And as I've said before you, a) which God? Does Shiva love me? Ganesh? Allah? Yahweh? Does Thor? Does Zeus? b) something which does not exist has no capacity for love. The only people who can take part in a debate for "does God love you?" are believe who accept the premise of "there is a God, or many gods."

I do not.

And actually the whole point of the thread was to talk about masturbation. Which I guess is fine in a purile sort of way but I'd prefer to have interesting theological discussions myself.

Like I stated before the God from the Holy Bible.

And It was until people starting going off-topic and I had to change it. Obviously.

See now I went to church as a kid, and I read the Bible, and was read stories from the Bible retold in a language a kid can understand, but at that age what I was taught covered Genesis, a little bit of Exodus, then nothing, then Jesus and his adventures in the Gospels. I wasn't told about Leviticus, or the rest of the Book of Law, I wasn't told about the Book of Job, or in the new Testament I wasn't told about all those long letters of endless doctrine. Those are things I learned about long after. The Book of Job in particular has God flat out admitting sometimes he tortures people just to test their faith. As a kid it was all Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Never got to hear about God telling Satan to go fuck up a devoted and humble man's life just to see if he'd break.

But even at that age I would ask "If God loves everyone, but it is a sin to kill, does God love a killer?" "Yes, he does." "Well if he loves them, how come he sends them to hell?" "God still loves people he sends to hell." Never got my head around that one.

Now that I'm free of the yoke of belief, it's easy to see the Bible as containing several mythological events, The Deluge, Moses, Jesus, and then the rest of it is a mixture of contradictory parables and a long list of ridiculously specific ceremonies and rituals, and that all of the Bible is told not by God, nor by Jesus, but by people who simply claim to have been there, and particularly to have known Jesus (though their differing accounts of the same events don't help their case much). Therefore much of the doctrine of the church, the dogma and the practices, are pieced together from an enormous mess of text, with so many authors from so many different time periods that it's a wonder there's any cohesion to it at all.

It just bothers me immensely that you would take someone else's word about a book which is itself someone else's translation of a translation of many different people's differing accounts of events from thousands of years ago, that the idea of "God loves everyone" is powerful enough that you simply assume the rest to be good and wonderful and true. If God loves everyone, including complete dickheads, then it seems like the value of God's love is pretty worthless. If you're in hell for eternity and God still loves you, that's nice and all but what use is that to you?

You know what to be honest I actually felt the same way when I was smaller. But I did something you haven't done which is the reason you are in doubt. I went to my pastor listed a whole bunch of questions, in a respectful manner of course and he answered them. His answers were directly from the bible.
The answers to your questions are all there, you just have to look and put the whole "pastor molesting children" (I'm going to get to that when I come back from work) aside and ask him all the questions without fear. And I'm pretty sure he'll find an answer in the bible.

I'll be back I have to g to work now.

I've just discovered a word that describes my position on God quite well: Maltheism - "Even if a God as described in the Bible does exist, he is not fit for worship due to his low moral standards."

I want to broadcast live on the world wide internet.

More to the point, "God doesn't make mistakes" then what is Lucifer?

(NOTE: Yes I know the video was a joke (I hope) but that is still a very valid question.)

Edited by user 11 December 2009 22:40:38(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

But that's the entire point of his act, on most similar Christian videos, they answer questions they have well constructed arguments backed up with Bible quotes to explain, so a Christian will watch and go "wow, this is re-affirming my faith, how can anyone doubt this?" while a non-Christian, particularly an atheist, will be sitting there going "What the hell are you talking about? You've made some basic scientific errors, and you're ignoring an enormous principle that completely destroys your entire argument!" He's a satire on that by having the Christian character answer those seemingly unanswerable questions with reasonable Biblical logic, revealing the contradictory and ridiculous nature of all Christian scientific argument.

A while ago I saw some video about the shocking evidence scientists cannot explain, that the banana was perfectly designed for the human hand, therefore there is clearly a God. In fact, here it is:


Now if you're a Christian you're probably going "Wow! That is amazing, I never though of that before!"

While the rest of us are scowling at the very poor logic (or laughing at the phallic implications). Apparently God made the Banana for the Human Hand is a better explanation than the combined evolutions of our ancestors and the banana fruit itself, evidence being that the banana also seems perfectly designed for the use of all of the other apes, as well as the monkeys who evidently diverged from our ancestry much much earlier, that most fruits change colour as they ripen and then decay, no that's definitely not a good enough explanation... Even ignoring the concept of emergence for a second, why does this not apply then to apples, to pears, to turnips? Why does this only seem to apply to this specific fruit originally native only to Southeast Asia, therefore not naturally ocuring across the majority of the Earth's surface, but, as a coincidence, available largely in the same habitat as monkeys? Not to mention the wild leap from banana-shape to ALL CREATION.

So I envisioned a similar video which was basically the same, but at the end, he says "and that's not the only fruit, how about the Pineapple, heavy, covered in spines and hard flesh, with a large spiky protrusion on the top perfectly designed to be opened with a large knife possible a machete? Or the coconut, with its hard hairy shell, about the same size as a slightly-too-small bowling ball, requiring only a hammer, a nail, or repeated blows with a blunt object, to open? Or how about the lemon, with its bitter taste and tendency to squirt the human eye with acidic juice?"

I really, REALLY wish that Christianity was this simple. God is Love, Jesus is Love - sounds fantastic. When I was very young, I wanted to be baptised as a Church of England Christian, because I was taught that it was the right thing to do, and I loved Sunday School. When I was a little older, I saw my sister's First Communion and how much she enjoyed it, I SO wanted to be Catholic, so that my kids could be Catholic and go through all these coming of age things.
But wham, bam, it gives you a slap in the face when, whatever denomination you pick, there's a whole Bible to study and that's where it gets complex. There are SO many laws. What I want in religion is simple teachings of love and faith, not practically everything I do being a sin. I tried out being a Christian for six months not so long ago, but believing that so many people I love are going to Hell, for doing pretty much nothing worthy of it, completely ruined it for me.
Part of me wishes I could be Christian, but the whole "non-Christians go to Hell" belief, plus the complexity of trying to follow the whole Bible, screws it up.

Have you ever heard of the Inquisition? Apostasy is a major major crime in Catholic history. Punishable by death.