17 "Ah, Lord Yahweh, you made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. To you nothing is impossible. Jeremiah 32:17 (NJB).
Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26 (NIV).
Although liberal Christians claim to not take the entire bible literally, most of them do accept that the miraculous deeds of Christ were actual events that occurred in history. It has always perplexed me as to how anyone could believe in the tales as they are told in the bible when it is clear that they are utterly ridiculous, and for the most part, contain so many elements of impossible fantastical exploits.
The answer to my question is clearly outlined in the two texts cited at the beginning of this post. Regardless of the context they both make one claim that can explain every biblical impossibility; that for God nothing is impossible. This my friends is where the great equalizer faith comes in. God apparently can do anything, and according to the scriptures there is nothing that he could not do.
But I think I have found one thing in particular that the biblical God cannot do! He can't seem to genuinely forgive anyone for any offense against him. He commands of each and every one of us to forgive our enemies etc. Matthew 6:14-15. In the O.T. God by his own admission used to punish those that offended him and their sons to the third and fourth generations in Exodus 20 verse 5. He later retracted this rule but it shows just was a hateful and vindictive being this God is, that is; if he existed at all.
In my world when someone offends me or does something to the point where he/she loses my trust or friendship I am always willing to forgive. But you have to realize that their so called "atonement" is reflected in them changing their ways. They have to earn my trust and respect once more through their actions. I am a firm believer that everybody deserves a second and sometimes even a third chance. Of course there are times when it is best to just rid yourself of negative people and influences in your life but in my case those time are rare.
Vicarious suffering as it is promoted in the bible is the most offensive and insulting system of atonement ever conceived. Imagine having a delinquent sibling with a love for mayhem and criminal acts of violence. One day he decides he wants to try his hand at rape and goes after some poor innocent woman whom he randomly targeted off the street. In the process of carrying out his sick fantasy he ends up killing the woman. After a lengthy trial he is sentenced to life in prison for the brutality of his crime and labeled a social deviant by the system. But you decide that he deserves a second chance and are willing to take his sentence upon yourself; even though you are in college with a great future ahead of you. The court agrees that you should stand in his place and serve his life sentence for him while he is set free. I ask you my dear Christian; where is the justice in this?
If you answered that the above analogy demonstrates an injustice, then you must also agree that Christ bearing upon himself all the sins (imaginary offenses against God) of humanity and then dying in your stead is just as wrong. God's own rules and lust for blood could not be overlooked in the case of humanity. If we were to take the story of Adam and Eve as literal then we are all born with a burden of sin and a debt to God.
Although our more modern believers now state that the garden tale was not to be taken literally, I tend to disagree. Why would they construct a genealogy for Adam if it were not meant to be taken literally? Why are we given a lifespan for Adam who supposedly died at the age of 930 years old! The bible has talking animals, people who can fly to the heavens or ride chariots of fire, people who can walk on water, parting seas and rivers, rocks that produce water, and feeding multitudes with a few loaves and fishes. Although all these things are impossible the answer is simple my friend: Nothing is impossible for God!
Talking to christian is like talking to a child. By creaking an omnipotent being that's their way of not facings the nonsense that's written in book of mythology, like when a child says: "my dad can beat your faded times infinity."
ReplyDeleteHave you checked out they websites I mentioned in a previous post : godisimaginary.com and the bible.com; whenever I answer religious question on yahoo answers I include links to those sites and to your blog.
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Talking to christian is like talking to a child. By creaking an omnipotent being that's their way of not facings the nonsense that's written in book of mythology, like when a child says: "my dad can beat your faded times infinity."
ReplyDeleteHave you checked out they websites I mentioned in a previous post : godisimaginary.com and the bible.com; whenever I answer religious question on yahoo answers I include links to those sites and to your blog.
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@Tracy, thanks for your support and comments. I have visited the sites you recommended before. I think godisimaginary.com is actually book marked on my browser. Your comment is a nice summary of this post; in order to believe the impossible there has to be impossible circumstances.
ReplyDeleteHey David :)
ReplyDeleteIn your analogy, the criminal goes free purely because someone took the punishment for him. You failed to mention whether or not there was genuine repentance (not merely remorse) for his action. If there is no repentance, then the amnesty becomes a license to break that law without consequence. That WOULD be injustice. But what if the criminal actually turned his life around and did far greater things than the individual that was in college with a supposed bright future? I'm sure many people thought that James Holmes had a bright future. With God, a second chance is not a matter of how much you deserve one (none of us deserve one) - it's just a question of whether or not you sincerely desire one.
Romans 2:
3 But you -- when you judge those who behave like this while you are doing the same yourself -- do you think you will escape God's condemnation? 4 Or are you not disregarding his abundant goodness, tolerance and patience, failing to realise that this generosity of God is meant to bring you to repentance? 5 Your stubborn refusal to repent is only storing up retribution for yourself on that Day of retribution when God's just verdicts will be made known. 6 He will repay everyone as their deeds deserve. 7 For those who aimed for glory and honour and immortality by persevering in doing good, there will be eternal life; 8 but for those who out of jealousy have taken for their guide not truth but injustice, there will be the fury of retribution. 9 Trouble and distress will come to every human being who does evil -- Jews first, but Greeks as well; 10 glory and honour and peace will come to everyone who does good -- Jews first, but Greeks as well. 11 There is no favouritism with God. 12 All those who have sinned without the Law will perish without the Law; and those under the Law who have sinned will be judged by the Law. 13 For the ones that God will justify are not those who have heard the Law but those who have kept the Law. 14 So, when gentiles, not having the Law, still through their own innate sense behave as the Law commands, then, even though they have no Law, they are a law for themselves. 15 They can demonstrate the effect of the Law engraved on their hearts, to which their own conscience bears witness; since they are aware of various considerations, some of which accuse them, while others provide them with a defence . . . on the day when, 16 according to the gospel that I preach, God, through Jesus Christ, judges all human secrets.
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ReplyDeleteNow, as far as the miraculous claims of the bible are concerned, there is really just one miraculous claim that you must choose to either accept or reject, and that is the possibility of God. If God is real, then there is less reason to doubt the miraculous. My tendency is to raise the same question about the claims made in evolutionary text books by asking is life without an intial source of intellegence is possible. Let me be clear on this - I am not suggesting that we give up the search for answers to life's most profound mysteries in lieu of a God of the gaps explaination. BUT I am saying that the discovery of naturalistic laws and processes in nature should not be regarded as irrefutable evidence against the existence of God. In fact, the God that is revealed throughout the Bible provides a point of reference for the origin of several aspects of life that have no scientifically testable explaination.
ReplyDeleteDarwin made this statement in his thesis On the Origin of the Species. He wrote "I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental qualities of animals within the same class."
Before we reject the idea of God as our creator, I think it is worth giving a sincere examination to the origin of thoughts, emotions, instincts, and intelligence. I personally have a hard time seeing how these things could come about without God. While I agree that a belief in millions of years of evolution may provide a time scale for a myriad of changes to take place, I am still not persuaded that time plus chance accounts for the origin of life.
Yours truly :)
Jackie
Jackie, thanks for your comments. On your first point about repentance I must first say that I find it invalid. What should I repent of? Should I repent for being born with a "sinful nature" which I had nothing to do with in the first place? If God is just then he should've just punished Adam and Eve and not proclaim a curse on all of mankind and other living things that walk the earth. If God is all powerful he could've reversed the effects of sin brought to this world through the disobedience of one single couple.
DeleteThe idea of consciousness to me does not point to a god. I may not know how it came about but filling that ignorance with "oh well, it's unexplainable so God did it is not how I use my logic and reasoning skills. I can confess that I don't know, but to say God did it is the ultimate arrogance! Especially, when that god just so happens to be the one you profess to believe in.
To state that God is good is in all reality an oxymoron. If anyone on Earth committed some of the immoral and murderous acts of your God they would be tried and most likely hung for being murdering tyrants and crimes against humanity. Hitler is the human equivalent of your God yet he was remembered as a despot and a tyrant. God is exempt because he just so happens to be the one who "created us" and is thus beyond reproach. That does not fly in my book.
1) Oh come on. You know exactly what is meant by repentance. Or perhaps you expect me to believe you've never done anything wrong, even by your own standards, let alone those of God.
ReplyDelete2) So you think God is unjust for fact that Adam and Eve blew your inheritance before you had a chance to enjoy it?
3) Um, he did reverse the effects. Romans 5:19 "For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous."
4) If you want to bring logic into the mix, then you might want to ask whether it's logical to even try to explain the immaterial (knowledge, information, thoughts, consciousness, etc..) through materialism alone. In the end, no amount of evidence could ever point you to a "god" because you have already made a commitment to materialism.
"It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." ~ Richard Lewontin, geneticist & evolutionary biologist
5) A moment ago you said that if God is just then he should have punished Adam and Eve. But now you are claiming that his destruction of some really wicked people is evidence that he is a tyrant. Make up your mind.
Your Turn,
Jackie
First off, God has no standards since he does not exist. Secondly, it only took his biographers about 3,000 years to try to repair his reputation by creating the whole vicarious suffering story about Jesus. Which by the way is an epic fail in my opinion. On your fifth point you are doing nothing but simply rambling, since it makes no sense whatsoever. If Adam and Eve committed a "sin" which is an imaginary concept as is the existence and worshiping of God; then he should have simply punished them. Punishing the entire human race and every living creature and cursing us all for the deeds of one couple who by the way did not exist either is outright unjust.
DeleteYou demonstrate through your comments exactly what I have said about fundamentalist believers. You can't see reason or logic because you are all blinded by faith. Faith is an irrational position, and in the light of reason impossible to defend. It only holds its own in the stubborn mentality of those who refuse to analyze the absurdity of their beliefs in the absence of evidence.
Finally, trying to justify your deities penchant for mass murder by calling his victims "wicked" does him no service. I bet if you were amongst those so called "wicked" people your opinion about God would be quite different. The only wicked one here is your imaginary guy in the sky.
You reject anything and everything that points to God and yet you accuse me of having an irrational position. You say I'm blinded by my faith? You say I can't see reason or logic? Perhaps you need to re-read the quote from Richard Lewontin.
ReplyDelete"It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that WE ARE FORCED BY OUR A PRIORI adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for WE CANNOT ALLOW a Divine Foot in the door." ~ Richard Lewontin, geneticist & evolutionary biologist
I could give a rats ass about what Richard Lewontin or any other so called expert has to say about this matter. In the end it is just his opinion; that is, unless you take it as the gospel truth as you do the myths of the bible. You forget, I have been there and done that. I gave God a try and in the end in the face of reason all I found was that myths could not hold up to logical scrutiny. My opinions are my own based on my experiences as a theist and my reading and understanding of the scriptures. Unlike you the more I read the bible in the light of reason the more ridiculous it seems. To think that otherwise intelligent people have fallen for the lies of ancient bronze age myths, just demonstrates the power of the will to believe in the absurd.
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