Random question on God
 

OK, so I'm not really doing this to get an answer from the atheists out there but here goes:

Does God ever do stuff that we would consider to be "evil" but it's "right"? You know?

It's sick to think of, but hard not to.

Well, he's killed lots of people. So there's that.

are you talking about God killing people or people killing people because of God? There's a distinction.

No, god has killed enough himself. Think Old Testament.

Yeah, but OT is just as much people killing people because of God. Plus OT is a lot more stories to me than definite history. But I'm not Jewish.

First you have to define God. God as in a religious God? If that's the case, "God" has been the leading cause of murder for the entire world. More people have killed each other in the name of "God" than anything else ... and why? Because MY "God" is better than YOUR "God".

My god could beat up your god mentality. If you're talking about the christian God, then yes. Think of the story of Noah's ark. He killed many many people with that flood. Essentially, everyone except Noah and his family, and two of each animal. He did it to rid the earth of evil, and let it start fresh. So in a way, it was an evil thing to do, but it was considered neccessary and right.

Even if God "weren't" responsible for millions of people being impaled, burned alive, drowned, slashed, eaten by lions, quartered, stoned, beheaded, kicked in the nuts and humiliated in public, the fact still remains that if he does exist, he has provided no reasoning as to why it is that we must suffer, nor does he find it helpful to provide crucial insight as to how we might evade death and famine the world over. By not providing this information, he is indirectly murdering billions.

So by existing, he fails at being a benevolent God and by not existing he fails as well...though I'll take those odds over a God who finds such pleasure in the suffering of his children. God failed. Man failed.

Capo, for the record, everyone dies, and Allah made it so. It's pointless to blame the universe itself for death, just as it's pointless to personify it. That's why I prefer Tao. God implies masculinity, and I hardly think it's prudent to theorize that the very universe has genitals of any sort.

Besides that, I firmly believe that religious texts are propaganda, and really have no basis in reality whatsoever. Something like Allah may exist, but the Allah of reality and the Allah of myth are hardly related.

Words like God, Allah, Brahman, etc. can only really be used to describe the singularity and movement of the Cosmos. The 'verse doesn't make choices, nor is it capable of action. It just IS. The universe is a matrix of possibility. Every possible moment already exists, and we as humans choose which moments to experience. That's free will in a nutshell. Notice that we don't directly control each individual cell in our body. They are free to go about their business without our conscious interference.

Good and evil are human constructs. Things happen, we compare them to all other previous events, then we place them somewhere on the imaginary good-evil spectrum. That is why personifying the universe is backward and, IMO, downright blasphemous. Believing in a paternal figure in the sky is what sets the stage for all the killing and manipulation in "his" name, or rather in the name of the patriarch who claims to be heaven-sent (Bush much?). It's that personification that maintains the patriarchies that are destroying our world and enslaving our people.

The more you think about unanswerable questions, the more beauty you allow to pass by unnoticed. That's the beauty of organized religion: it keeps people distracted, and takes away their desire to ponder IMPORTANT questions like, y'know, those regarding authorities and freedom.

Really. And Allah is of course widely acknowledged to not be male-gendered which is why gender equality is so commonplace in fundamentalist Islam since WAAAAAIT A MINUTE

"Allah" is a specific deity with a specific (ostensible) history; this history includes the insistence that Now Is The Time For All Good Men To Chop Up Their Dicks, the Sodom Affair, My Prophets Should Definitely Have Children For Wives and of course I Promise Not To Ever Flood The World To Death Again. In every ostensibly historic record of these theoretical events, Allah/Jehovah/Yahweh/Yahu-Wahu (ALL THE SAME GUY) is "HE". Not "it". Not "the nebulous deity". "HE". Allah is a specific entity, and he's completely a dude. "God" is a general term. How is the former MORE generic than the latter.

Did you happen to miss this part of my post? Why would you use writings I've already stated such an opinion on to prove your point?

I looked it up on Wikipedia, and you're right, Allah is actually a masculine word. Thanks for pointing out such an obvious hole, they're not always that easy to see in first-person. I guess Tao is a much better word for it.

However, 'God' is far from a general term. Even 'god' is masculine, as evidenced by the existence of the word "goddess". I guess the term comes from that idiotic notion of the Trinity, the idea that the unity of the cosmos is somehow difficult to understand. Yeah, when you have three gods but claim to be monotheistic, I can see where you'd be confused. Sorry guys, but Jesus was just a really cool dude who figured out some neat tricks you can do with the right understanding of the quantum field, and there's no disconnected man in the clouds to pray to. Holy Spirit almost fits the bill, but I've always been under the impression that it's only supposed to exist in people, while I'm pretty sure that the all-pervading force of the universe would exist in inanimate objects just as much.

OK, I guess I have to start calling it Tao again. But Allah was so much fun to say! OK, I'll edit my original post so that it's less illogical.

Wait what?

My religion believes in the trinity. But its not so much that there is three different gods. There is one god, with three different representations. The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit. Another aspect of trinity is that he has three characteristics. All knowing, All seeing, and He is everywhere.

The holy spirit exists in people. Jesus was a man, and he was also God, and God is the holy spirit, and thus Jesus was the holy spirit, but also a man. Hence, the holy spirit is in man.

RR, I think there's a certain understanding of the nature of the universe that any person can reach with enough effort that allows them to do things that were previously unthinkable. There's more going on in the universe than we know right now, and it's possible for human minds to comprehend more than they currently/usually do. Everything is still theory, but it's not like we know anything about Jesus for sure anyway, and I'll be the first to admit that I've got no proof.

Smelnick, you're entitled to your belief. If it makes sense to you, then go for it. Personally, I think it's needlessly confusing to the minds of those who don't already know, and I could never understand why it was ever mentioned. The Tao was present in Jesus, just as it's present in all humans, so I don't see why people give praise to Jesus after God issued a commandment that said "worship me and only me". It's hard for a young mind to grasp, which is why I won't be bringing my future kids up as Christians. Don't get me wrong though, I'll still teach them about it, I just won't say "this one is right, this one is wrong".

Personally, I believe that all humans are equally divine, and that looking at Jesus as anything more than a prophet (which I think is also an ability we all possess in varying degrees) and an example for right behavior really takes away from that.

Its not so much that we 'worship' Christ. According to 'the bible', if you accept jesus into your heart. accept the fact that he died to relieve us of the burden of our sins. If we believe that he is the son of God. If we believe and accept all this just on faith, then we are considered 'saved' and can then go to heaven.

I do have my doubts about the religion I follow. But I figure, why chance it. Maybe it is true, maybe it isn't. At least this way I'm covering my bases in case it is true. And at the same time, I build integrity, good morals, and I have a healthy community of people who support me at my church.

I'm aware of this. I was referring to the numerous instances in the Old Testament where god sees fit to end the life of whomever he chooses.

Again, Old Testament: stories. I mean, for christ's sake, there's "world flood" stories that predate (or came around at about the same time) as Jewish civilization.

If it's not just stories (and/or "world flood" being a small portion while other peoples were spared), then there's a shitload of retarded inbred people in the Bible.

If there is a higher power, it would probably just be whatever started the universe ... and it isn't an actual living thing. God is EVERYTHING if it used itself to create the universe. WE are God. Everything you see is God. So, I guess you could say the universe is God, and we are just a pathetically small portion of it. Religous beliefs are based on some of the most arrogant prospects. In the vast, unfathomably GARGANTUAN universe, people have this weird assumption that we are extremely important in some way - and some invisible being is concentrating all of it's mental energy towards this miniscule speck of sand we call Earth to inflict pain and misery to those who don't worship. That's unrealistic.

You know, I honestly wasn't searching for the atheist/agnostic opinion, what with the actual use of the word God that wasn't in quotation marks in the opening post, but, hey, let's have someone bitch about how "God doesn't exist" in a thread that presupposes his existence.

I don't know exactly how you want me to attack this question; I was born and raised Jewish.

I know, Capo. It's how I, personally, as a homosexual and a Christian, deal with a lot of the Old Law and OT in general.

My springing-off point is that there are two separate accounts of creation within Genesis, as well as my family's acceptance of scientific evidence of Earth's history, that much of the OT is a mix of history and stories, with my personal belief tending toward more of the end of story. Either that or God fucked up when he created the world first, and I don't accept that.

Language is fluid

The word "comedienne" exists but no reasonable person insists that "comedian" only refers to men

I'm talking RELIGION, dumbass. There's a difference between the existance of a God and a made-up fairy tales to control people. Another case in point on how arrogant religious people can be. Have it your way. Continue to live without questioning whatever bullshit has been fed to you. You don't want my opinion, I don't want yours. Fuck you.

The point of this thread isn't RELIGION, dumbass.

If I were religiously inclined, I might bring up that God caused (because, let's be honest, if he's all-powerful he's responsible through action or inaction for everything) the holocaust, which was undeniably evil, but that its occurrence led to the establishment of the Jewish settlement in Israel, which if I remember my whacko-nutjob-christianism properly is necessary for the second coming of Jesus, which is good.