You are squirming a twisting, trying to find a way make what you said earlier rational. There is nothing you can say or do to make it so. You said that God wouldn't do the flood. In order to know what God would or would not do, you would have to be God. It's a comparison of a finite being to a supreme being, there is no assumption of common ground in such a comparison.

Wrong.

I don't need to know the God in a mythology. I can go by what the authors claim.

The authors claim that the God is all-wise, omni-potent, and all-merciful.

That contradicts the idea of a a God who waits until his whole creation has turned to evil before he acts to do something about it.

The very act of crudely flooding a planet and having some guy build an ark to save the animal kingdom also flies in the face of a God who is omni-potent and could just turn all those people into pillars of salt if he wanted to.

The story is self-contradicting in terms of what the word "wisdom" even means.

It's not that I would question a supreme being, I question the authors who made up such an utterly stupid story.

Besides, you point the flood, which is the least of my problems. I mean, yes, I agree that too was obviously utterly stupid. I will grant you that. But there are tons of other problems with this story.

It has this God leading people to a promised land only to have heathens living on the land that the people will need to murder.

Such a God would be highly inept at best. It clear to me that the authors of this book were simply attempting to justify their wars. No all-wise God would do such a thing IMHO.

Again, this is NOT passing judgement on a deity. It's just recognizing that the authors who wrote this story were utterly stupid.

I already gave the final and conclusive proof.

(A) The God commands people to judge others and stone sinners and heathens to death.

(B) The same God sends his own Son to denounce his commands, and lie about the fact that his changing the rules.

So here we have the authors of this book demanding that we believe that God lies.

Now, you're argument is that you'd like to pretend that if you could know God, then God could somehow explain these absurdities away.

But that misses the entire point. The book already claims these things. Therefore in order to believe in the God you must dismiss the book and hope that God can give an explanation of why the book is wrong.

Where is there any rationale in that?

If the God truly was all-wise it wouldn't have written such a confused and contradicting book in the first place.

So it's not about the idea that any such God needs to be justified. It simply a recognition that the BOOK was obviously written by liars and there is no Surpreme being behind it to begin with.

There's nothing to justify. The book is obviously the false doctrine of men who were attempting to justify their wars and their male-chuvinistic attitude toward women.

Your attempt to somehow associate a God with those idiots is the problem. You're buying into their lies and arguing that maybe somehow there truly does exist an genuinely all-wise God who will someday explain why the book is so utterly stupid.

You've gone far beyond the book in the hopes that some righteous God is lurking in the background and who will come out and say, "Sorry for the confusion, allow me to explain why the book that I demand that everyone believe in appears to be so utterly stupid and conflicting".

What sense does that even make?

Believe in this utterly stupid book because their might be an intelligent God behind it in some totally unfathomable way!

Boy, talk about FAITH!

All you're doing is rejecting the book and hoping that a truly righteous God exists behind it.

Spidercmb, this comment is outside of all arguments here, and supplied only as a commentary: I find your arguments laughable. You don't answer questions, you don't retort arguments, but you encase your answer as if you were answering questions or retorting arguments.

An analogy to it may be:

(Anyone:) "I think the tree is tall, because its top is far from its bottom."

(You, spidercmb:) "No, it is not tall, because to say its top is far is to say it is near, therefore god does exist."

Some parts of your statements can be argued with, and everyone takes up the challenge, because they are so blatantly arguable. Some other parts of your statements do not relate to any part of the topics at all.

I think you're just trying to tire us out with what I consider nonsense, thereby disrupting our circles.

I don't know why you do this. I can only guess: You are part of a religious organization that has as its mandate to destroy the progression of atheism, by any and by all means. In North America you can't shoot us; but you can try to infiltrate us and tire us out.

I am not taking this entirely from thin air. In my town I used to frequent humanist meetings, forums, where people would get together and talk. Then once in a while a whole bunch of new faces would show, they would be quiet, until one of them piped up with some disrupting, sometimes religious zealotry and blindness to reason, and the rest of the new comers would support him. This has been traced back to some known religious groups, I hear. I don't know which religious group or groups.

We could do nothing about it, since the meetings were billed as open, and billed as all welcome. They filibustered us and just as quickly as they came, they disappeared.

I am not trying to say anything, but I have two parallels observed about you to them: Inperviousness to reason, disruptive in nature, and occasional emergence on the forum in a more-or-less constant absence.

If you say that's three, not two, I give it to you, I just wanted to hear at least THREE reasonable statements from you.

The sages tell us that it's a waste of time to argue over religion.

I agree.

If some people want to believe that they have been so unworthy of their God that he had to have his son nailed to a pole to pay for their sins then more power to them!

I don't want to take that hope away from them. Evidently they have some pretty deep guilt feelings they need to deal with.

However, having read the religious doctrine myself I'll take Jesus's at his word: "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

I can accept this. I accept that there are indeed evil people in this world. This concept is beyond my personal ability to comprehend, but clearly evil people exist. I do see evidence of such people myself.

So I guess the supreme creator of this universe had to create some way for those poor miserable souls to be redeemed.

It's beyond my comprehension because it doesn't apply to me. This explains why it makes no sense to me.

I can accept that.

So I'm sorry to hear that some people were actually the cause of God having to have his only begotten son nailed to a pole. I'm very grateful that I'm not among that rotten bunch. May they find the repentance they so desperately need.

But let them also hear the words of Jesus and recognize that even Jesus himself acknowledged that all men are not in need of repentance.

Don't be calling Jesus a liar. You people who are in need of repetance are already in enough trouble as it is.

This post makes no sense to me, but that's fine. We can just agree to disagree.

Well religion is usually discussed in the religion forum but many of us "atheists" moved a lot of our discussions to the science and Philosophy forum where a bit more reason and science could be found.

If we wanted to argue endlessly about the Bible or religion we would be hanging out in that "general religion" forum.

I don't go there anymore because like Spider said, it's illogical to argue about the behavior of a God I don't believe in, and that goes tje same for a book I believe to be a bunch of fiction written by either aliens or ancient rulers who wanted to control people and start wars using religion and usurping the power normally given by way of faith in some God.

Yes, anyone could have predicted that that's what you'd say, once they read and accepted my view of your style and alleged purpose as per above.

I wouldn't utter "I agree with you" even to disagree. I would feel stupid to agree with you even to that extent.

It's a personal thing and I don't suppose you sense it, but I really don't think much of you, your intellect, your grasp of logic or your religion. Again, that's a personal view and please don't feel offended, it's not a personal attack on you.

Turns out I was wrong, you don't understand the argument.

I'll try one more time.

Unless you know everything, you cannot say if a supreme being would perform an action attributed to that supreme being. You can say "Well, there must have to be a better way!", but that is an assumption that can't be based on any facts. It's a statement of fact with no evidence to support it. In other words, a gratuitous assertion.

With Noah's Flood, it's easy to say "That's stupid!", as James so eloquently put it, but James doesn't know that there were better actions God could have committed that would have met God's goals. James imagines that God's plan has absolutely no goals whatsoever and God can do anything he wants and still get the desired results. That is a very short-sighted and naive belief.

God exists and you cannot argue against the idea, because any form of argument against it proves it.



My short summary of spider's position.

So nobody really understands the argument?

Really you guys, watch some smart non-Christians argue against Christianity. They don't mention God's behavior. They attack the historicity of the Bible, the possibility that God exists, the nature of God. But to argue that God's actions are stupid requires that you know all of God's goals for the universe and every possible outcome from the situation.

I am just giving you grief spidey...

That works in two ways.

It also means to know the mind of god, and pretend you know what he wants . . . . you would need to know what god knows which is clearly impossible for humans to do, right?

So all of religion is a sham.

Well, this is a two-way street Spider.

Consider the following:




In a "Grand Picture" of things I would agree with you on this.

However, when speaking about a religion that is based solely on a collection of stories in a book that "Grand Picture" that you would like to elude to is totally irrelevant.

Now allow me to explain why it's irrelevant.

You are attempting to claim that if we could know things that are NOT explained in the Bible, then we could see the justifications for why the Bible appears to be utterly stupid.

However, all you are doing there is asking us to believe in a God that is ultimately different from what the Bible claims that God is like.

You are asking use to embrace the Bible, worship Christianity and it's interpretations of the Bible, all because you claim that God utlimately isn't like what the Bible claims.

You're claiming that we must have complete faith that in some imagined "bigger picture" there exists a God behind this book who can justify the gross stupidity of the book itself.

What sense does that even make?

Why bother with the book at all if you're going to believe that way?

You might think that I don't believe in a "God", but intuitively I do. However, I recognize, Just like you do that if a "God" exists it must be far more intelligent than what the stories of the Bible depict.

Therefore instead of clinging to the Bible, I simply reject the Bible as most likely not having anything to do with God in the first place.

Moreover, if what you claim is true, then this God certainly woudln't even blame me!

God would necessarily have to look at me and say, "Yes my child, you were perfectly correct, I am far greater than that stupid book makes me out to appear"

So what's the point in even clinging to the Bible if you, yourself believe that if you knew things outside of the Bible those things could somehow justify the Bible?

You're actually arguing against the Bible when you suggest this. You're actually agreeing with me that the Bible is indeed stupid, and you're attempting to argue that the "Real God" can somehow be justified, if only we had access to some imagined 'infinitely intelligent explantions' that cannot be found in the Bible.

So as far as I see, you're actually in agreement with me and just don't even realize it.

If what you say is true then clearly the God that's behind the Bible couldn't possibly blame anyone for rejecting the Bible on the grounds that it appears to be stupid because even that God would know that the book does indeed appear to be stupid without the necessary extra information that he failed to include in the book.

How could a God blame anyone for rejecting a book whilst God withholds the most important details that are required for the book to make sense?

You're basically just saying, "Look, let's ignore the actual Bible and just worship the God who supposedly wrote it in the hopes that there actually is a righteous God behind it after all in spite of the fact that the book makes no sense on its own"

That's the argument I'm hearing. And it makes no sense to me.

If we're going to do that why not apply that to the mythology of Zeus? Why apply it to the mythology of Yahweh?

Or better yet, why even bother with either of those. Why not accept the Moon Goddess of the Wiccans. There's aren't even any major conflicts associated with that mythology that we'd even need to ignore. We could just accept it, as is, and it makes sense without contradiction. Then we don't need to makes 'excuses' for the God in the mythology.

That's all you're doing. You're just claiming that there must be 'excuses' for the Biblical God and that we should just accept that. Buy why? Why bother with such a convoluted and gory mythology?

Why not just worship the Moon Goddess of the Wicca and do away with all those horrible inconsistencies and unexplanable stupidities?

Spider,

When James argues about "God's behavior" it is because he has given you the benefit of the doubt and temporarily has accepted your premise that (hypothetically) your God exists.

Its like me saying... okay, IF the God of the Bible exists and IF he really did all the things the Bible and you claim he did.... then lets take a look at that.

I have used this form of argument also. I have asked Christians who believe in the literal story of how God "created Adam and Eve" from the dust of the earth, and how he "walked in the garden with them" and asked questions about the nature of this God that has a body and can walk in the garden with Adam, and create Eve from his rib.

I asked these questions not because I believed in that God but because they did. I wanted to begin with what THEY believe and explore their thinking from there.

So I understand this kind of argument. It does not mean that I believe in the God.

Bushio said the same thing as me, only with a lot fewer words.

The only thing I would like to add to his comments is the following correction:

So that religion is a sham. (not all of religion is a sham)

All religions don't describe God's character and behavior in such great detail as the Abrahamic religions do, and therefore they are not in a position to have to 'justify' the God's behavior.

Well I am only assuming that a religion is indeed a religion when it starts to try to speak for god, or know gods will.

That's baloney!

We can take any mythology and argue about whether or not the charaters within that mythology are consistent in the behavior that the mythology itself attributes to them.

We could argue the same things for Zeus, or any ficticious character in any made-up story.

I aruge that the mythology itself is inconsistent.

The mythology itself claims that God is all-powerful, all-wise and all-merciful, and then has this same Character doing un-wise, lame, and un-merciful acts.

I can't even argue against the mythology of Zeus on these same grounds because in the mythology of Zeus, Zeus was never claimed to be 'all-perfect'.

If Zeus didn't like the way you looked at him he could squash you like a bug and not have to give a reason. Maybe he just felt like it. Zeus was allowed to do anything he wants.

The Biblical God, on the other hand, is NOT permitted to just do anything he wants. Why? Because the STORY the actual mythology itself demands that this God be all-righteous!

Therefore the God of the Bible cannot do "unrighteous acts" because the mythology demands that it's a "righteous" God.

Yet it has this god doing all sorts of things that flie in the face of the very notion of "righteousness".

So there's no need to even pretend that the God is real.

We can view it as a ficticious character within a mythology the whole time and still be able to say that the mythology itself is inconsistent because it claims that it's God is all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful, but it has that God doing un-wise, un-powerful, and un-merciful things all through the story.

There is no need to even pretend that the character in the story has any reality in order to point out the fact that the story itself is a contradiction in terms.

So this idea that a person must accept the 'reality' of a character in a story in order to point out contradictions in the story is simply untrue and has no basis whatsover.

By that definition then perhaps Wicca doesn't qualify as a genuinely religion then.

The only thing it claims that came from the Goddess is the Wicca rede:

"An it harm none do as ye will"

And I'm not even certain they claim that this actually came from their Goddess, some people do, others don't.

There's no threat of what will happen to a person if they do go around harming others, but there is an indication that this is indeed against the will of their Goddess.

So I'm not sure whether that would qualify as "knowing gods will" or not. It's a pretty short doctrine, that's for sure.

Perfection begets perfection, anything less is not.

Is this a perfect universe?

I think you missed my point altogether. If the God is not real, does not exist, then he HAS NO BEHAVIOR TO CRITICIZE.

Yet you argue about "if he existed" then.... he is whatever. So in that moment you HAD to let him exist hypothetically.

Otherwise you are fighting a phantom that does not exist and that is a pointless waste of energy. That is all Spider was trying to say.

If you truly don't believe he exists, then there is nothing to argue or talk about.

I don't see you arguing about what a butt hole Zeus or Thor was. Its time to give up on Jehovah James. He does not exist either.