Why This Belief?

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When imitating something, there must first be the real one.

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This does not logically follow.There have been many imitators of Bigfoot, but the original Bigfoot is an admitted fraud. It was a guy in a hairy suit.It may be that there was an authentic original thing for imitators to mimic, but there doesn't have to be.

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The way I see it now, is that nothing happens without the will of the father.

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Ouch.There's a lot of bad stuff that is God's will, then.

So, Satan is just as powerful, and probably more powerful than God?

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Whether or not the original story is true or not, is irrelevant.

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I disagree on it's irrelevance ifa) people claim that the story is factually true and promote this belief to millions of others, andb) those millions base their entire lives upon this story and therefore affect my life in fundamental ways.

So, what is the good that comes out of a infant born without a brain?Jeffery Dahmer? Oklahoma City Bombing?Also, what about when bad things come out of things I thought were good?You are just making a statement of faith that every horrible, awful, terrible thing to ever happen MUST have some good attached to it.Why MUST they? Because it seems that you MUST view your God in those terms or you might lose your faith.Well, that seems a lot like making excuses for an all-powerful God to me.

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I have found nothing to contradict what I went through, or explain it away.

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Self-delusion
Wishful-thinking
post-hoc reasoning
communal reinforcement
Schizophrenia
boredome
disillusionment with your previous life's pathEver consider any of these more mundane explanations?

OK, so Satan isn't more powerful than God.So all of the evil and suffering that Satan causes could be stopped by God, but he doesn't?Either God is a just and merciful god that doesn't want us to suffer, or he is a capricious, vengeful god who sometimes lets Satan perpetrate pointless suffering and evil for no apparent reason.I mean, look at it like parenting.If I get punished by a parent, or the parent lets bad things happen to me, but I can't figure out why I'm being punished or why the parent stands by and lets bad things happen to me because it's never explained to me, then I think I'm pretty justified in thinking that this parent of mine is pretty inconsistent and unreasonable.Wouldn't the parent of even the most ungrateful, bratty, poorly-behaved child still pull that child out of the path of a car if the child wandered into the street?A good parent would, but God appears to not be bothered a lot of the time.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 06-07-2005 09:01 AM

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If they O.D. at 1 a.m., that is on them and not on the parents. (Hey--you raise them as best as you can, right?)

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The flaw in your analogy is that God is an all-powerful, all loving parent while humans are limited by being human.If a child is 5 years old and they OD'ed at 1 AM the parents ARE very much responsible.Aren't we as ignorant infants compared to God?Also, if a human parent was all-powerful and all-loving, wouldn't they save their child from OD'ing at 1 AM if they could? Wouldn't they keep their child safe by force of will alone if they could?I would if I was a parent and I had that power.God doesn't, though.

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I often wonder why these outsiders think that by taking all responsibility upon themselves that they can reasonably take on a universe of uncertainty with nothing more to have faith in than their own evolutionary potential.

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Similarly, I think the inability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty is what leads people to a belief in God. It's easier in many ways.

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maybe... However the flaw in YOUR analogy is that if we are the 5 year olds, we have the ability to "wish" our parents away...as if they did not exist.

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Well, any involved, caring, effective parent would be quite apparent to their 5 year old. Even though the 5 year old may wish the parent away, he or she is not able to.And, some of those 5 year olds who don't wish their parents away, who cry out for them in their moments of greatest need, receive no answer, get no help.

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God...our loving parent...stands near and watches His rebellious 5 year old who wants a world without omnipotant parental authority.

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Or, God, our neglectful absentee parent, appears to not exist at all when his child really thinks about the state of the world, and begins to understand how humans think.