JPD

Biblegod is declaring his inability to forgive by applying punishment completely out of proportion with the "sins" committed during a limited period of time.

It would take far greater power, intelligence and love to forgive than it does to punish. Biblegod is inherently, mentally and spiritually, flawed.

rhutchin

OK. Your only hope now is that God does not exist.

God says that one sin is enough to exclude you from heaven. Given that God is willing (and able) to forgive you that sin (on His terms; not yours), I don't see what your complaint is. Maybe, it is the part about having to give up those sins that you cherish so much.

rhutchin

Johnny Skeptic is wasting his time out of ignorance. I guess you must be ignorant that you are doing that. You could read your message above and remove your ignorance about your ignorance. Then you could do something other than opine about your ignorance.

Johnny Skeptic

But an excellent case can be made against Christianity even if the historical evidence that is in the Bible, including the Resurrection, is true. For some strange reason you assume that the only issue is God's existence, when in fact the issue of his character is just as important. We know that President Bush exists, but reasonably proof of his existence is not reasonable proof that he has good character. Your arguments always end up with risk assessment, when in fact no God or man can convince people to love him based solely upon threats even if the threats are believed. Whenever you bring up the character of humans, I bring up the character of God. No belief system is any better than the foundation upon which it is built. The foundation of the Bible depends lock, stock, and barrel upon God being good and fair. You have falsely said that God is good and fair.

But according to God's own rules, he is a sinner and a hypocrite.

rhutchin

Good idea. It's all there in the Bible. Everyone should investigate it.

How about if all the IIDB'ers petition Congress to pass a resolution calling on the nation to repent and pray for deliverance from destruction prior to each hurricane season?

God has given people a free will. If everyone used that freedom to obey God, I see no reason why the world would not become a Garden of Eden. Crime would certainly not be a problem.

Maybe, it is because people are like Johnny Skeptic and choose not to obey God. It's that free will thingy that does it, I suspect.

Hmmm. That's not the way my Bible tells the story. Must be your own unique translation.

As long as God allows men to freely choose to do evil, even Christians will suffer. They do so to set an example that this life is not worth clinging to given that life which is to come.

Jesus explains that their sin did not result in the man being born blind. However, it is sin that has led to people being born blind. Parents should always pray daily for their children even before conception because of this.

No, my judgment was about the alleged "good character" of those who could have given food to the Irish and did not. Whether "all" those who died were Christians is not certain. I doubt that you have evidence to that effect.

Again, it is that free will thingy that God gives to people. I think your position is that people use their free will to do evil (perhaps you speak from experience) and you think God was wrong to give people free will. Somehow, I suspect you like to choose what you want to do and would object if God took that away.

My advice to those in need is to turn from their sin and pray for God to forgive them. God says that the person who seeks first His kingdom and His righteousness will have food to eat and clothes to wear.

Paul was aware that being saved by God did not make a person Biblically literate. Instruction was still needed. Christians are intructed to love their enemies as well as those who love them.

rhutchin

Character does not matter here. When you stand before God, it is your character that will matter. Whether you perceive God to be of good or bad character makes no difference. The traffic court judge may be a crook, but if you drink and drive, you can be justly sentenced for DUI.

Your only hope of escaping judgment is that God does not exist. (Actually, you can escape judgment by repenting of your sins and seeking forgiveness, but you don't seem to want to go in that diection.)

wiccan windwalker

P's wager is not really invalid so much as incomplete, it is a skeletal framework of a more complete "gambit" perhaps in more modern lexicon called "Lorenz Risk Averse Strategy", designed primarily to avoid the worst case scenario (that is ticking off the most powerful God or God analog having control over eternal reward/punishment, assuming such exists).....in a nutshell: Christianity-aversion obtains via believing in/accepting Christ: Islam-aversion obtains by an infidel protecting Islam holy places and protecting Islamic women and children: JUdaism-aversion obtains by being a righteous gentile, by saving/protecting Jewish people,:All Eastern Religions: aversion obtains by improving one's character over a lifetime, by doing charitable work and abstaining form abject evil....Outland Religions: likely mathematically insignificant, but if deemed so, must be "weighted" on a case by case basis and then "averted" accordingly.....

JPD

If Biblegod is like this then I could not possibly worship him. He knows that and he knew that from the beginning. The possibility that I would believe in him exists as an unrealised concept in his mind only...or perhaps just in yours.

To believe in sin - which is a religious concept - I would need to be religious. I'm not. I don't believe that sin exists just as I don't believe that your Biblegod exists. You believe this utter nonsense not me. I don't have the burden of having to uphold ridiculous concepts as if they equated to something real when the only "evidence" that points to them is text saying "This is the truth" and believers repeating it and saying "This is the truth because it says it is" but trying to make it sound more likely by saying "I have come to the understanding as a result of careful research."

Your posts indicate a bit of a fixation with false dichotomies:

You don't believe in my God therefore the only possibility is that you are bad. Please convince me that there is more to your arguments than this and an endless thrashing of Pascal's wager. There must be mustn't there?

Johnny Skeptic

If the story of Adam and Eve is true, there is no maybe about it. As I said, "somehow, whether through genetics or through some other means, God has ensured that everyone must commit sins at least some of the time, meaning that it is impossible for anyone to always acts like they should act." Clearly, the Bible teaches that it is impossible for anyone to not ever commit any sins.

Logically, he who is most at fault is he who is best able to help people and refuses to do so. If God exists, he is at fault much more than anyone else is.

If God provided more information regarding his existence and character, fewer people would disobey him, right? Since he deliberately withholds helpful information, he is immoral.

If that is true, then God has imposed impossible conditions upon decent people, and there is nothing that they are able to do about it. You would consider it to be an atrocity if God told lies, and yet you have been able to abandon your principles and morals and love a God who has committed numerous atrocities against mankind that are much worse than lying is.

1 - God makes people blind, deaf, and dumb, reference Exodus 4:11.

2 - God punishes people for sins that their ancestors committed, reference Exodus 20:5.

3 - God killed babies at Sodom and Gomorrah. Those babies did not have any knowledge that free will exists.

4 - God kills people with hurricanes, including some of his most devout followers. Even Attila the Hun did not kill his own followers.

5 - God empowered a savage Devil to help him attack mankind.

6 - Today, it appears that all tangible benefits are distributed entirely at random according to the laws of physics. This is to be expected if God does not exist. If he does exist, then he frequently distributes tangible benefits to those who are not in greatest need, but frequently withholds tangible benefits from those who are in greatest need, and with no provable regard for a person’s worldview.

Do you believe that hurricanes do or do not operate in a random manner?

7 - God deliberately withholds information from some people who would accept it if they were aware of it. If God clearly revealed himself to everyone, no man could complain that he did not have adequate information, in which case no man would have any excuses. As it is, on judgment day, any man who has never heard the Gospel message who Jesus chooses to send to hell can rightly say that the rules were not clearly disclosed. In addition, on judgment day, any man who has heard the Gospel message and rejected it, and would have accepted it if he had had more information, can rightly say that he was treated unfairly.

In the thread on 2 Peter 3:9, you said “If God revealed Himself in the manner you are describing, then everyone would obviously become a Christian.” I replied “But you have said that the Devil knows that God exists, but has rejected God, so you have refuted your own argument. In addition, millions of decent people would not be able to accept God even if they believed that he exists.”

God is able to provide additional information that would convince some people to become Christians who were not previously convinced, which means that he is not nearly as loving and merciful as you claim he is. If a man tells his son on numerous occasions not to drive when intoxicated, you would probably claim that the son had been provided with sufficient information, but you most certainly would not claim that if the father saw his son try to drive when intoxicated that the father should not still tell his son not to drive when intoxicated. It is called love and compassion.

Human effort alone could never let everyone know about the Gospel message. In the first century, it is not likely that anyone who lived in China could have known about the Gospel message unless God told them about it, and history has shown that God has little or no interest in telling people about the Gospel message himself. If God provided me with additional evidence, I might become a Christian.

If the Bible is true, then I am refusing to tell people about the Gospel message out of ignorance, not out of intent. On the other hand, God refuses to tell some people about the Gospel message out of intent. This makes God much more culpable than I am.

8 - God endorses unmerciful eternal punishment without parole. If mercy is anything, it is forgoing eternal punishment without parole even when justice, in this case, God’s justice, requires it. Otherwise, mercy is meaningless.

9 - No loving, rational being, whether a human or a God, ever intentionally does anything without the hope of benefiting himself and/or someone else at present, or in the future. It has not been reasonably established that God derives any benefits whatsoever from making people blind, deaf, and dumb. It is most certainly not necessary to make a man blind, deaf, and dumb in order to convince him to become a Christian. In fact, one of the best ways to convince a man not to become a Christian would be to make him blind, deaf, and dumb. It most certainly is not necessary to allow a man to starve to death in order to convince him to become a Christian. If God had always provided all of the hungry people in the world with food, and had always told everyone, tangibly, in person, that he was the source of the food, the Christian church would surely be a lot larger than it is today.

10 - In the Old Testament, God ordered the death penalty for a Jew who killed a Jew, but not for a Jew who killed a slave. In addition, the New Testament does not clearly oppose slavery, even though it easily could have if God exists. If it did, the world would be a much better place in which to live in.

A web definition for the word "atrocity" is "the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane." Clearly, God has committed many actions and allowances that are shockingly cruel and inhumane, and completely unnecessary towards the achievement or any worthy goal.

Now you can claim that I have not provided sufficient evidence of atrocities that God has committed against mankind if you wish, but rational minded and fair minded people know that if the God of the Bible exists, he is either evil or mentally incompetent. Under our legal system, many of God’s actions and allowances are punishable by life imprisonment or death. If telling lies is wrong, it is wrong no matter who tells lies, including God. If refusing to feed hungry people is wrong, it is wrong no matter who refuses to feed hungry people, including God. If killing people is wrong, it is wrong matter who kills people, including God. Hypocrisy is wrong no matter who is a hypocrite, including God. Are you actually going to tell us that telling lies is worse than killing people and allowing people to starve to death when you have plenty of food?

It is your position that the elect deserve to sometimes be killed by God, and sometimes be allowed to starve to death because they have made some unintentional mistakes?

wiccan windwalker

Johhny Skeptic...uhh maybe Chrisitianity isnt for you...maybe you should stay away from religion and get a hobby...volunteer as a big brother or help out with meals on wheels or do something productive with your life........your fixation on and hatred for theists may require counselling. Blessed Be.....