God as the ultimate child abuser

[Jon Miller]

You have two boxes. Someone tells you that his box has a 1000000 dollars, and that the other has a punch in the mouth. Another guy tells you that the first one has it wrong... that his box is the one with 1000000 dollars. This isn't an ideal example, but I am trying to work with what you posted.

So you have a choice, but it isn't clear (Because the gift is in a box) who is right. It depends on who you bleive.

Jon Miller

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
You have two boxes. Someone tells you that his box has a 1000000 dollars, and that the other has a punch in the mouth. Another guy tells you that the first one has it wrong... that his box is the one with 1000000 dollars. This isn't an ideal example, but I am trying to work with what you posted.

So you have a choice, but it isn't clear (Because the gift is in a box) who is right. It depends on who you bleive.

Jon Miller

Yes, exactly. After you believe one or the other it isn't really a choice.

[Jon Miller]

You have a choice of who you beleive. Just like in the myth of Adam and Eve, they had the choice of beleiving God or the serpent.

Jon Miller

[Kidlicious]

I can't choose to be a Christian anymore than you can choose not to given what you know at this time.

[Jon Miller]

I am pretty sure that people who have accepted His gift, later reject it by forgetting about Him. If I started trying to forget about Him, I bet I would not beleive within a year. And it is actually surprisingly easy to forget... just let myself get caught up in other things (not even sins, per se).

Similarly, you could try to beleive in Christ. And I think (because I Think I Am right, as it was put earlier) that you will end up finding Him.

Jon Miller

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
You have a choice of who you beleive. Just like in the myth of Adam and Eve, they had the choice of beleiving God or the serpent.

Jon Miller

God knew what they would choose and they knew what they were going to choose.

btw, you didn't answer this question. Does God need or find sin usefull?

[Jon Miller]

I already did actually. I would say that beings sinning was not needed.

Jon Miller

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I am pretty sure that people who have accepted His gift, later reject it by forgetting about Him. If I started trying to forget about Him, I bet I would not beleive within a year. And it is actually surprisingly easy to forget... just let myself get caught up in other things (not even sins, per se).

Similarly, you could try to beleive in Christ. And I think (because I Think I Am right, as it was put earlier) that you will end up finding Him.

Jon Miller

That's why I said "at this time." Sure we can both change our minds. Maybe we thought it through more or seen more evidence.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I already did actually. I would say that beings sinning was not needed.

Jon Miller

Clever. That's now what I asked. Let me rephrase. Does God need us or find it useful for us to be able to choose sin?

[Jon Miller]

Yes.

I think that what God wants, in easily expressed human terms, is to be loved. And it isn't love, without the choice to not love.

I think that this is why humans exist (the answer, put simply, to the age old question), to love.

Jon Miller

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Yes.

I think that what God wants, in easily expressed human terms, is to be loved. And it isn't love, without the choice to not love.

I think that this is why humans exist (the answer, put simply, to the age old question), to love.

Jon Miller

If he want's us to love him maybe he could show up on our birthdays or something you know.

Bottom line is you either love someone or you don't. You can't choose to love them. You can choose to treat them the same either way though. That's not what God does though. If we don't love him he condems us to death. When in actuality he created us to either love him or not. It's not really a choice. I either love ice cream or I don't. God made me either love it or not. I don't have a choice.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Elok


Pullman is a fantasy writer...and moronic, strident atheist. He doesn't even understand the things he criticizes. Kissing up to such a man is not desirable in an eminent clergyman, to put it mildly.

It's just fantasy literature, it's no big deal. Are you calling for Christians to distance themselves from all non-believers? Hmmmm.................... Einstein professed himself an atheist, so I guess there'll be no nuclear energy for you?

The ridiculousness of the lesbian bishop scandal was not the gayness per se, but the general attitude of contempt for tradition which led to it.

What lesbian bishop? What lesbian bishop?

If you're just going to make up your values from whole cloth there's no sense pretending to be Xian. Finally, we're getting the majority of our converts from "high-church" protestants like the Anglicans. They all tell horror stories, to much the same effect: the traditional protestant churches are being taken over by the same avant-garde pseudo-intellectual phonies C.S. Lewis warned them about fifty years ago.

Hmmmmmm.................. Let's see, there used to be about 100 million Orthodox in Russia, now there are only about 25 million. Wow! Your church is really growing! We get a lot of converts from your church too, people get tired of the pomp and pseudo-piety getting in the way of the essentials of the faith.

I don't know what the "Lesbian bishop" cr*p is all about. Care to put some facts behind your allegations?

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Lorizael
Have I crushed your faith yet?

LOL, no

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Agathon
No. It's simply irrational to believe in historical miracles, as Hume demonstrated so wittily. It's only reasonable to believe in miracles if the denial of the miracle would be more miraculous than the miracle itself.

Ah, so because David Hume can't perform a miracle, and Agathon can't perform a miracle, nobody can perform a miracle and therefore all claims of miracles are false.

Being witty isn't the same as being right. Maybe you should draw out something of substance to support this instead of making a blanket appeal to Hume's "authority" (no, I'm not going to do your homework for you).

I'll try to explain this in small words with a lowbrow cultural reference, if that helps. This isn't the equivalent of, "She turned me into a newt! ...Oh, I got better." The miracles weren't the focus of the Gospels. Jesus derided the people who only came looking for a miracle.

It's not my fault if people are raving loonies who believe a man walked on water and arose from the dead. It's patently ridiculous to believe those things. Given what we know of human beings and human nature, it's simply more likely that it was made up.

So, whatever is more likely is true. There are no statistical tails, no outliers. Especially if the unlikely is inconvenient to your belief system.

It's funny how someone who claimed that he had seen others rise from the dead or who spoke in gibberish claiming to be inspired by fairies would be considered a candidate for a lunatic asylum, but religious people, who believe exactly the same sort of thing, get off the hook because it is a collective delusion.

You'd have a point if the claim was that an average human performed these miracles. The whole story, from the start, is that he was never an average human. His contemporaries largely didn't believe either, for essentially the same reason.

Why stop there? According to the Gospels, even the disciples didn't believe the resurrection when it happened. The tomb was empty, some saw angels, Jesus even appeared in person. The leaders gave up and went back to the family fishing business in Galilee. They are honest that it was a hard sell, even with miracles happening in front of their eyes.

The truth is, if you believe in Christianity, you are mentally ill. You are delusional in any reasonable sense of the word. You are no better than people who believe in things like faith healers and fairies or vampires or other mythical creatures. You are only saved from the consequences of your insanity (medication, deprivation of voting and civil rights or ostracism) by the fact that many others subscribe to your lunacy.

Don't hold back; tell us how you really feel.

The madness of the whole thing becomes evident once you consider sentences like this: "I think that people who believe that physical illness is caused by evil spirits and can be cured by the sacrifice of animals, but I believe fervently that a Jewish carpenter was the progeny of an invisible divine being and he rose from the dead and could make bread and wine by waving his hands in the air along with curing leprosy and other ills by touch, and he once cured mental illness by magically transferring the "bad" into some pigs".

For ****'s sake, if you believe this ****, you are a 24 carat nutter.

Part of that doesn't make sense. Perhaps you meant that the first is ridiculed by the hypothetical speaker, and the second is affirmed? Again, being witty (or petty) isn't the same as being right. I thought we were discussing things on an elevated level rather than the typical internet frothing, flaming, and name-calling.

I'm reminded of Twain's quip that Democracy has to be worst form of government devised by man, except when compared to all the others. Well, religion has to be the worst delusion devised by man, except when compared to all the other delusions man suffers. Like the arrogance of the materialist atheist: "Whatever I don't believe in must be rubbish."

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Bishop Spong's faith crumbled after suffering with a wife afflicted by paranoid psychosis for more than 20 years. His early ministry was marked by repeated conflicts with southern racists, first in North Carolina, where a mob burned a cross on his front lawn right in front of his wife, then here in Lynchburg where he frequently came into conflict with 'ministers' of other denominations, some of whose names many of you would recognize. The strain eventually began to tell, and his wife began having paranoid delusions. The Protestant Episcopal Church moved him to a bishop's seat in New Jersey. Though removed from the vindictiveness of racial strife in the south, his wife's condition did not improve. Despite the turmoil at home Spong found time to take up a new cause, the rights of gay people to worship as they saw fit and he gradually got his way. During this time he began to modify his vision of Christianity, basically reducing it to nothing more than a club for social progress. I've read his works and autobiography, it's apparent to me that his loss of faith was largely the result of his suffering as he dealt with his increasingly psychotic wife. It's a pity that a man who out of faith did so much to help others suffered so much in his personal life and eventually lost his faith. It's also tragic that his example, as basically an atheist liberal, will be upheld by conservative theologians as a reason to resist the granting of rights within the church to gay people.

poor man, that's really sad