Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court discussed his "favored version" of the tale in a footnote to his plurality opinion in Rapanos v. United States (decided June 19, 2006): "In our favored version, an Eastern guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies "Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down." Apparently a real conservative doesn't have to believe in God either.
Proof #16 - Contemplate the contradictions A thoughtful person who thinks about God cannot help but notice the amazing contradictions. They are everywhere you look. Here is one very simple example. On the day Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, he discovers that the Israelites have created a golden calf. To punish the people, Moses gathers a group of men and takes the following action in the book of Exodus, Chapter 32: Then he [Moses] said to them, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' " The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. So... one minute we have God carving into stone, "Thou shalt not kill." Then the next minute we have God telling each man to strap a sword to his side and lay waste to thousands. Wouldn't you expect the almighty ruler of the universe to be slightly more consistent than this? 3,000 dead people is a lot of commandment breaking. Obviously that is a total contradiction. The reason why you find contradictions like that in the Bible is because God is imaginary. When you look at slavery, you get the same feeling of total contradiction. It is obvious to modern human beings that slavery is an abomination. The fact that God is a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible shows us that God is imaginary. A recent issue of Christianity Today featured this cover: The cover story is: 5 Reasons Torture Is Always Wrong. If you think about it, you can see the contradiction here. What does God plan to do to people who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior? According to the Christian faith, he plans to torture them for eternity in the fires of hell. Since we all know that torture is always wrong, we have a contradiction. According to Genesis, God also tortures all women for eternity with painful childbirth. For her trangression of eating the fruit, God says to Eve: "I will greatly increase your pains in Childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children." This, of course, is torture. Inflicting excruciating pain on someone as punishment is the dictionary definition of torture, as you can see here: tor·ture: Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion. [ref] So, according to the Bible, God is the universe's all-powerful torturer. Unfortunately, according to Christianity Today, torture is always wrong. The fact that a perfect God is doing something that is always wrong shows you the contradiction. If you would simply look at and accept how obvious these contradictions are, you can see the truth: God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Understanding the Rationalizations It has actually been stated by one reader that Hell does not involve torture. "Hell is nothing more than a separation from God, not a fiery place of torture," according to the reader. Therefore, in his mind, he is able to rationalize that God is not a torturer. In order to believe this rationalization, this reader has to completely ignore the Bible. If you read the Bible, you cannot miss the fact that Hell is a place of torture. According to the Bible, Hell is a place of eternal torment. The article What Will Hell be Like? has a complete description. A place of eternal torment is, obviously, a place or torture. What you need to do is stop rationalizing and accept the evidence that you see everywhere. God is imaginary. All of the contradictions in your religion prove it.
Surprised you didn't mention Acts 1:15, "1:15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)" Was it 500 or 120????????????????????? Why is there no agreement?????? Seneca
You have some logic problem here. You're assuming that torture by human and torture by God are the same. They're not. Torture by human is wrong. Torture by God, however, is not wrong, since God is never wrong. All human sufferings are created by God. This is similar to immortality. It was clearly stated in the Bible that eternal life of humans would be wrong. Only God(s) can have eternal life.
But who says God is never wrong? If God is beyond right and wrong, then how can God be a source of moral authority. A being that does whatever it wants rules by appeal to force, i.e., do what I want or I will make life miserable for you, or, in the case of absolute power, you will do what I want period, full stop. The only way for a supreme being to logically have moral authority is if said being submits its will to some sort of moral code--either of its own making or someone else's. If God has no definable moral code--and there is nothing God can or cannot do in a moral sense--then God simply cannot be trusted. God is like Q or the Great Gazoo. If He / She / It has a sadistic, hateful, son-of-a-bitch side, well then too bad. If God does have a definable moral code, then we can work from there. Is this moral code consistent? Do we agree with its basic tenets? If God says he loves humanity, but then decides to ruin 99% of humanity, that constitutes a potential contradiction with the code as implied. It is also possible, and logically defensible, for man to judge God if God exists. It might not do much good, but that doesn't render the judgement pointless. If I set up and adhere to a moral code that I believe is reasonable and just, and you violate that code with your actions, then within the scope of my opinion, I can deem you immoral / unjust etcetera. Whether or not you are more powerful than me--or have the ability to torture me--doesn't really have any bearing on the matter. It's really an interesting catch 22. Those who believe God can do whatever he wants, including fucking with people's heads just for kicks, or torturing them because he can, really have no bearing for trusting God in the first place. They might as well trust Mytzlplk. On the other hand, those who believe God should be held to a moral code must reason out that code themselves, and apply the judgement themselves. There is no one else to do it for them. And the appeal to force, i.e. might makes right, does not necessarily give one being moral authority over another, even if said being is supreme.
food for thought... To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying, and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown - the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none... The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear .... - Friedrich Nietzsche
torture by god....what the fuck is wrong with you.... I think that YOU may win the prize as the stupidest son of a bitch here at ET....Yes I am sure of it now...You are the grand prize winner.... and what do you win.....Well I can only think of one prize appropriate for the stupidest man here at ET....Frozen Tits.... Yes folks that frozen taste treat developed by me, while trying to get to my office near the corner of Wacker and Madison... Now you may want to dismiss me out of hand...who the hell am I after all...but I can assure you that I am sane and relatively lucid and if you allow for the kind of mind bending numbness that occurs when one reads YOUR posts, I am a person of impeccable judgement.... Torture by god....you fucking idiot...If I was God I would come down and kick your ass just for the hell of it... Okay then, Carry on...You Religious Scholars..
Do you think that God gives a damn? Whatever you call it, torture or not, it makes no difference to God. You're just one of many animals that God made. Don't be so arrogant and think that you're more important than the other animals.
Proof #17 - Think about Leprechauns Many believers will say, "It is impossible for you to prove that God (Allah, Ra, Vishnu, whatever) does not exist. There is no way to prove that something does not exist." This is a silly argument for the following reason. Imagine that we have a conversation one day and I say to you, "I believe in the gerflagenflopple. You cannot prove that the gerflagenflopple does not exist, therefore it exists." You can see that this is ridiculous. Just because I have invented something out of thin air does not mean that its non-existence is suddenly unprovable. There has to be some evidence that the gerflagenflopple exists in order to assert its existence. Since there is not, it is quite easy to say that the gerflagenflopple is imaginary. Now let's imagine that we have a conversation one day and I say to you, "I believe in Leprechauns. You cannot prove that Leprechauns do not exist, therefore they exist." You actually have heard of Leprechauns. There are lots of books, movies and fairy tales dealing with Leprechauns. People talk about Leprechauns all the time. Leprechauns even have a popular brand of breakfast cereal. But that does not mean that Leprechauns exist. There is no physical evidence for the existence of Leprechauns. Not a single bit. Therefore, it is obvious to any normal person that Leprechauns are imaginary. If you think about it, you will realize that there is no difference between God and Leprechauns. Lots of people talk about God as though he exists, but there is no actual evidence for God's existence. For example: God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth. All historical gods were imaginary and we know it. None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either. (see this page) God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone. The resurrected Jesus has never appeared to anyone. The Bible we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God. When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers." Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God. And so on⦠There is absolutely no evidence indicating that God exists. There is a tremendous amount of empirical evidence that God does not exist. Therefore we can conclusively say that God is imaginary. That is the only thing that a rational person can say. Another angle Here is a second way to look at the same question. With every other object and phenomenon in our experience, we use the scientific method to determine whether it exists or not. For example, X rays are invisible, but we know that they exist. We can devise scientific experiments to prove that they exist. Then, once proven to exist, X-rays can be used predictably in all sorts of beneficial ways. If you would like to hypothesize that God exists, then you should say to yourself, "Let's devise a repeatable scientific experiment to provide evidence that God exists." Every experiment we devise demonstrates, yet again, that God is imaginary. Isn't it odd that God, unlike everything else in our universe, has been put into a special category? When we talk about God, we are supposed to do so "philosophically." Why? Why not treat God just like all other objects and devise experiments to detect his presence or absence? The classic religious response is, "God must remain hidden. If he proved his existence, that would take away faith." This is clever -- here we have an object named God that proves its existence by completely hiding its existence. Of course, in the real world, any object that provides no evidence for its existence is classified as imaginary. Even more interesting, this object called God, which is supposedly hiding its existence completely, is in the meantime supposedly writing books, answering prayers and incarnating itself. How can that be? This obvious contradiction shows how imaginary God is. When we look at prayer scientifically, we find that "answered prayers" are actually nothing but coincidences. When we look at the Bible scientifically, ethically or rationally, we find that the Bible is wrong. When we look at all of Jesus' miracles scientifically, we find that none of them left behind any scientific or historical evidence. Nor, for that matter, did Jesus, nor did Jesus' resurrection. Strangely, not a single historical source independent of the Bible ever mentions the resurrection. The reason why we can find no empirical evidence for God's existence is not because "God is a magical being completely able to hide from us." It is because God is imaginary.
Your premise is incorrect. Perhaps you have never seen a limb restored as a result of prayer but it has been recorded in church history. One interesting case was of a man in Portland who was part of John G Lake's ministry who had lost a toe in an accident as I recall and then had his toe restored. The story was that he kept his severed toe in a jar to show when he gave his testimony. Another interesting example comes from David Hogans ministry in South America (also much more recent) where he prayed for a girl with no bones in her legs (born that way) and within a few days she had healthy, normal legs. There is a church in California that has a fantastic ministry to the sick and the number one thing they see happen is bones getting re-set often years after an injury. Although I have not personally seen a limb grow on an amputee, I have seen a wide variety of physical healings and other miracles as a direct result of prayer. -qwik