I wrote a post, yesterday, titled, I Am More Powerful Than God. The point of the post was to say that, since God is supposedly all powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere, being accused of "turning others away from Jesus" with my words was a false accusation. If I am able to best the god with all the myriad omni-characteristics, then I must be more powerful than him.
I'm actually okay with that. The logic of the Bible god is completely ridiculous and I am left incredulously shocked that intelligent people still believe in a glorified Santa Clause or Tooth Fairy.
Enter a young gentleman who I grew up with. We'll call him Tom B. He's half my age and brainwashed into fundamentalist Christianity by his parents and the decades of a carefully constructed apparatus for true believers to be well-versed in apologetics and the "us vs. them" false dichotomy.
Only he doesn't know this. And that's by design. Fundamentalists are taught to view themselves as using superior logic to anyone that may be their detractors. Hell, the Apostle Paul set this up by saying, "The truth of Christ is foolishness to the wise." That's a paraphrase, of course, but you get the point. Anytime you are faced with doubts or a redress of your belief system, you are well within your spirituality gold star chart to reject all arguments as foolishness and Satanic.
Tom's response:
First, no. You don't get it both ways. You can't tell me that it is not possible for the human mind to fathom the realities of God, and then in the next breath, tell me that my human mind has the capacity to fathom the realities of God if I only read his book. You get one. Not both.
Then I mentioned Ole' Abe. I told him that I'm morally superior to God, including Abraham, being that I wouldn't kill my kids if some jerk-off told me to, no matter how powerful he thinks he is. I've written about Abraham here, here, and here,
To that, Tom B. responded:
But damn....God loves you.
I fear for his kids. And, being a quiverfull fundie, he'll have a whole gaggle of them.
Note: Oh...and Tom B....I blocked you because I can. Your arguments were stupid and nonsensical. And you attacked me for blocking you by impersonating your brother's account. One day, you'll grow up and realize I'm right. In the meantime, don't have kids.
I'm actually okay with that. The logic of the Bible god is completely ridiculous and I am left incredulously shocked that intelligent people still believe in a glorified Santa Clause or Tooth Fairy.
Enter a young gentleman who I grew up with. We'll call him Tom B. He's half my age and brainwashed into fundamentalist Christianity by his parents and the decades of a carefully constructed apparatus for true believers to be well-versed in apologetics and the "us vs. them" false dichotomy.
Only he doesn't know this. And that's by design. Fundamentalists are taught to view themselves as using superior logic to anyone that may be their detractors. Hell, the Apostle Paul set this up by saying, "The truth of Christ is foolishness to the wise." That's a paraphrase, of course, but you get the point. Anytime you are faced with doubts or a redress of your belief system, you are well within your spirituality gold star chart to reject all arguments as foolishness and Satanic.
Tom's response:
If what you're saying is true, it's a really good thing that the reality of God is not who humans make Him out to be. Because, if that's really who God is than even I would't believe in Him. The thing is, humans can say anything they want about Him. They can attempt to find His flaws and make Him look bad. But in the end we're judging Him by our standards of who we think He is. If you really want to know who He really is read the book He gave us.My response was two-fold:
First, no. You don't get it both ways. You can't tell me that it is not possible for the human mind to fathom the realities of God, and then in the next breath, tell me that my human mind has the capacity to fathom the realities of God if I only read his book. You get one. Not both.
Then I mentioned Ole' Abe. I told him that I'm morally superior to God, including Abraham, being that I wouldn't kill my kids if some jerk-off told me to, no matter how powerful he thinks he is. I've written about Abraham here, here, and here,
To that, Tom B. responded:
In Abraham's defense. If you made a beautiful wooden chair and placed it in the dinning room nobody in the world can rightly take that chair out and burn it unless you gave them permission, because it's your chair. In the same way God (who made man) gave Abraham the permission to "burn the chair". Of course he wouldn't let it happen because He loves us too much. But since God is the author of all life he has the right to do what He needs to with it.I especially love the part where he conjectures, "Of course, [God] wouldn't let it happen because He loves us too much." Really? And in the next breath, people like Tom B. will tell you that you're going to burn in hell for eternity - just like the millions, nay billions upon billions of souls before you.
But damn....God loves you.
I fear for his kids. And, being a quiverfull fundie, he'll have a whole gaggle of them.
Note: Oh...and Tom B....I blocked you because I can. Your arguments were stupid and nonsensical. And you attacked me for blocking you by impersonating your brother's account. One day, you'll grow up and realize I'm right. In the meantime, don't have kids.
To start I'd like to point out that I didn't attack you. I thanked you nicely for proving a point about God's existence, simply because that's the way your point looked to me.
ReplyDeleteNow, what I am going to say will be said in a way that I hope you don't find offensive. If I were at all offensive in my previous comments than I apologize.
You're telling me that I'm brainwashed and that the stuff I believe is wrong, but you're not telling me why it's wrong. Show me where the flaws are.
Christianity isn't supposed to make sense to us, God doesn't need it to. God set up rules and boundaries and gave us one a mission, to glorify Him. If we don't obey Him there's consequences and if we do than we're rewarded which sounds an awful like raising children, pets, or the law of our land. Play by the rules and everything is fine, screw up and turn your back on your authority and there'll be consequences. It's simple.
Now let me tell you why I believe in a God. Jsyk, I'm not a little kid protected by mommy and daddy anymore. I'm 20, very independent, in college with a real job and so on. This isn't the kid you knew, this is someone who's tasted the thoughts of the world. I'm not leaning on my parents anymore.
Now the reason I still believe in God is simple. If you look through history you will find that every nation that's ever been in existence has one common theme, they all have their own gods. All these gods by different names, different titles, different powers, and different roles came into existence because man has always needed someone to worship because he has always subconsciously known that there is a God. Take a story I recently read in "Cowboy Boots in Africa." The story goes to tell how a pygmy man lived in a jungle. The pygmy man knew nothing about Jesus when one day a missionary came and told Him about God. The pigmy man was very excited and told the missionary that he finally what he'd been looking for. When asked what he meant he said that he had always known there was a God somewhere. He used to cry out to this God to make himself known because the pigmy man wanted this God. Some days he would climb the tallest try he could and pray for this God to make himself known. A few years later the missionary came to their village. Man has always known there is a God, it's instinct. Now I believe in Him because this same instinct tells me. Also, if this Bible were true than Hell is nothing I'm going to get close to, and I can be guaranteed that I won't get close to it if I believe in God. So, if you're looking for logical reasons other than the love reason that Jesus died for me than there you are.
You have been blocked so you cannot respond, but let me just pretend to respond to you for the benefit of there who may be reading;
DeleteThis narrative of the "grateful pigmy African" you trotted out does not match the reality of the way Africans (and other people from poor countries, not that all African countries are out-and-out poor, but some are) actually think about this. I have seen many articles in which Africans criticize this attitude and are sick and tired of white Westerners like us patronizing them. Some of them believe in God already anyway, but even if they didn't, they have their belief systems. Also, some of them don't like the messages evangelicals like you send; one story told by a white, middle class Navy SEAL, Eric Greitens, tells this: When Eric was helping in Africa, he saw an evangelical missionary preach that if you didn't believe in God, you were going to hell. She patronizingly held up a book, dropped it, and said something like "It is a law like gravity [kids] that if you don't believe in God, you are going to hell". The African who translated this, obviously not liking what he heard, gave a message about how we have to share our burdens and we cannot shoulder them alone (believable, after that patronizing book demonstration). Eric excused the evangelical and said that at least she was there helping (which is not actually good given the problems missionaries have caused, including increased homophobia and leaving half-built churches lying around in South American countries that are predominately Christian). I ultimately took a different message, especially after reading firsthand accounts from those "unfortunates"; the guy mistranslated the sermon on purpose because he may have wanted to spread religion but he was not going to do it on those terms. Also, if man has always known there was a God, all of the world's religions would have been monotheistic; when animals have an instinct, that instinct is acted on by all of them, not conveniently by a single "superior" group of them. Just sayin'.