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[Just browsing]

What is your proof that a life without suffering isn’t a life at all? That’s just your opinion, which I disagree with

[jimwalton]

I already wrote it to you, briefly. Hopefully you've been reading what I wrote: "If [God] were to interfere in every situation where there might be suffering, evil, or unfairness, there would be no such thing as cause-and-effect, no such thing as science, no reason, and no sense to things. There would be no predictabilities. God would govern every thought we have, every move we make, every word from our mouths, and every perception of things and people. In other words, we would no longer be human, and rational thought would cease to exist. It's a completely unacceptable situation."

Think about it. God has to control your body, completely. And if you slip and fall, He has to negate gravity. And if there's an earthquake and your house starts to collapse, he has to negate science. And you wouldn't be allowed to speak and unkind word: God has to control your thoughts and your tongue. But He also has to control how you interpret what other people say, so there's no hurt from misinterpretation. Your brain is not yours; it doesn't really think. You're God's robot. Your body can't do what you want. You don't make any decisions. You're God's robot. There is no science. Nothing works predictably. God is always negating it. Nothing makes sense. You can't tell what things are going to do. God is always interfering. There's no regularity and no predictability. You think think this is the good life? Life as you'd like it to be? This is the life you want? You say you disagree, but think about it. Is this what is desirable to you? I doubt it.

[Just browsing]

“That’s like blaming god for gravity if someone’s foot slips and they fall.”

Well… god did create gravity, so that’s perfectly reasonable to blame him.

“Ignoring that gravity is necessary for life.”

But ”god” is the one who decided that gravity should be necessary for life. He’s the one who made it that way. So again, it’s his fault.

As far as the happiness/suffering thing: god could have made a perfect world where there’s no suffering, yet he decided to deliberately and unnecessarily inflict suffering on his own children who he claims to love. If I punch someone in the face and then give them an ice cream cone, do those things cancel out? Nope. I’m still an asshole for punching then, even if I did something nice afterward. They don’t cancel out

[jimwalton]

If you're going to blame God for all the bad, you have to credit Him for all the good. If He's responsible for everything that happens, you have to be consistent. Then God should be praised for every time you've laughed, every good friend, every good day, every bit of health, every bit of knowledge and education, any comfort. You can't blame God for all the bad but say all the good is just the way life is. That a contradiction.

> As far as the happiness/suffering thing: god could have made a perfect world where there’s no suffering, yet he decided to deliberately and unnecessarily inflict suffering on his own children who he claims to love.

This is not true at all. Again, you are thinking that it's possible God could make a world where there's no suffering and yet there is reason, science, knowledge, love, and happiness. You're not making sense. If you have a brain and can use it, then you can use it well or poorly, for right or wrong, for good or bad. You have to be consistent. If you want "no suffering," you have to eliminate science, knowledge, reason, love, and happiness. All is programmed.

And what makes you think God has unnecessarily inflicted suffering on us? I'm starting to smell the faint odor of bias here.

> If I punch someone in the face and then give them an ice cream cone, do those things cancel out?

Wow, what an awful analogy this is.The smell of bias is growing stronger.

[Justin]

> Absolutely yes. Jesus said in John 10.17-18: "The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life ..."

Except ... that only happened once he was forcibly arrested, tried, and killed. It's a bit convenient to claim that you totally did something willingly after you were forced into it and don't really have a choice in the matter.

> You're still stuck in your flawed analogy ...

It's ... your analogy that I'm responding to.

And while I might be grateful to your Jesus-analogue, in every case your analogue of God is either evil or ignorant.

The point isn't that Jesus would've done something wrong. The point is that a 'God' that accepts Jesus' sacrifice is ... well, either evil or ignorant.

[jimwalton]

> Except ... that only happened once he was forcibly arrested, tried, and killed. It's a bit convenient to claim that you totally did something willingly after you were forced into it and don't really have a choice in the matter.

You seem to be missing what happened. Jesus willingly went to Jerusalem, knowing that He would be arrested there. He knew they were after His life, but He didn't leave town. He stood and let the soldiers arrest him without resisting. He didn't defend Himself to Pilate. You seem to think He was forcibly arrested. He could have stayed far away, but didn't. He went willingly, knowing that He would be crucified. He even predicted it, many times.

> It's ... your analogy that I'm responding to.

The "flawed analogy" was coming from the other post-er, not from you. My quote from Jn. 10.17-18 was not an analogy.

> in every case your analogue of God is either evil or ignorant.

I have no idea what you mean by this. You'll have to clarify.

> The point is that a 'God' that accepts Jesus' sacrifice is ... well, either evil or ignorant.

Let's try another analogy, though all analogies fail somewhere along the road. Suppose a person had a deadly disease that would kill all of humanity. Would it be evil and ignorant to kill that person and burn his body to stop the plague, or would it be the right thing to do?

[Obi Wan]

Well, I used to tell myself the same thing as part of my never ending study to try to make the inconsistencies in the Bible consistent. I was a preacher for 8 years, so not only did I study this stuff in depth but I preached it too.

Then one day when my faith was shaken by the behaviour of my fellow Christians I decided to shore it up by looking into the history of the the Bible and the peoples named in the Bible. So I read some history books and pulled copies of archeology and ancient history periodicals from my university library to check what the books said and I found out that so much of what is written in the Bible is simply not true. I remember feeling completely stunned and thinking "Oh! Well that's that then." My faith evaporated like mist in sunshine.

[jimwalton]

I'm sorry to hear you left the faith. And I know that the hypocrisy of alleged "Christians" is disconcerting. As Brennan Manning said, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

Exodus 20.6 and Deuteronomy 5.9 are not examples of the Bible's inconsistencies, but rather that we have to understand the Bible rather than read it superficially. I've been a preacher for more than 40 years, and the deeper I study the Bible (culture, history, archaeology, linguistics, inductively, etc.), I am convinced repeatedly of its truth. I dig as deeply as I can. My faith grows stronger the more I study.

[Justin]

> I have no idea what you mean by this. You'll have to clarify.

In every analogy you've presented, the entity that would be in God's place (the one doing the punishing) is either evil or ignorant. With your hunger games analogy, the authority that forces a person to be taken to fight in the games is evil (also, this analogy doesn't quite make sense since the decision wasn't punitive).

With your police example, they're ignorant in that they just don't know any better as to who the real culprit was.

There's no situation in which it comes out okay to knowingly send some random guy to jail, or give them the death penalty, for the transgressions of another person. Even if random-guy volunteers for it.

> Let's try another analogy ... would it be evil and ignorant to kill that person and burn his body to stop the plague, or would it be the right thing to do?

This seems to stray far further from the point at issue. Did Jesus have some sort of contagious disease or evil within him that would spread to other people if he wasn't killed...?

[jimwalton]

> In every analogy you've presented, the entity that would be in God's place (the one doing the punishing) is either evil or ignorant

That's where the analogy falls apart, as all analogies do. The point of the analogy was taking someone else's place, not in the morality of the entity doing the punishing. You have to follow the point, since it's an analogy not an allegory (where everything has symbolic meaning).

> With your police example

I'm not aware that I gave a police example.

> There's no situation in which it comes out okay to knowingly send some random guy to jail, or give them the death penalty, for the transgressions of another person. Even if random-guy volunteers for it.

This is where analogies fail. In our penal system, you're right. But in what's going on in creation, the analogy fails because it's not the same thing. And, in the Bible, it also matters that it's not some random guy, but God the Son. That fact changes the entire scenario. It's not something ANYONE else ("random guy") could have done.

> This seems to stray far further from the point at issue. Did Jesus have some sort of contagious disease or evil within him that would spread to other people if he wasn't killed...?

No, that's nonsense. It's an analogy of whether it is ever justified to kill one to save the many. It's not about Jesus having a contagious disease or an evil in him. You seem to have missed the whole point. You're looking at the particulars that don't matter and missing the object.