Stephen T-B

"Well, actually, God just lets you be yourself. God does not have to make you do anything; He merely has to allow you to do as you desire without interference from Him. " (rhutchin)
So, this god might just as well not exist?
And yet, we hear from rhutchin that it allowed Herod to kill all those babies and children so as to warrant the justice it intended to mete out to him when he died. So there was intent behind it's apparent non-action.
According to my moral compass, this makes it culpable; as I would be culpable if I had a work colleague who I had good reason to believe was beating his wife and torturing his children, but did nothing to intervene because I had been assured in a dream that after he'd killed them, he would be prosecuted for the crime and jailed for the rest of his life, which I judged to be his just deserts even before he'd killed his wife and children.
But this god's morality, which allows it to behave in an equivalent manner, makes it exempt from censor by its devotees because it is their god. Just as the Aztecs made no criticism of their god which had to be fed to the point of satiation with the blood of sacrificial victims.

Rhutchin's god, we've heard in previous threads, is entirely passive, having set everything in motion (including the fact that Stephen T-B will be judged wicked when he's dead ,and punished with eternal torment) and just sits back and watches it all unfold.
Strangely, however, this isn't at all what it used to do - at least not according to the Biblical stories. Far from "sitting back" and watching it all unfold, it constantly intervened in Earthy affairs - to the extent of drowning well over 90 per cent of all terrestrial creatures because they'd been wicked (how wicked, we might ask, can a meercat be?), confounding the human language so as to prevent humans building a tower that might have reached heaven, and stopping the sun progress across the sky. Then it created a demi-god to live and die among men so it might be able to save some of them from the fires of hell (and being a demi-god it had some pretty potent magical powers which it used on numerous occasions), and after that it turned Paul into the first Christian.
According to a great many of its devotees it has, indeed, intevened in human affairs quite frequently since then, though in rather less spectacular ways than it once did.
What are we to believe?
Then there's the curious matter of the Jews, once upon a time God's Chosen People (and, I suppose, according to them, still His Chosen People).
To the Jews. god provided holy scriptures, in their own language and supplied via prophets drawn from their number. Careful study of these scriptures led them to believe that their god would, in due course, send them a Messiah, and so far their religious leaders have seen nothing to suggest to them that god has.
Meanwhile, a lot of people for whom the scriptures were not provided, which are not written in their own languages nor by their own people, think the Messiah did in fact come, and that believing this is a prerequisite to avoiding the common human fate of spending all eternity in the fires if hell.
Some of the devotees of this "Messiah" - among whom is the Blessed rhutchin - think it's only by god's grace that we attain that belief, and that god gives it to some and witholds it from others. Which means, of course, that the Jews - once his Chosen People and whom he favoured with his Holy Scriptures - are, in fact, among the damned.
And not by any old accident: this god always knew they'd end up being damed, and while it saw fit to ensure that Paul of Tarsus would become a believer and found a church for the Saved (gentiles, mostly) it did no such thing for the mass of Jewish people who it has allowed to continue in error. Presumably because it likes the sound they make when gnashing their teeth.

SeekingKnowledge

As usual someone above has summed up my overall feelings better than I ever could (I pick Stephen) I would like to ask/point out...

In your above statement... This is what you and I call free will, yes? If your God allows me to have this free will, why does he interfere with peoples free will so much in the bible?

rhutchin

God interferes to accomplish His purposes and this entails that He interfere in the willful actions of only the elect. Others, God can leave alone.

rhutchin

Clearly, it is metaphor (and still literal). When it says, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor,” that is literally true. God will display His splendor through "Israel." We just need to identify who/what "Israel" represents. I see it representing Christ.

His offspring are the elect.

rhutchin

That seems right. There was a Herod who ruled up to 4 BC and there was a later Herod who ruled around 30 AD.

The Dagda

What amuses me is none of them were actually considered nasty people, like Richard III by Shakespeare it appears to be pure propaganda with little or no basis in fact. Ok they weren't saints, but both Herods were it seems pretty much popular people with no real antipathy against them from their subjects at least.

rhutchin

It's a harsh world. What do you expect from sin? Seems prudent to ask God for help.

Yes. So, why make God your adversary?

Yes. So does it behoove you to submit to God or to Satan?

One of the consequences of sin.

One of the consequences of sin.



No reason unless asked to do so.

spamandham

As I expected, it's metaphor when it's convenient, and literal when it's convenient. I do agree this is a metaphor, but it has nothing to do with any 'elect'.

The only relationship between Jesus and Isaiah 53, is that the passion was constructed primarily from Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. The author of Mark even gives this away as he has Jesus utter Psalm 22 as Jesus' last words.

SeekingKnowledge

But if God has the ability to counteract my free will, the he didn't ever really give me free will did he?

You are explaining a God who has, in a sense, went through and set up this extremely elaborate cosmic Rube Goldberg machine, and now he is just sitting back watching it unfold. There is no free will for the cogs in that wheel.

The logic is flawed. If your Christian god does exist, he isn't at all like you expect him. You are fighting a losing war on logic and reasoning. If I was a little more educated (and not posting from an iPhone) I would go back through and banter with you further, but for now I will leave it at this.

I have pointed to one of many flaws in your archaic logic.. A fundamental flaw in the construction of anything denotes instability.

Pretzel logic doesn't change reality.

Living in a fantasy world won't further the advancement of our species, and neither will particular translations of passages(literal or otherwise) of an ancient letter or story.

All history needs to have equal weight for what it's worth.. Or it's doomed to be repeated. And we don't need another inquisition of you or me. And we are getting ready to have a Jihad, at least here in America, or so it would seem. Religion helped highten our intellect exponentially years ago and deserves it's credit for that, but our species is past that.

At least, If we can't get past it, we are doomed.. Agreed?

Stephen T-B

This reflects an interesting mindset:
"Who do you think created homosexuality in hundreds of species of animals and birds, including in possibly 100% of primate species?" (Johnny Skeptic

"One of the consequences of sin." (rhutchin)
A consequence of sin - I see.
Like disease is?

And how curious that Adam and Eve falling to the temptation offered by a talking serpent - with legs - should have inadvertently created homosexuality (and disease) among non-human animals.
Disease, I suppose, was this god's heavy-handed, indescriminate response to being disobeyed by its recently-created clones.
This god is credited with having created everything, so it created disease in order to punish every life form on the planet - billions of them - for the misdemeanour of just one of them?

And it created homosexuality - obviously. Also as a punishment, presumably. But perhaps rhutchin can tell us how indulging in homsexual acts "punishes" a chimpanzee?