spurly

Some people say that they can not believe that God exists because they see evil people prosper while the good people suffer injustice after injustice (slavery, child slavery, persecution, etc.). They say that if God was truly God, then he would not let that happen.

But let's walk down this road a little ways and look at the scenery. Let's say that God did just what these people wanted him to do. He immediately blessed every good act and rewarded it, while he immediately judged every evil act. What would the result be? People would be following God for what they could get out of it. People would have no doubt that God exists, sure. But they would be following him for all the wrong reasons.

God values two things from us more highly than anything else. One is faith. Jesus asked, "When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" The other is love. If God acted the way these people proposed, there would be no need for faith in God, everyone would know beyond a shadow of doubt that he exists. In addition, people would come to him for what they could get out of it, instead of coming to him simply because they loved him - which is really what he wants.

Anyway that's just my take. I know many of you have a different opinion. And I'm sure I'll hear yours soon.

davidm

Yes, I'm sure all those victims of slavery, child slavery and persecution you mentioned are as grateful to God as he is filled with love for them.

K

spurly:

Are you trying to imply that it would be impossible for a person to follow God for the right reasons in the scenario you described? Does God not know what's in the hearts of humanity? Can He not see who is following Him out of love and who is doing it to get ahead? What possible benefit is there for God to throw good people to the Lake of Fire simply because He callously decided to create a universe that looks exactly like one would expect a universe to look if there were no God?

spurly

Yes, you are right. God does know the heart. He would know who was following him out of pure motives and who was not. However, the people following him still would really not be doing it because they chose to do so out of their own free will. They would be loving him for all the wrong reasons.

That's not the kind of love that God desires. He also doesn't want people to fake loving him - he can't stand phonies.

As far as your last question goes, throwing people in the lake of fire is not something God enjoys. His main desire was to have a relationship of love with his people that would last for eternity. When people choose not to love him, then he is going to honor their request and let them go to the only place in the universe where he is not present.

Kevin

Nil Desperandum

For a puny little human, you sure do a great job of describing the mindset of a supernatural being that you, in no way, shape, or form, could ever possible understand.

orac

Then a whole lot of people are going to be in for a nasty surprise, if your god does turn out to be real.

I don't suppose you can teach us how to tell the difference between real god-followers and phonies who'll lead us straight to hell? No? Oh dear.

So, where is he?

I simply can't understand how I'm supposed to love someone who doesn't exist. Sure, I read about him in a book, and I hear people who claim that they've felt him and that they've had good things from him. I just don't understand why I should love Brahma. I know, you say I should love this wonderful god who created me and who loves me so much that he, um, is hiding from me, but I don't see the evidence that he's real.

Oddly, all the other deities (including Allah, Jehova/Jesus/Holy Ghost, Zeus) are just the same - they all have books about them and faithful believers who assure me that they're real, but the deities themselves are hiding.

Oh, "love me even though I'm hiding from you or I'll honour your 'request', heh, heh, to be tortured for eternity even though you had no reason to believe that there was a choice to be made or what the options were" is not a free choice. A free choice would be an open presentation of all of the rules, all of the options, and a guaranteed reasonable length of time in which to consider the options. Sure, if God is so great especially when compred to the one place where he isn't present then most people will choose to love him - but without this information noone can actually make a decision.

Merely insisting that we must believe in your god doesn't work - there's too many gods all with believers making the same claims, and unless one of them can show some evidence for their god's actual existance I see no way to choose between them, and thus no point to believing in order to avoid being tortured for eternity. See? If your god is real and all the others are false, then he could reveal himself and reduce the decision to "love or not love" rather than "believe in this one? that one? this bunch over here? some other bunch? a few that noone's heard of for years? and if I believe, which (if any) should I love?"

Let's present an old example, one more time: Pick a number betwen 1 and a million. If you get the right number, one thing will happen, and if you get the wrong number another thing will happen. Please explain to me how you will make the right choice, when the only additional advice you can get is from people who, in reality, have no more information than you do?

If it helps, even if you prove your god is real, I'll still want a few questions answered before I can consider your god to be anything other than evil. As it is, I just coinsider his "followers" to be mostly less than admirable people who justify obscene behaviour by claiming they're doing what god wants.

I'm also not sure you're right when you claim that your god wouldn't enjoy torturing everyone who got the wrong god, either - the book of revelations suggests that some christians will be celebrating the torture of the sinners, and these are the people god considers good enough for heaven.

Btw, seeing we're debating your god, let's look at the opinion of the people who wrote the bible:

God saves the Jews, and Moses leads them out of Egypt, performing assorted miracles along the way. Do the people worship faithfully, or do they start worshipping golden calves the moment Moses turns his back? Now, considering the answer to this question, why does god have to stop performing miracles in order to let people freely choose whether or not to love him?

Jesus was busier than a circus magician performaing amazing and inexplable miracles. Remember Judas? Do you think you can work out whether or not he is classified as a faithful and god-loving person? Given that he personally spoke to a physical Jesus and personally observed many miracles, how could he possibly do the wrong thing if the mere presence of Jesus would eliminate free will?

Please note that without an explanation of why the physical presence of Jesus and God's assorted miracles did not override people's free will 2000 years ago, your idea that it would do so today is somewhat suspect.

spurly

I can only know what he has revealed to us. Through the life of Christ we can see that he can't stand phoniness and he loves authenticity.

Autonemesis

But god's followers already do that. Every pitch I've ever heard for the gospel talks about an eternity of bliss if you follow god, or an eternity of damnation if you don't.

spurly

Some people, to be sure, follow God for what they think they can get out of it, but that is not what God desires. It is why he refuses to do miracles on demand. God desires a relationship of love with us. A by-product of that is being allowed to love him for eternity.

Kevin

K

spurly:

So God would rather hide from good people (and in so doing condemn them to an eternity of torment), than to risk that some of them may be phonies - even though He knows their hearts and can tell the phonies from the true followers? This God would truly be a monster. Imagine a mother who abandons her infant children simply because she worries that they may grow to love her only for what she provides to them. A self centered God that acted in such a way would have no right to be called 'Father'.

We're not talking about people who CHOOSE not to love God. We are talking about people who see the universe the way God made it - it looks exactly like one would expect it to if there were no God. These people can't 'choose' to believe in God any more than they can choose to believe in fairies.