Confession of a former christian

So in summary - Islamic terrorists are wrong and you are right because you believe it to be so. They also believe they are right but they are simply wrong about this. Because you say so.Additionaly you would do exacly as they are doing if it would lead to a 'positive' outcome. Again Islamic extremist do beleieve they are justified by their belief and that the outcome is positive but they are simply wrong. Because you say so.This world is a dangerous place because of people like you."God" help us all.

Basically... God is more knowledgable and benevolent then we can ever hope to be, and therefore his will is best even if we do not understand (currently or possibly ever) the actual reasoning for why His will is best.This, actually, is an extremely good arguement for bowing to God's will.I'd do the same thing, actually. I'd just have to be shown two things first:1. This God actually exists.
2. This God actually is more knowledgable and benevolent then we can ever hope to be.So far, I've yet to be shown either of these points.
So far, I've yet to hear of anything reasonable that would even imply either of these specific points.Bowing one's entire moral philosopy to a known morally-higher power can be an acceptable course of action. It's also a very serious course of action. I'd hate to see anyone doing so without the required due-diligence. If you can no longer show Him to anyone else, then you no longer have proof for yourself, even. This should be understood in the sense that you possibly could have been fooled. A dream, a vision, an imposter-being, imagination, or perhaps the entity that was shown to you simply no longer exists as it did when it originally showed itself to you. You may even receive constant reinforcement of your personal proof. The fact remains, however, that without the ability to show this to anyone else, you are left open to the significant possibility of being personally fooled. I'd agree to this. Sure God could, sure any sufficiently powerful being could. Then, in order to make sure I wasn't being fooled somehow, I'd have to test my knowledge agaist reality. If I'm unable to duplicate the specifics, I cannot rule out the significant possibility that I am being fooled (through any number of means). Duplication of results may not be the best or only method of verification for testing against reality. But it is our current best known method, by far. For something as serious as bowing my moral philosophy to another being, I cannot honestly let such an obvious and powerful test go unpassed.Any serious course of action, such as bowing one's entire moral philosphy to another entity, should not be done if there is a significant chance one is simply being fooled.

It seems that an interesting philosophy results from the realizations of your statement. So you are saying that there is no way of telling if something that hurts you is wrong or evil, since you cannot know if God caused it or if the human hurting you is being led by God or not.In fact, since God is in control of everything (doesn't stop the baby's killing, by your example) then nothing that hurts you can be classified as wrong or evil. It is only the act of disobedience (sin) that is evil.So if you are killed by someone, your death is not evil even if it was murder. It is only the action by your murderer (unless God told him to do it) that is evil. Your murder is actually good because God let it happen.Furthermore, you cannot even tell if the person doing the murder is acting at the behest of God. So, you cannot even tell if his action is evil. I don't see how you can approve of laws to punish him then.What knowledge were we supposed to have gotten from that fruit in the Garden? Darn! cheated again!

As has been noted by Stile, you depend on two false premeses for such a decision to be rational:1) god must exist
2) you must have proven that god is a better moral judge than human reason and empathy can provideNeither of these has been shown to be true. In fact, the second seems to be disproven. Hm. I see what you mean, iano. I believe that a greater good would be served if I were to kill every single human being who agrees with yuor disgusting religion. If I am correct, then I would be justified in killing you, right? Assume for the sake of argument that a greater good would be served. Would slaughtering all Christians be justified?It's the exact same argument as your "killing babies is justified" verbal vomit. If you really thing the ends justify the means, even in such cases as mass-murder or child murder, you really are a disgusting sonofabitch, and a greater good would be served by removing you and all those like you from the human population. It's a good thing I'm not Hitler. It's unfortunate that your arguments follow the same lines as the rationale behind the extermination of the Jews.Authoritarian morality and an "ends justify the means" philosophy are what resulted in the Holocaust, and what are causing Islamic terrorism today. Glad we agree that your moral system is an abhorrent example of idiotic filth. So killing babies is justified if it brings their parents to god. Yep, you're insane. Suddenly the whole "lying for Jesus" thing doesn't seem so bad! I'd much rather tolerate a liar than someone who advocated killing babies because the horrific pain the parents feel might "save" them!You make me sick. You're a perfect poster child for "Why I wouldn't be a Christian even if I believed in a deity." A world where the vast majority of human reason and empathy is overridden by religious dogma. Why are the religious right building megachirches insteaad of feeding the hungry with that money, iano? Why is the Catholic Church even now telling AIDS-ridden Africans that condoms cause HIV rather than prevent it?You serious dare to place the blame for overconsumption of resources and underfunded relief efforts on human empathy and reason, when both these things scream against it while your churches wallow in wealth and hypocracy?Human empathy and reason are perfectly adequate for forming a moral system, which is why every society has some system of morality. They may be different, but the Christian moral system has shown to be at best inadequate, and at worst horrific, as you yourself show when you say in all seriousness that killing a child could be a "good" act if it brings the parents to god. You buy into the reasonign that brought us the Inquisition and make claims about other moral systems?I think there's a passage in that book you're so fond of about a plank in someone's eye. Even a broken clock can be right twice a day, I suppose. If you can't prove his existence to anyone else, what differenciates you from a schitzophrenic suffering delusions and hallucinations? Popularity of the delusion? You didn't answer the question, iano. Would it be ethical for me to hurt or kill my creation?Complaining about the size of the AI is irrelevant - the AI is sentient, and that is all that matters. I don't care if it's the size of a squirrel or a battleship. Besides, aren't we supposed to have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, becoming like god, according to your silly mythology book? Are you an idiot? A human lifetime on Earth is a finite term. Any "sin" or crime committed during a human lifetime is temporal. How can rejecting god for a single lifetime justify punishment for eternity? How can disagreement with a philosophy, or simply not acknowledging the existence of an entity that apparently has tried damned hard to cover up any evidence of itself, ever justify any punishmnet at all, let alone eternal torture?You don't agree with me. If I had authority, would it be ethical for me to subject you to torture?Once again, this is the philosophy that led to the Inquisition. People like you are a threat to the entire world. That would, in fact, be "downplaying the horrendous pain and suffering that can be experienced." Why did the firstborn of Egypt deserve to die, iano? They did nothing. Amusing how you take some aspects of the Bible to be literally true, and not others, even outside of obvious parables.Of course, your interpretation only serves to make your position worse off. ...yes there is. I didn't agree to pay any price. I didn't agree to incur any debt. I signed no contract, made no compact, consented to no covenant. Your claims of gods authority all boil down to "god has a bigger stick, and might makes right." Irrelevant. You have to show why sin justifies eternal torture of any sort. "God hates it, a lot" is irrelevant, becasue it still relies on "god has a bigger stick, and might makes right."I hate your moral philosophy with a "furious hatred" as well. Does that mean I have the right to torture you? What if I was infinitely powerful, or all-knowing? Does that make it any more right for me to torture you, just becasue I disagree with you strongly? Fair, if not entirely accurate. I made a conscious decision to compare my beliefs to those of known-fictional entities, or to schitsophrenics. If I had no more real evidence for my beleifs than a guy in a straight jacket has for his voices, it's likely my beliefs are delusional in nature. 1) I had a great deal of the Christian Faith you are implying I did not posess. You are mistaken, and are leaning heavily on your No True Scotsman fallacy. Have fun with your irrational arguments.2) You're right, empiricism is quite good at dispelling fairytales. Like your deity, the imaginary sky pixie who cares a whole lot about whether little boys touch themselves. The deity who sacrificed himself to himself over a rule he made up in the first place. Fairytales just like that. Or the one about the global Flood that never happened. Or the Exodus that never happened. Or the whole Creation story. And I'm saying that a sufficiently powerful entity could do that, but my belief would be identical to a schitzophrenic who believes his voices are real. I actively avoid believing in things I have no evidence for for exactly that reason - if my belief holds as much water as a crazy person's belief, perhaps my belief is also crazy. Absence of evidence is evidence of a likelihood of absence, iano. I don't believe in god for exactly the same reason you don't believe in an invisible pink unicorn.To repeat an often used Atheist argument, you and I are both Atheists with regard to innumerable religions. I simply believe in one fewer deity than you do. When you understand why you do not believe in those deities, you will understand why I do not believe in yours.

I can't see that it matters what or who the source of the pain is. Insofar as God utilises it (whatever it's source) in the attempt at saving us it can be considered a good thing. Like breaking eggshells is a good thing in the process of making omelettes. I'm not sure that a car could be considered evil - even though it can hurt you. In that sense of "thing" I would agree with you. I would agree that the root of evil occurs at the point of rejection of Gods restraint which balances one side of the see-saw. Rejection (the cutting loose) of this restraint permits the see-saw to tilt and slide the person down towards the attraction profferred by sin - which had been balancing the other end of the see-saw. Balancing things that is, until the will makes the choice for sin.Where the line is drawn between this root of evil and the products that follow I cannot say.All God does is good. In permitting my murder I get to see God quicker - which is good for me. My murderer has broken a law of God which is good for him. Doing so will either assist in his being brought to his knees before God and saved (the law as a schoolteacher to lead you to Christ)- which is a good thing for him. Or it will condemn him to Hell. Hell is something that only occurson account of a final, irrevocable demand of a persons will - sin being the vehicle for that person ending up and remaining where it was they wanted to go. It is good that a man be permitted to exercise his choice - irrespective of where that choice leads him. Otherwise he wouldn't really be a man. To be honest, I generally don't consider civil law in terms of any moral comment they might be making. Not in terms of your observation - but because there is little point in me judging others. I arrived at the same conclusion by a different route thus. God will deal with us all in the end and that (in my least wordly moments) is good enough for me..- A knowledge of good and evil - most certainly in the sense of our own personal good and evil - access to which we all have. Knowledge of anothers good and evil is of secondary importance.

Why is "allah's" non-existence taken for granted. Allah is the arabic word for God, Arab Christians call God 'allah', and supposedly, they worship the God of Abraham, which the Christians also worship.It allegedly is the same God, so your statement 'the existence of Gad is assumed, but the non-existence of Allah is also assumed. That means God both exists and non-exists at the same time.

This is a little off but understandably so given what you were responding to. The simple definition of 'good' given earlier went something like "that which conforms or aligns to Gods will". Evil would then be defined as the contrary to that: "that which runs counter to Gods will".In taking the tack you were responding to, I was engaging in relativistic argument to show how something considered as a relative "good" (eg: going to heaven instead of hell) could arise out of some action/inaction of God which would be considered relativley "bad"(God inflicting/permitting pain).In fact, "good" and "evil" are relative only in so far as they relate to Gods will or no.In the sense of "knowing best what good is" thus, God knows best not because he is more knowledgeable but because God knows what his will is - better than anyone else.- It wasn't just my entire moral philosophy I handed over to God (..and I certainly didn't have much of a one to offer him), it was me entirely: lock, stock and smoking barrel. It was more down to his diligence than it was my due.- Excuse me if I stop you right there. Have you not just placed a limit on Gods ability to demonstrate his existance? Surely all your tests can hope to achieve is a rearrangement of atoms in your brain tending towards a pattern called "as certain as these tentitive tests can enable me to be". God can arrange the atoms in your brain into that pattern too. Perhaps you'd like even more certainty - it's just a modification of that pattern after all. How certain would you like to be. That's no problem to God..- As you might imagine, reality takes on a different hue once God appears on the scene. There is no reason to suppose tools applicable in evaluating a godless-tinted reality will be of any use in this new terrain. To suppose so is to speculate wildly.

Taz as I said, Jesus and the apostles demonstrated the model Christian. Study them to see if that's what you're looking for. I work at modeling after them but come short as a model. They're the ones to be the models. They were very preachy about the narrow straight way to life but never hurt a flea, unlike the literalist Quran folks. They wanted what they had to be shared with others so as to share the pearly gates with others etc.Be mindful they and Jesus warned that their way was the way of suffering because the world would reject, persecute and kill them wherever fundamentalist Christianity is in the minority. That's been the case ever since, now in Islamic places like the Sudan etc.The alternative is eternal torment according to Jesus and the disciples. I didn't set that up. That's what they taught. If you don't believe what they preach based on the fulfilled prophecies, etc you will likely have no desire to go that route.I have no doubt whatsoever that I'm on the right road with them as I've studied the evidence all my life to make sure. I've had so many remarkable manifestations of the reality of God myself via answered prayer, etc that nothing will ever convince me otherwise. The closer one draws to God the more he reveals himself and draws near. Imo, this is the way of peace and blessing. Whether I live or die, I win with coming King Jesus and the resurrection. I have peace and confidence that

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Buzsaw writes:

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Jesus and the apostles demonstrated the model Christian.

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You mean the one that blighted the fig tree for having the temerity to not produce figs out of season?That's what a model Christian does? Kills things in hissy fits?

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Be mindful they and Jesus warned that their way was the way of suffering because the world would reject, persecute and kill them wherever fundamentalist Christianity is in the minority. That's been the case ever since, now in Islamic places like the Sudan etc.

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Be mindful that the Jews were warned that their way was the way of suffering because the world would reject, persecute, and kill them wherever fundamentalist Christianity is in the majority. That's been the case ever since.So if Islam is bad for what it did to the Christians, what does that make Christianity for what it has done to the Jews?Does the phrase "blood libel" mean anything to you?

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The alternative is eternal torment according to Jesus and the disciples.

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BZZZZT!Pascal's Wager. I'm so sorry, Buzsaw. Johnny, tell him what parting gifts he has!Well, Bob, Buzsaw has won himself a lifetime of anguish in someone else's hell! Yes, that's right. After spending all of his life fighting against Satan and worshipping the Christian god, Buzsaw gets a reward of going straight to Hades for his hubris. He'll be sentenced to solve a series of puzzles for which the instructions can be read in many ways. Every attempt to glean more information will be met with "Since it would just be a waste of my time to tell you, I won't." Of course, every proposed solution will conflict with something in the contradictory instructions. This being for his continued insistence that those around him are unworthy of explanations.But, he won't get hungry because he'll have an afterlife-time supply of Rice-a-Roni®, the San Francisco Treat.You didn't really think that the god that truly exists was the Christian one, did you?

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I've had so many remarkable manifestations of the reality of God myself via answered prayer, etc that nothing will ever convince me otherwise.

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And the other two-thirds of the globe can make the exact same claim...except they come to a very different conclusion regarding god.Why should you anybody follow your claims when most people think you're full of it?

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Whether I live or die, I win with coming King Jesus and the resurrection.

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And when you wind up in eternal torment in hell, what will you do then?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

I'm not placing a limit on God to do anything. I'm recognizing the existing limit within myself that needs to be tested for.What are you saying? That I'd do a test, and it may fail, but God would re-arrange my mind so that I think it passed? Or are you saying that I'd do a test, and God would re-arrange my mind (or the test) so that it would always pass?Either way, the test on myself would be positive. If I could always run the test, and it always came out positive, then I would no longer be so afraid of fooling myself. The chances of fooling oneself would be greatly reduced.I'm not restricting God in any way, I'm simply making an attempt to make sure I'm not being fooled. Being fooled is a very significant problem that needs to be tested for. For me, anyway. I get fooled a lot.I'm not 'testing God', I'm testing myself. If God can re-arrange anything so to make the test positive... that's great, that's exactly the kind of confirmation I'd be looking for.Or maybe you're saying God would re-arrange my thoughts so that I wouldn't feel the need/desire to run the test in the first place? This is possible. Then I'm no longer doing my due-diligence, and I shouldn't be bowing my moral philosophy over to anyone. Of course I'd do it if God makes me do it, but it doesn't remove the fact that I shouldn't make that decision myself, because I have not tested myself. Remember, I'm not testing God, I'm testing myself. I don't know about you, but I get fooled a lot. If I don't test myself, I'm not doing my due-diligence, and I'm not ready to make such a serious decision as turning-over my moral philosphy to another entity. Everytime I come across the knowledge that I can be fooled (in any way), I only re-confirm the fact that I need to test myself before making serious decisions.But yes, if God 'fixes me' so that I am never personally fooled any more in any way, then I no longer need to test for being personally fooled. Presently, this hasn't happened to me yet. Just this morning I thought I had my car-keys. But I didn't. I was fooled. I actually forgot that I had left them in my other jacket. So, right now, I still need to test myself for being fooled before I make any serious decisions.But, lets look at your last remark there one more time: I would like to be certain to the point where I can test myself (and get agreement from others) that I am indeed not fooling myself.
If that's no problem to God, then I have no issue.

Rrhain your message is so full of hogwash that I wouldn't waste a minute on it except to advise that some sound reasoning applied to your allegations would make it a little more sensible.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

ooooh! An expert rebuttal!Go spend some time talking to your imaginary friend. It gets lonely, being nonexistent.

I was noting that this chain of messages left much to be desired.Then I noticed the topic was in the "Free For All" forum.So, never mind. No dilemma on what to do.Adminnemooseus

Some people seek to understand God, knowing that given their human limitations, they will never be able to fully achieve such a lofty goal.Other people believe they do not need to study God any longer because they already have all the knowledge they will ever desire or need to achieve. These are the people who claim to speak for God in his/her supposed absence, including any judgment concerning salvation that according to the Bible itself is solely within the province of the Christian God.Which one are you Buz? Your posts indicate your position is the latter one.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

And who is going to be the ultimate judge of whatever test you care to carry out? Why, it's youself of course. You are the one who assigns worth to whatever test is carried out. You are the one who decides to accept or reject the tests conclusions. You are caught in a catch-22 of recognizing limits and not-recognizing limits.To suggest yourself able to test would require that you be "god" in this instance. Which means that is indeed a limit placed on God ... by god.