Is God good?

The problem I personally have with this sort of stuff is that I just see it as meaningless priestly drivel. Made up baby talk. The sort of stuff that just flows out of the pious from the pulpit every Sunday,It's just gibberish to me, astrology talk - the words are just padding; you can hear the self-indulgence and genuflection in the tone. Ugh, it makes my skin crawl.(Nothing personal Phat - just seen and heard this kind of bullshit too much.)

That's a good palce to start, but it's actually the whole 9 yards - the whole made up, feel better gunk.

Don't you think it strange that the Word of God has to be interpreted at all?It seems to me that your interpretation may be unique to you. After all there are some 30,000 Christian sects all believing something slightly different. And all the Christian religions throughout the ages believed different things at different times all based on this very same Word.Why wouldn't your God have made his Word inviable? Why send it to us in such a garbled and contradictory way that it was bound to cause death and violence between believers throughout it's life?And who gets to decide who's a wooden-headed literalist and who's a correct literalist? You have told us over and over that the bible is literally true and where science has shown it not to be - as in the age of the earth and dates of floods etc - then science is wrong and the book is right.Seems to me you want i both ways and you, not the book, is the deciding factor.

Nurse will be along in a minute.......

Which is, of course, what they all say.The fact that you - and they - dismiss this plain and obvious fact out of hand, should tell you a lot about what your faith actually is: delusional wishful thinking and self-importance.

Yes, Faith, they are different, they all believe slightly different thing to you. And they are all equally convinced that they are right.Your personal belief is a minority one, a very minority one. Your belief isn't even shared by others in the Christian movement. Is everybody else in the world wrong and you right? How does that work?If you had been born in Afghanistan to Muslim parents you would not believe what you believe now. You wouldn't know about your form of Protestant christianity; you may not even have heard of Christ. But it's highly likely that you would believe in Islam.If what you believe is a function of what your parents believe and where they are born, where does that leave the truth of the belief - it's utterly random, but the result of an accident of birth provides an entry to everlasting salvation or not. That is not the action of a benevolent god.

Your beliefs are NOT mainstream.Christianity in total is a minority belief - the majority of people on the planet believe something different to Christians.Protestants are a minority belief inside Christianity and your version of it is only a part of that small chunk of those.You have no special knowledge Faith, you just believe something that most people don't. And all the rest are going to hell.

This isn't the way it works for most of us atheists.We start with the usual belief in the god of our parents then we have our road to Damascus moment and realise that it's all a load of nonsense and the emperor is stark buttock naked.Personally I had a faith in the Christian God as strong as anybodies until the age of about 14 then it suddenly occurred to me that it was all a total and complete lie. Now you explain to me why this god that you believe in would do that to me?He unsaved me, Hallelujah.

You did notice that one of those 12 tribes was called "other" didn't you? Thought not.I also love the idea of a tribe of 'atheists'. I wonder what the collective noun for atheists is?
A murder, a confusion, a mess, a profanity, a nowse, a disparity, an annoyance, a burning....?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

You are amazing, even for a creationist.Protestantism IS a minority belief even within Christianity. But then you believe in the absolute wackiest form of it - literal creationism, Noah, Floods, the whole bag of crabs - which puts you amongst a really tiny number of people.But that's not the bloody point. The point being made was that almost the entirity of the planet believes something different to you and most of them believe it as strongly as you do. But YOU know you're right, just like they do. So if there is only one true god and it's yours, how come everybody else doesn't know it? How come they have their own certainties? Why does where your'reborn matter more than any other factor in the belief game?

Which is a fact that is contradicted BY the bible.When God killed all animal and plant life on the planet - including the children who could not be guilty of any sin - he committed an evil act by any definition at all - even yours.But somehow you feel able to deny this like you can deny the simple arithmetic fact that your beliefs are held by a minority. It's a very interesting psychological condition.

Can you please explain to me in simple terms how a new born baby can refuse to be saved and why killing just one of them in the flood would not be an evil act?

You have no comprehension how utterly stupid this is. God can kill a baby for no reason at all but still be righteous? This presumably is the absolute morality that humans are supposed to emulate?Bonkers, total nonsense.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Babies don't have wicked thoughts or commit violence.I may not be supposed to judge him but, you know, he gave me a brain and a sense of morality so I apply it and it tells me that anything that murders millions of babies for no reason other than the supposed sins of their parents is evil.It looks to me like your God is a revenous wolf.15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

What? Really, what?God deliberately killed all life on the planet except a handlull of people and a couple of each of the 'kinds'. That's deliberately, with malice aforethought. With intent. He gave warning of it, then did it. That's considered, pre-planned genocide. That's the worst crime that we humans can imagine. The very worst.But if babies "die they die". Are you seriously that callous, that un-Christian?What on earth do you believe and how could you even consider it sane, moral, human or - god help me - Godly