The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday (page 173)

flamegrilled

But none of those things would directly contradict things that the christian god had previously revealed to humans.

God explained what love means and commanded us to follow the example of Jesus.

We can be certain that perfect love does not mean drowning a quarter of a million innocent people.

I can agree with all of that.

If we can't be certain of that fact then christians have no way to follow Jesus' command to love.

Non-sequitur.

Should they give generously to the poor or drown the poor? Who knows? Both are perfectly loving acts.

Silly.

Simon

If we can't be certain of that fact then christians have no way to follow Jesus' command to love.

Should they give generously to the poor or drown the poor? Who knows? Both are perfectly loving acts.

The Good Samaritan parable contradicts perfectly the loving-god-ignores-tsunami-but-is-still-loving argument.

The only one who showed love in that story was the one who acted to stop the suffering of the traveller.

Theists would have us believe that the bystanders who walked past and ignored him showed equal love (we can't know why they ignored him) and also the thugs who beat him (because we don't know why).

Simon

So my open mindedness and application of logic without a fixed starting premise is the real problem.

You are not open minded. You are trying to come up with an explanation to fit your beliefs instead of basing your beliefs on the evidence.

It's why you are struggling.

Silly.

Glib answers whenever anyone makes points that you can't address and shows your arguments up.

Not very convincing.

I would have thought it would be easier to defend an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving being but apparently it's really hard work.

Yes, it does follow because the robbers and travellers may have had good reason to ignore the hurt man. They were just like your God in the Tsunami situation, so there may be an argument that they were MORE like God that the Samaritan who helped out of pure altruism. God only ever helped out for his favorites.

Hummingbird001

I said, about 20 pages back, that so far the best theists can come up with for why God refused to act during the tsunami was god's excuse: Trust me. I know what I'm doing.

cofty

We can be certain that perfect love does not mean drowning a quarter of a million innocent people. - Cofty

I can agree with all of that. - Flame

So why did he drown a quarter of a million innocent people?

The god of christian theism knew about the earthquake in advance

He observed the wave rise from 19 miles below the Indian Ocean.

He watched it for another hour as it rushed towards the countries around the pacific Rim

He knew for a certainty what the death toll would be.

He knew that the lives of a further 5 million would be devastated

He only had to say the word to stop it in its tracks

He did not.

For an omniscient, omnipotent god, to send the tsunami or passively observe the tsuanmi is morally equivalent.

If the tsunami is an act of love how do we determine what love is? This is not a non sequitur or a trivial question and you don't get to dismiss it so easily.

OUTLAW

I passively watched someone "hurt" my cat. I love my cat. There was no contradiction.....flamegrilled

.................

........................................................................................................................ ...OUTLAW

Viviane

So my open mindedness and application of logic without a fixed starting premise is the real problem.

Fixed that for you.

Viviane

I passively watched someone "hurt" my cat. I love my cat. There was no contradiction.

So no one hurt your cat.

Explain how allowing ~250K to drown is "hurt" instead of dead.

humbled

The problem of God and suffering evolved. It is the solution to suffering and death that has kept Jews and now Christians digging through old scriptures and writing new ones for centuries.

Christian theism has a big problem. There is no way it can have a loving and limited God(my personal best hope)--- it is depending on an all powerful God to reverse death.

Jesus was their front man.

Paul saw the resurrection as the last and ONLY hope for the God who had failed to come through for his people. Finally here was the way He would solve the problem of suffering and death. Not even the teachings of Jesus were as important as the resurrection.

"If for only in this life we have hoped in Christ we are to be pitied more than all men.........." 1 Cor. 15:19-20

Here is the problem^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^for Christian theism. God has to give a resurrection--even Paul is saying"Life sucks!"

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

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