prefer cold-water in my face, or a kiss from my wife, but thanks anyway.

Just out of curiousity Falcon, who exactly was he waking up? I'll answer it for you because I'm a mind reader: homosexuals, gamblers, atheists, women who work mens jobs, lesbians, prostitutes, people who engage in casual sex, people who dress out of line, people who don't put god before their own children and spouses...Am I close?

Better yet, am I closer to salvation? While I may not buy the god concept, at least I am recognizing his arrogance and ignorance. That should stand for something, right?

Hello. Are you there Falcon?

free12thinker

Of course motivations can be detrimental and an outsider seeing that a person's belief seems detrimental isn't going to change that person's
belief. I mean, if I believe that God wants me to kill people I won't listen to you saying that's wrong. I will listen to God in preference to you -
you're just human; He is God.

Hello Helen,
I have one question for you. If God told you today that he wanted you to walk into an abortion clinic and kill the entire staff, would you do it?
After all, he is God.

rainbow walking

rw: Unless that person, like yourself, happens to realize belief as a motivation, can be detrimental.

rw: That would beg the question of how you came to incorporate such an idea into your belief system. How you came to believe that God wanted you to do this will reveal the nature of the problem and suggest some avenues of approach to resolving it.

For instance, did you hear God tell you to do this? If so, we could be facing a psychological dis-order.

Or, did someone posing as a representative of God tell you this? If so, then we're facing a deception from which you are the initial victim.

Now, do you actually believe that God would tell you to crash a jetliner into a skyscraper?

HelenM

I can't speak for any other theist.

But, speaking for myself, there's always the possibility that I'm mentally ill...so I have to check out what I think God says to me, with other people...I daresay that would be the end of my having the opportunity to do such a thing...don't you think?

I don't feel that someone with my propensity to be psychotic can go around thinking God is telling them to do stuff and not check it out against 'common sense' and with other people, if appropriate.

Of course if I was ill maybe I'd just do it

Scary. But then OTOH I never came close to any intention to hurt anyone when I was psychotic. If I did hurt anyone it was only in relatively small (compared to physical injury) indirect ways such as probably not paying enough attention to my kids. But I still got them where they needed to go..Maybe because intervention happened before I completely departed from boring traditional ideas such as my kids need to go to school .

(Not that I am trying to understate the emotional impact of not paying attention to my kids. But I know what I would have done and what I wouldn't have, even though I wasn't in a state of paying much attention to what other people thought)

So...that's how it is for me, but most theists don't have the possibility that a 'strange idea apparently from God' might stem from mental illness so I daresay they would answer differently

love
Helen

HelenM