Summations Only

There's no mystery why some think differently from others. The ones who wish God had their backs are ignoring the evidence, which plainly shows that He doesn't. They even go so far as to make excuses for Him: "You can't tempt God." That's right; you can't tempt Him to have your back.

I'm talking about the people who do ask God for directions and don't get any - or get bad ones. You know very well that God doesn't give you what you ask for most of the time. So how can you say He has your back? It's not an assumption; it's a conclusion based in the evidence. You can't rely on God to do it for you. Even Noah had to build his own ark.

So He only gives us what we want when we want what He wants to give us?That's what I've been saying: He doesn't have our backs; He has His own.

So He says. How is doing whatever He wants not selfish? Oxymoron. We ask; if He wants us to have it, He gives. There's nothing"joint" about it; it's totally one-sided.When you don't get what you want, you comfort yourself by saying you didn't really, really, really want it anyway. Sour grapes.

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Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

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Yes, that's the standard apologetics.Note the context though that God intends to use Cyrus as the human instrument of "mere punishment" against Babylon. From God's viewpoint and Israel's viewpoint, Babylon is evil and Cyrus is good but from Babylon's viewpoint, Cyrus is evil.Calamity is in the eye of the beholder.

How do you know you can trust God? Yes, let's.

St. Paul said that man can decide:

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Romans 2:14-15 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;

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Morality is what is written on our hearts. The question is: Who does the writing? God or society?

That's a glib answer but it doesn't work. Why would you pray to a god unless you thought you could trust him?

What Romans 2:14-15 says quite plainly is that man can and does decide what is evil, based on his conscience. That's what you asked.

How do you know that gravity isn't caused by Satan trying to drag us down into Hell? How do you know whom the revelation is from?

That's exactly the point. You don't have any information from outside the Bible. Your ideas about Satan are entirely subjective whereas our ideas about gravity are objective.

Well, trust is often based on past performance. If you trust your wife not to cheat on you it's because he hasn't cheated on you before.Can you trust God to give you what you want because He's always given you what you wanted before? Most likely not. God has a track record of doing exactly what He wants to do without regard to your wishes. I'm glad you use the phrase "merely faith". There may be hope for you yet. I have a low opinion of faith too. Again, that's exactly the point. What if your interpretation of the observation/revelation is wrong? What if Satan is really the good guy?

Yes, we decide what is evil - and if God or some other alien entity "judges" us, then we decide whether the judgement is evil or not.

What makes you think I want eternal life under God's terms? I am. How do you know the "satanic books" aren't sponsored by God to make Satan look bad? I asked you, "What if Satan is really the good guy?" It's (suppsedly) God who's "revealing" to you that Jesus is His son. If God is the bad guy then that revelation is likely to be false. Where did I say that Satan was answering your prayers? I thought my point was that nobody is answering your prayers. Likely to be false, yes. Every religion has its own faith-baed claims and its own revelations. They don't all agree so at least some of them must be false. Yours are just as likely to be false as anybody else's. The difference is that science is self-correcting; it is always changing its picture of reality. Religion, on the other hand, is notoriously resistant to change. So we've come full circle. Where did evil come from in the first place? What exists that God did not create?