(Sorry about the late reply)
CabVet said:
No, if you really listened you would notice that what they really want is to be left alone and not have anybody's God pushed down their throats. Criticizing and pointing out inconsistencies in your God does not equal to "wanting" him.
No, I was describing the
kind of God atheists seem to want. It's a small but important distinction. Christians offer a God who gave us free will, but strangely atheists pefer a God who doesn't give his subjects a mind of their own.
Selfinflikted said:
Re-read my post. In fact, I said exactly the opposite. What I want now is for you to explain to me how if god had created man perfect that would automatically preclude man having free will. You are the one arguing that perfection and free will can't coexist. I'm simply asking you to explain to me why you think that.
I think we got a little mixed up - I never argued that free will and perfection cannot co-exist. You originally said something along the lines of "can't you create a perfect being without free will" and I said no ... unless your idea of perfection is nothing higher than a rock.
Selfinflikted said:
So, after the writing of the Bible was completed, god just stopped? I asked for examples outside the Bible for a very obvious reason.
My Godmother claims to have had a divine revelation from God and she leads a very good life. Would you take that as proof? I doubt it.
Selfinflikted said:
Anyway, you have yet to explain to me why god isn't responsible. Until you can show how he isn't, we are at an impasse. I have already shown quite clearly how god is responsible. That is not to say that we should simply poo poo our own responsibilities as empathetic human beings, however. Because it is quite evident that if we won't do something, no one will. Certainly not your god, who just rests on his laurels while the human suffering trudges on...
I'm not sure if
Begt came back to discuss what I mentioned earlier so I'll say it to you.
Along with the personal responsibility / free will angle (which would disappear if God came along to fix every single thing which ever went wrong) the fact is whenever examples are given of God's intervention - the slaughter of the Canaanites for example - we use them as proof that God is evil. Would we have said the same if He ravaged Nazi Germany? Maybe, maybe not.
People say they want divine intervention, but I think they would react very differently if they actually got it.
Selfinflikted said:
Hm. That's not what I'm aiming for with this line of debate, and I think you are reading into my posts some things that I most certainly have not said nor insinuated. You have started from a few shaky pretenses, and that has skewed your ability to grasp intent. IOW, you are not picking up what I'm putting down.
Or perhaps when your ideas on God are laid bare you realise how ridiculous they are.
Thing is, most of your questions are unanswerable - deliberately so I suspect. You want proof of God helping people outside the Bible, but whenever someone says they've recieved a message from Him they're dismissed as crazy. You want God to intervene more often, yet when or if He does, His acts are regarded as evil or cruel. You say you value free-thinking over blind faith, yet would prefer it if God never gave us free will.
Creationists use the same tactics - first by saying there is no proof of evolution, then dismissing all the evidence supporting it because "that assumes evolution is true in the first place".
Selfinflikted said:
No, you can't very well go around accusing and faulting god with anything because that would show him to be all the things you claim he is not. Besides, he might not like that anyway and not let you into heaven. That is, after all, the name of the game. Is it not?
If God actually was as lazy and uncaring as you described He wouldn't offer us a way into heaven in the first place.