Where are all the gods?

Phat writes:Everyone seems to behoove the idea of god allowing harmful things to exist, but I've never seen a problem with it. Do we really expect Him to catch us every time we stumble and fall as a baby? To magically put protective pillows around our tiny knees and faces? How then would we develop the character traits to survive? Obviously we do need to get tougher.

I've never figured out how the unbelievers will call Him a bloody bastard or a tyrant as if they have some better idea of how such a Deity *should* behave! But that's an argument we will never have any conclusions on.

Tangle writes:It's certainly an argument that you will fail to understand because, I suspect, you just don't like it. To the rest of us it's blindingly bloody obvious.

Everyone seems to behoove the idea of god allowing harmful things to exist, but I've never seen a problem with it. Do we really expect Him to catch us every time we stumble and fall as a baby? To magically put protective pillows around our tiny knees and faces? How then would we develop the character traits to survive?Obviously we do need to get tougher.

Tangle replies that its almost exactly how life would evolve if god never existed, which is true. What is interesting to me, howver, is how humans ( the ones without dogmatic beliefs) indict and challenge this God character to either to live up to *our standards* or that they don't need Him.

I've never figured out how the unbelievers will call Him a bloody bastard or a tyrant as if they have some better idea of how such a Deity *should* behave!

To me, God is described as jealous implied that He so loved His people that He defended the very contract between them and Him to the letter, getting mad at them for not taking it seriously and assuming that He foreknew the outcome of their rebellions.

You've got me here! It makes much more sense that it was the early authors who spoke for God through their own lives and experience. In many ways, God's written relationship with humans was a reconciliation of males with the tenderness of masculinity that they never received from their busy Fathers. God was masculine yet was tender and understanding at times and tough and callous at other times...as they themselves needed to be in their warring culture.
I'll give you all that God, as described by humans, is a human construct, but it does not prevent me from believing that He exists above, beyond, and apart from our attempts to describe Him.

I will agree that it is BS but that it is *evolving* BS. If God exists (which I believe He does) and wants us to know Him and know ourselves in the process, He obviously won't give us any clearer directions apart from what we ourselves conclude from our own experiences.

Phat writes:When we were teenagers, we would experiment with drugs. If someone we knew gave us a pill....

Phat writes:You claim that it does not matter whether or not God is real but I strongly disagree.

Gen 17:1-27 NKJV writes:When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him,"I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. 2 And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly." 3 Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: 4 "As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. 8 Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."9 And God said to Abraham: "As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. 10 This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; 11 and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you. 12 He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations, he who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant. 13 He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. 14 And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant."15 Then God said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her."17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, "Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" 18 And Abraham said to God, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!"19 Then God said: "No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. 21 But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year." 22 Then He finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.23 So Abraham took Ishmael his son, all who were born in his house and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very same day, as God had said to him. 24 Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 25 And Ishmael his son was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. 26 That very same day Abraham was circumcised, and his son Ishmael; 27 and all the men of his house, born in the house or bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him.

ringo writes:But after you took the pill you decided - based on the evidence - whether it was a good pill or a bad pill. You didn't just cling to it for better or worse like you do with God.

Phat writes:My questions begin with this one: Was Abraham really talking with God?

Phat writes:There is only little to ponder if you believe that the God of the book and his son were simply human creations.

jar writes:Asking if the character in a story was really talking to some other character in the story makes no sense whatsoever. And as I said, trying to claim that something that did not even exit for hundreds or thousands of years after some story was written was what the author was talking about is just plain stupid.The stories can tell you how the author thought his listeners and associates should react but to claim the author was writing to an audience several thousand years in the future is unsupportable.

Dr.Mark Durie writes:How did this all begin? According to Sir Fergus Millar, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at Oxford University, it was Josephus, a Jewish historian writing in the first century CE, who first advanced the idea that Ishmael was the ancestor of the Arabs. In The Antiquities of the Jews Josephus stated that Ishmael was "the founder" of the Arabian nation, and Abraham was "their father". From Josephus, this assumed connection between the Arabs and Abraham, through Ishmael, passed into the historical consciousness of Christians, and then made its way into early Islam.The Qur'an does not speak of Ishmael or Abraham as ancestors of the Arabs — although it does have Abraham and Ishmael praying for Allah to make their descendants a Muslim people — but the link is established in the hadith literature, in traditions about Muhammad's own genealogy. In this way Abraham and Ishmael came to be considered, in Islamic tradition, not only a spiritual antecedent of Muhammad as an Islamic prophet, but also the physical ancestor of (at least some of) the Arabs.

Phat writes:Think jar, think. I simply do not believe your evidence. I have seen examples of Christians who actually have transformed lives.

Phat writes:It seems silly to believe that every Biblical Christian Apologist and Pastor, of which there are well over a million, are all fantasy deluded and/or willful con artists and shysters.

Phat writes:And I would never trust a Bible "teacher" who explains the book as merely a history of the patriarchs and their mythos.

Phat writes:... we work those issues out with our significant other rather than simply examine evidence on her record and then simply tossing her out.

ringo writes:But you can't "work things out" with God. I've suggested that many times and you keep rejecting it. With your God it's strictly His way or the highway, no working things out, give in to His demands or else. That's no kind of marriage.