I agree Wobble, that the thread got a bit misdirected, but some solid points were made to show that God, to coin a phase, 'doesn't seem to give a damn'.
It has shown me a couple of things. Some Christians [apologies to sac for not qualifying that earlier] are really just God Apologists. All the atrocities, all the war, all the hatred, all the murder and mayhem, and rape of little children, is not enough for them to believe that God should do something. The only thing they have said that he has done is to 1] send his son to die. 2] some mysterious action that convinced a single person that God is out there supernaturally.
I honestly must ask: Just what the hell big deal is it that God sent a spirit to earth, incarnated as man, and he died on a cross? Big deal! Billions and billions of men, women and children have died. A fair number of them have been tortured and killed publicly. So what? Now if that execution had resulted in immediate salvation to man - now that would be something I suppose. But it did not.
All we have is the words in an ancient document, culled from thousands of ancient documents, deemed 'holy' by some clerics that held power over the masses of people and wanted to continue to hold power, translated and re-translated until likely the original message is obscured, that says that this single death represents salvation to man. Now, 2000 years later, no salvation! Man is still suffering precisely like he always has - with the occasional exception of someone who claims that God took care of him. God is not the same God even to all the believers who accept the document as proof. They fight among themselves, call the other groups wrong, and at times go to war and kill each other over differing beliefs.
All the time, little children are dying, bombs that can irradicate mankind are being flown about the planet ready to be armed and fired, diseases run rampant and kill millions, on and on.
Clearly - God had done nothing. The question was asked by Time Magazine:
April 8, 1966. That controversial question was followed a short time later with the New York Times article that declared it to be so.
To me - He is dead in the sense that he seem unable or unwilling [either by choice or by non-existence] to act. If I and you, puny dust, can see that enough time has passed to prove anything God has to prove, why can't he see that? All the theistic nonsense about 'His purposes and sight are so much different than human reason can understand' is bullshit.
Man created God in his image - shortsighted and unfullfilled.
Jeff
