Is God good?

The 'facts' basically can be summarised by God being (as you clowns wont to stress) being omnipotent and omniscience (which is amusing because He can't be both - they are mutually logically incompatible). Regardless - He is supposed to know in advance exactly how he sets up the Universe and all that is in it - and how it will play out for ever and ever.This means nothing happens without his will or planning - he has figured out the spin of every last electron. And therein lies the true sickness. The Fall was his planning - and hence the suffering and (depending on your brand of Christianity) the sick label of 'Original Sin'.It's not a story of success of a great creator but one of fuck up after fuck up. How could the creator of the Universe who knows in advance EVERYTHING that will ever happen allow a scenario to arrive where He has to wipe out virtually all the world in a mass flood? He must have known - indeed planned - this to happen from the outset. The screams of the drowning, the braying of terrified animals (what did they do wrong in the plan by the way) - all of this He knew he would do BEFORE HE EVEN PUT THE EARTH INTO BEING - because he is omniscient remember!And then to continue his fuck up he has to "Invent" a human form of himself - bring it to Earth incarnated as a Jew and who had to be insanely tortured and sacrificed in order to forgive people the 'sins' that he forced them to inherit from the get go.....It's sheer fucking madness!If Jesus was around now and 'executed' in America - little catholic children would be wearing electric chairs not crucifixes round their necks (quip borrowed from Lenny Bruce).You keep quoting bible scripture to try and wriggle out of this amoral mess - but the problem is far more basic than bible scripture. It goes back to what God did from the very get go - He is either an incredibly incompetent omniscient (can such an oxymoron exist?) to screw everything up so badly - or he is one sick bastard who's planned every last ounce of suffering for every organism that has had cause to suffer at His hands.And then people like you spin round in circles, devoid of any internal morality of your own and desperately trying to rearrange the deckchairs of your beliefs as your ship goes down. When you finally can admit you have no case on 'God is good' you can begin to see why consequential morality is far superior to the absolutist version relying on appeals to authority.

Me? I don't believe your god exists at all. But people like you do - and are forever telling us that "nothing happens that is not in accordance with God's will."I'm just pointing out that if you truly believe that - then your God's will is sick beyond the pale. And so are you by association. I really worry about being in the vicinity of those with absolutist moral convictions that get their compass from the words of a bronze-age tome.

So for clarity here - are you in fact saying that you don't believe your God is omnipotent and omniscient? That things DO happen that are 'not in accordance with Gods will'?Because if that is the case I've got further questions of a different nature to put to you.....I'll defer answering the rest of your post until I get some clarity on the question above.Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.

You've got that ass-backwards! It's you and your ilk that are the sick and twisted ones. In 1994 Reverend Paul Hill took a shotgun and murdered Dr John Britton and his bodyguard outside Dr Britton's abortion clinic. He said he wanted to stop the 'murdering of unborn babies' as befitted his Christian beliefs. Presumably the same sick beliefs that think it's OK for an 'almighty god' to murder equally unborn babies in the womb of tens of thousands of pregnant women that undoubtably were present in the world at the time of the Flud.But that's OK isn't it? Cos your sky daddy authorises it it's OK. And what he says goes - because we are too dumb to figure out the 'greater good.'At what point did you lose your rationality Faith - if indeed you ever possessed any? I find you and your ilk deeply distasteful holding such psychopathic views.

Hi Crash, OK - so maybe I was a bit strong on my post - but it is an emotive issue (at least it is for me).I didn't say Faith was a psychopath - but that some views that people like her hold can be viewed like that - in particular for me, the nonchalance with which acts like the Flud can be written off with an airy "It's God's will".Psychopathic - "A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse" - From The Free Dictionary.I would argue that viewpoints that do not take consequences into account and appeal to authority only are certainly amoral and definitely without empathy.I would respect the likes of Faith if she said "Well what God did was a terrible thing and when I get to heaven I will be discussing this with him as I don't agree with it myself".But instead we get "If God deemed it just then it is just." No thoughts of consequence - no concerns over the unborn babies, or the newly-born ones gasping down the flud-waters, or the children desperately trying to tread water until they gave up in terrified exhaustion. Or of all the braying terrified animals....these are the consequences of God's decision in this matter. Anyone truly moral (as in what our normal society would class as moral) couldn't possibly square those actions.I don't see why someone can't believe in God whilst disagreeing with some of His actions. Why do people have to believe and agree in every detail no matter how seemingly bad? In my opinion what separates a normal viewpoint from a psychopathic one is that very ability to weigh consequences in a moral and empathic framework against blind obedience to a higher authority.And while I concede my post was strongly worded and I did not mean to infer that Faith was per se a psychopath - I still maintain that viewpoints such as the take on the Flud being 'just and right cos God decreed it' to be far from a normal sane, rational and healthy viewpoint.

Hello Faith While my post is strongly worded (perhaps emotively too much so) and I do not think you per se are a psychopath (as compared to views held being so), please see my post to Crash above.

Hello FEY, Earlier in this thread I was jeered (including by you) for a statement that I found many views by your side as being psychopathic.Psychopathic - "A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse" - From The Free Dictionary.To find it 'just' that any intelligence, no matter how far ahead of us can just wipe us off the face of the world is a disgusting attitude.We are mentally far above ants - but if you saw someone just stomping on them for fun wouldn't you think them a psycho?To acquiesce to a higher power in fawning adulation is sick. You are beneath contempt and I make no apologies for my tone this time. I believe your religion has corroded your brain to the point where rational empathic and consequential decisions have been degraded away. If this is the price of your religious fervour - you can keep it!!Is God good? The bible - his own words - betray that statement massively - you'd have to be blind, or a fool to think otherwise.