posted
"Tell that to the parents of babies which where born blind and/or deaf, and/or with a mental handicap. Tell that to anyone who has been crippled for life - paralyzed from the neck down - in a severe accident. Tell that to a person who has lost family, or (a) good friend(s), in a severe accident, or to an as-of-yet uncurable disease (i.e. cancer)."
Although I'm not stating my own opinion here, for those who have lost family, the "blessing" would be the time you had with them, rather than the time you lost them. Is it better to have known someone for a short time, or not at all?
Same with children. Is it better to have a child born blind (or whatever), or to have never had a child at all?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
quote:If you see life itself is a blessing, as I do, what have you to complain about? If you think you DESERVE life, for whatever reason you can come up with, then you have EVERYTHING to complain about.
That's an interesting viewpoint, and not without some truth, but having been away from religion for quite some time now, I find it difficult to put myself into the frame of mind that views existance itself in such a subjective manner. I think that someone who is in such a mindset will, indeed, have some predisposition to feel a certain way about life. However, I think that it's pointless to criticise someone who is not content with their life. You view life as a blessing, but would you feel the same way if you were in pain, or sad, depressed, and lonely?
quote:Is it better to have a child born blind (or whatever), or to have never had a child at all?
Although I think you're expecting people to answer that it's better to have had a handicapped child than none at all, I think that there are valid reasons for preferring the opposite. I've just rewritten a paragraph on my views on this subject a few times, but I can't seem to hammer out the points properly without dragging the discussion towards the existance and nature of morality, which has already been discussed exhaustively in other threads.
-------------------- "Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I'm pissed at you, so I hurt your children?
Funny, to me it seems more like, "You get punished, and EVERYONE gets hurt in the process. So don't think it's just your life that'll get messed up if you screw up." "obey me or burn forever" IS forced obedience.
No, it's not. It's a frelling big favor. We WOULD burn forever, not as punishment, but as the natural way of things. God can not be in the presence of sin (Job being a screwy book that quite possibly shouldn't be there to begin with), and without God there is no life. Obeying God is the only way to avoid hell, and He set that up at massive cost to Himself.
Life is a blessing.. .provided you're not born with crippling defects or into an abusive household, or with any number of problems that AREN'T your fault.
No, it's STILL a blessing then. All is in how you look at life, and apparently you're the more pessimistic type.
I will personally make sure you burn in your own damned hell if you try to pass this off as "God's will".
Excuse me? Who said people dying was God's will? Not me. It's just the way the world is.
"...and that's why God causes bus accidents..."
How dare you even CLAIM to know the thoughts and desires of a supernatural entity?!
Because he told a bunch of people, and they wrote them down.
You obviously haven't lived long enough to know what real misery means
Wanna bet? There have been times when I would have welcomed death. Then I grew up and realized exactly the truth I've been telling you: life is a blessing, no matter what. Simply view it as such, and you'll be happy all your days.
No shit has hit your fan yet, but you have no idea how much I'm restraining myself from hoping it does, just to teach you some humility
*L*
Humility? You think I need to be taught humility? The basis of humility is the exact concept I've been trying to get across to you!
There are two ways to look at life:
A) Humble guy: "I don't deserve life, and yet I have it anyway. Cool beans, no matter what happens to me."
B) Proud guy: "I DESERVE life, with all the trimmings. If something bad happens to me, well, it must be GOD, treating me unfairly!"
Still think I need humility? I'll take anything life has to offer with a smile, becuase I can't be touched. Humility leads to happiness in all things.
he certainly must also deserve the blame when life is a curse.
The only time life is a curse is if you WANT it to be a curse, if you want to see it as one. Job may have been wrong about who was doing what, but he did get one thing right: "Blessed be the name of the Lord." I am ALIVE. I have the chance to spend eternity with God, instead of away from Him. How can I possibly complain for my own situation?
he can't only be responsible when they go right, and not when they go wrong.
Sure He can. They go wrong when we take control away from Him.
for those who have lost family, the "blessing" would be the time you had with them, rather than the time you lost them. Is it better to have known someone for a short time, or not at all?
Yes! Go, Liam! Regardless of Tim's former .sig, Tennyson got it right: it IS better to have loved and lost.
You view life as a blessing, but would you feel the same way if you were in pain, or sad, depressed, and lonely?
What makes you think I'm not?
Well, minus the "depressed" part, 'cause that's part of what we're trying to avoid, here...
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
posted
Methinks I know definitions of 'pain' you're unfamiliar with.
So don't speak to me about pain.
quote:"You get punished, and EVERYONE gets hurt in the process. So don't think it's just your life that'll get messed up if you screw up."
Like I said again, that's STUPID. Stupid and childish of God to allow other, innocent people to suffer for someone else's mistakes. Stupid to punish the son for the iniquities of the father. That's what the people did to the big kid in 'Freak the Mighty.' An omnipotent being could have found a better way.
quote:but as the natural way of things. God can not be in the presence of sin (Job being a screwy book that quite possibly shouldn't be there to begin with), and without God there is no life. Obeying God is the only way to avoid hell, and He set that up at massive cost to Himself.
Horse puckey. God made the Serpent/Lucifer/Satan. And He made the rules, even the one about not being in the presence of Sin (and if God can't be in the presence of Sin, doesn't that necessarily make Sin more powerful than God?). He didn't HAVE to. Nobody put the Ultimate Nullifier to His head.
And tough about Job. It's in, so you have to accept it at face value as equal with everything else in the book... or don't expect ME to accept ANY of it.
quote: apparently you're the more pessimistic type.
What's so pessimistic about not wanting people to suffer unnecessarily through no fault of their own, and saying that for them to do so is wrong? You say 'we all sinned,' but you KNOW that's crap, because babies and unborn children can't sin. Sin, according to you, is the negative use of free will.. and they don't HAVE it!
quote:A) Humble guy: "I don't deserve life, and yet I have it anyway. Cool beans, no matter what happens to me."
B) Proud guy: "I DESERVE life, with all the trimmings. If something bad happens to me, well, it must be GOD, treating me unfairly!"
You forgot: C) Child: "I exist. That is not my fault, I didn't make me. What I do to myself with my own actions, that's my fault. What others do to me, or what happens to me that I didn't cause myself, is NOT. And I shouldn't have to stand for it."
If you'd done nothing to me (and you haven't), and I came over to your house and whacked you over the head with a baseball bat, you'd have just cause to complain about my actions.
If a child who has done nothing to God is 'whacked' with 'baseball bat' of the pain and suffering and ultimately slow and painful death from cystic fibrosis, he has just cause to complain about it, as well.
And I'm so sick about hearing about God's 'sacrifice.' It's no sacrifice to send a bit of yourself to Earth to die, or even into Hell, if you know you're getting out in three days. Big fat hairy DEAL. Its a MUCH bigger risk (and therefore a much bigger sacrifice) for those of us who CHALLENGE, knowing that if we lose, we get to go there, in our entirety, FOREVER. There was never any danger of that, so God risked nothing.
See, the thing about omniscience and omnipotence is that it means that God never plays games that He can lose. He either wins, or He throws the match. Same with the Human toys. Omnipotence means that if an idea can be conceived by any mind (and certainly by a human mind), God can accomplish it. That means that God is capable of saving EVERY soul without resorting to acts that would violate free will. Saying that God is constrained by 'rules' is to deny His power.
quote:Job being a screwy book that quite possibly shouldn't be there to begin with
Now, if only Jeff would do his archive-hunting thing and find the time Omega made his big hullabaloo about how you can't believe the rest of the Bible unless you believe in Creation and how either the Bible is all the word of God or isn't and how selective acceptance is bad and how Catholicism is stupid etc. etc.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
posted
An omnipotent being could have found a better way.
He did. It's called "Don't eat the frelling fruit". Whoops! Too late.
if God can't be in the presence of Sin, doesn't that necessarily make Sin more powerful than God?
No, it just means that God has an unchangable nature. Just like I can't breathe vacuum.
He made the rules, even the one about not being in the presence of Sin
If God could be in the presence of sin, He wouldn't be Himself. There are things God won't do for any reason.
It's in, so you have to accept it at face value as equal with everything else in the book
Book? What book? The Bible isn't a book. It's a compilation. You have to analyze EACH BOOK on its own. Job contradicts the rest, and is totally unrelated to the rest on top of it all, so why did the Catholics put it there to begin with?
You say 'we all sinned,' but you KNOW that's crap, because babies and unborn children can't sin.
They're stuck in an unclean world. Yes, it's sad when a child dies, but a) they were alive for a time, which is a blessing in itself; b) their presence was a blessing to others; c) they have committed no sin, as you say, and thus likely get a get-into-heaven-FREE card. Think big picture, here.
What's so pessimistic about not wanting people to suffer unnecessarily through no fault of their own, and saying that for them to do so is wrong?
Oh, that's not the negative part. The negative part is where you blame the God who gave them life to begin with, and gave them a chance at something better that they otherwise wouldn't have had.
If you'd done nothing to me (and you haven't), and I came over to your house and whacked you over the head with a baseball bat, you'd have just cause to complain about my actions.
Yes, because you actively did that to me.
If a child who has done nothing to God is 'whacked' with 'baseball bat' of the pain and suffering and ultimately slow and painful death from cystic fibrosis, he has just cause to complain about it, as well.
Complain about what? God did nothing to them. Neither did anyone else. The circumstances are what they are, and you can accept that and try to make them better, or you can try to find a scapegoat and waste your life whining about it.
And I'm so sick about hearing about God's 'sacrifice.' It's no sacrifice to send a bit of yourself to Earth to die, or even into Hell, if you know you're getting out in three days.
Methinks God knows definitions of 'pain' you're unfamiliar with. You don't consider dying the most horrible death ever conceived a sacrifice?
Its a MUCH bigger risk (and therefore a much bigger sacrifice) for those of us who CHALLENGE, knowing that if we lose, we get to go there, in our entirety, FOREVER.
Challenge what? God? That's not a risk, that's stupid, spiteful, and suicidal.
OK, one more time
A) You're screwed, by your nature and by the nature of the world you were born into.
B) God undergoes the greatest possible trauma to save you.
And you complain about what, again?
Omnipotence means that if an idea can be conceived by any mind (and certainly by a human mind), God can accomplish it.
No, it means that He can do anything that CAN BE DONE. God can't make the sum of two and two be five.
Even the omnipotent have limits, both of their nature and of their goals. Forcing us into worship would defeat the entire purpose of creating us, and being in the presence of sin would be by nature impossible.
Think of it like this: you sin, and BY DEFINITION you are no longer in God's presence. He doesn't cast you out, you cast YOURSELF out. The very definition of being in God's presence is being without sin. Work better for you?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
quote:You don't consider dying the most horrible death ever conceived a sacrifice?
I would... if crucifixion was the most horrible death ever conceived. It isn't. Besides that, the most horrible LIFE ever conceived is FAR worse than the most horrible death ever conceived. There are kids who suffer just as much as Christ on the Cross, but they do it EVERY DAY for YEARS.
To bring up an old example... my gf was horribly abused, sexually, physically, and psychologically, by her mother and two neighbors as a child. She suffered WAY more than a pitiful few days... she's 37 and her agonies are STILL going on. She ALSO suffered from a birth defect which could have cost her her arms, and now she suffers from the effects of the surgeries to 'fix' (or make less bad, actually) that defect. These things will NEVER go away.
A few days, to thirty-odd YEARS. Sorry, but your boy just doesn't compare.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
quote: A) You're screwed, by your nature and by the nature of the world you were born into.
I made neither my own nature nor the world's. God did. He set up ALL the entry and working conditions, including the 'fact' that one moment of stupidity and gullibility committed by two fruit-munching simpletons could doom an entire species -- yeah, THAT's fair and reasonable --, to eternal torment. I refuse to accept responsibility for things I did not create (which makes me the opposite of God, who refuses to accept responsibility for things he DID create.
quote:B) God undergoes the greatest possible trauma to save you.
Nope, not the greatest possible by a long shot.
quote:And you complain about what, again?
That it's all so unnecessary. He could have forgiven Adam and Eve, and put an end to it. He could have avoided teh situation entirely. But He didn't. He set us up.
quote: No, it means that He can do anything that CAN BE DONE. God can't make the sum of two and two be five.
The Bible is full of God doing things that can't be done. Your definition of 'can't' is meaningless. (Plus, there's always noneuclidean geometry.)
quote:Even the omnipotent have limits, both of their nature and of their goals. Forcing us into worship would defeat the entire purpose of creating us, and being in the presence of sin would be by nature impossible.
Defend this using scriptural quotes. It's a theory, and a flawed one. Lucifer can be in God's presence, and L's a sinner of the highest order, any way you look at it. If God couldn't be in the presence of Sin, He couldn't act in this universe at all, and the Deists would be right.
quote:Think of it like this: you sin, and BY DEFINITION you are no longer in God's presence. He doesn't cast you out, you cast YOURSELF out. The very definition of being in God's presence is being without sin. Work better for you?
Before I was born, and for a great deal of time afterwards. I didn't sin, as I was incapable of the act, OR the knowledge of what sin, obedience, good, evil, and God was. Therefore, BY DEFINITION (yours) I should have been constantly in God's presence, and He in mine. Yet this clearly wasn't so. So no, it doesn't work at all.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
posted
Most horrible trauma ever conceived, eh? Ask Prometheos or Sisuphos or Loki if they'd like to switch places w/ Isho'. I think they'd gladly go through three hours on a crucifix and three days in hell followed by eternity in paradise, rather than their eternal punishments. Not to mention that, as Rob points out, some real people have to go through much worse. So, basically, you're wrong.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Loki got condemned to spend all eternity in Wisconsin, right?
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
No, even the Norse gods weren't that sadistic.
I would... if crucifixion was the most horrible death ever conceived. It isn't.
Yes, I worded that slightly wrong. It's the worst form of death that doesn't involve purposefully keeping the victim alive through modern medical means.
There are kids who suffer just as much as Christ on the Cross, but they do it EVERY DAY for YEARS.
They don't have it done to them by others.
A few days, to thirty-odd YEARS. Sorry, but your boy just doesn't compare.
Jesus: lived perfectly, died horribly anyway GF: lived imperfectly, still alive, and will be for the frseeable future, though in (considerably less) pain
Yeah, maybe your GF has the worse situation, by your view of the world, but tell me something: what is your girl's one chance of being free of her pain? And who can do it for her?
If that's not reason enough for you, I don't know what can be.
He set up ALL the entry and working conditions, including the 'fact' that one moment of stupidity and gullibility committed by two fruit-munching simpletons could doom an entire species -- yeah, THAT's fair and reasonable --, to eternal torment.
OK, fine, blame Him for that, if you want to. But He's done everything possible to make up for it, so what more do you want?
I refuse to accept responsibility for things I did not create
You have sinned. You HAVE to accept responsibility for that, because it's YOUR action.
He could have forgiven Adam and Eve, and put an end to it.
It's a little more compliacted. God STILL can't be in the presence of sin. Jesus, by virtue of being the perfect sacrafice, is the perfect intermediary. But the perfect sacrtafice had to be made, and God made it.
The Bible is full of God doing things that can't be done.
Can't be done BY US. Defying the laws of physics is nothing, because God created them. But math is totally abstract, and even the omnipotent can't change it.
Plus, there's always noneuclidean geometry.
Which doesn't change the sum of two and two.
Lucifer can be in God's presence, and L's a sinner of the highest order, any way you look at it.
Not if you cast out Job, which doesn't make any sense as part of inspired scripture.
If God couldn't be in the presence of Sin, He couldn't act in this universe at all, and the Deists would be right.
That's where Jesus comes in. Jesus was "the Word", "Logos", the active force that carries out the commands of the higher power.
BY DEFINITION (yours) I should have been constantly in God's presence, and He in mine. Yet this clearly wasn't so.
Says who?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
posted
How is crucifixion more painful then impalement? That's when they sharpen a really big pole and put you on top of it so as you slide down it, the pole rips you apart (by entering the anus). Sounds pretty painful to me.
posted
Impalement kills you relatively quickly, say an hour or two. Crucifiction, you suffocate slowly over three or four days, until eventually you can't use the pressure on the nails in your hands to pull your body up for air any more. If you're lucky, they break your legs early, so you die faster.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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