missed the boat, my comments are NOT misguided at all... if you claim that God is an inherently incomprehensible creature, then the debate ends right here...if god is UNKNOWABLE then it is much more than simply "misguided" to claim KNOWLEDGE of him, it is downright IDIOTIC! by attempting to define their god, christians are in fact limiting him, (if god is THIS, then he does not posses the attribute of being NOT THIS)... a limited god is fine with me (IF HE CAN BE PROVEN TO EXIST)...but it is NOT FINE with christians...they keep wanting to have an unlimited, infinite god....yet, such a proposition is TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE,.... if it is totally unintelligible....then they can NOT claim knowledge of it... to then have someone like you come and say, "no no no man is finite, god is infinite, you can't make such "surface level comment" (as dorkhorse says)" is bullshit.... christians say god created man in his image right? well, as far as i know, god doesn't have a body or anything that actually resembles man...so i can only assume they mean "in his image" to mean that we THINK similarly to god...(otherwise how the fuck are we created in his image if neither in body nor mind??) that means WE CAN talk about gods qualities...and when we talk about them, the concept of god (as reported by christians) totally falls dead on its ass anyway, going down this road often leads to unnecessary dead ends...even though i am totally confident in the atheit positions ability to vanquish any religious doubletalk, there is more than one way to take down christianity...and that is to look at its roots...the idea that jesus lived as a man, as i have said, is total bunk...completely untrue... and not only jesus, but all other areas of the bible can be totally destroyed by critical analysis...christians simply have no answers to any of this...the only thing they can do is, like darkhorse, hide behind a defence of "complexity" that they invent so that they can keep living their lives in blissful ignorance..
Fasterpussycat, You need to get over yourself. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you pray to yourself at night.
actually, we can make a pretty daming case against god that, far from being benevolent, he is positively EVIL! if we look at the end result of evil from an individual point of view, it is pain. ie, an evil act was done, and pain was suffered. for pain to be suffered requires consciousness...obviously..a man can only feel pain if he is concious to feel it so let's look at what happens...god creates a world that contains the elements necessary for life - conciousness - to exist. this cannot be called an act of "good"...it is simply necessary for the concepts of "good" and "evil" to even exist... from that point on...man is totally left on his own to battle against a world that can cause him harm (and end his life) at every turn... GOD PURPOSELY CREATED SUCH A WORLD, THEREFORE HE IS EVIL! if he really wanted to do "good" to man, why not make him so that he can't feel pain? then the concept of evil would lose all meaning...if nothing hurts you, it doesn't matter what another man does to you, or what the world does to you... i can only conclude that since god had a say in what kind of world he wanted and he chose to create this one, he is evil.
You got me! I bet you have spent 4 days looking for a mistake from me. Good Job. However, the logic behind that post is right on the money!
daniel_m, Since when does pain = evil? Pail is a good indicator that you are very much alive. I have suffered both extreme physical and emotional pain. I've had a tooth pulled without novacaine, found out a long-term girlfriend was cheating on me with my best-friend, stood at the bedside of my father telling me, after his heart-attack, that I would have to be the man of the house at 15 years of age (he survived). During the time periods they occured, the pain felt unbearable and unavoidable. If it was emotional, I wanted to run away but there was no where to flee to. If it was physical, I wanted to grab the dentist by his throat and curse at him. In retrospect, every painful experience in my life turned out to be a positive growing experience. I wouldn't change any of those painful moments -- I am more of a man because of them. Without pain, we have no contrast to pleasure. Funny how people so easily blame a god for pain but fail to neglect how the pain evolves them as a person -- all the while forgetting the immense pleasure that comes from being alive. How often do you feel pain vs. pleasure? Seems to me like pain is but a small price to pay for such enormous pleasure of being alive. Pain exists because, without it, learning would probably take much longer -- if it ever happened at all. It is through pain that you are probably a better trader -- so don't compare pain to evil -- they are not one in the same.
"Made in his image" means we are given the ability to distinguish right from wrong and to choose--free will, pal. It's up to you.
I said PAIN is the END RESULT of EVIL...can you read?? is this not true?? Please show me how... anyway, my point was that christians love to paint there god as the ultimate good guy...all i done was to show that, if we are to judge him by his actions (which is the test that WE are all put to), he sure doesn't look TOTALLY, COMPLETELY, PERFECTLY GOOD to me... no need for a 500 line rant...just read what I say and you'll see it makes perfect sense..
Thunder, I've found that its very easy to know what is right and wrong in terms of absolutes. However, with life being so complicated, I find it much harder to know when it's right to be wrong, and when it's wrong to be right.