Where are all the gods?

OP writes:Where are all the gods?

Ringo writes: Cleveland.

tangle,from another thread writes:The fantasy option is that there's some skydaddy going to help out with stuff here.(Especially as if there is a skydaddy, he put the bloody disease here to start with).

Hyro writes:Well, in all fairness, my idea of a God wouldn't include a petty, human emotion like vanity. This is precisely why I object to the bible's version of jealous God who wants to hog all the glory. That seems so out of place with a perfect God who is complete within itself.

2 Cor 11:2 writes:I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so
that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.

ringo writes:You cling to the notion that evidence is important in every situation that really matters. You look at the evidence before you drive through an intersection or step off a curb.

The only reason you don't insist on evidence for God is because it doesn't matter whether God exists or not.

Hyro writes:And why on earth would a God who, according to the bible, only wants humans to love him create billions of creatures he seems to care little about or why he creates deadly viruses that kill out the very people he loves so damn much? Why create an infinite universe that is functionally useless if Earth and heaven were the only things of importance?

Hyro writes:Jealously is almost universally perceived in a negative connotation... that it speaks of a fundamental insecurity. It seems out of touch with a "perfect being." If he doesn't need anyone or anything then why set out to create humanity at all? It's obviously a distortion of the character of God imparted by HUMANS who assumed it.

Hyro writes:What makes more sense? That God spoke only through Jews a few thousand years ago and then stopped speaking altogether or that the Jews in the 1st and 2nd century BCE spoke for God and as God through the lens of their Jewish experiences?

Hyro writes:At what point might you entertain the notion that this is bullshit? And not to say that God per se is bullshit, but that your conception of God revealed through the bible is bullshit?

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.

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.

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.