The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday (page 224)

sunny23

I might be misinterpreting your overall message by the way you worded a few phrases. If so I'm sorry. I have posted the analogy this page and last

Ruby456

psacramento

it is lovely to hear your views.

I love visiting churches old and new wherever I go and the structures and silence do say something to me when I go inside (I guess this would be true of the buildings of other religions too). For me it is like going into a womb like place and is suggestive of what you were saying about the world being in a pregnant state. Embryos and foetuses withstand huge changes, torsions and unimaginable growth in a protected but stimulating environment. Even atheists can draw meaning and significance from religious materials and it is in this sense that I understand what you are saying about suffering.

on the other hand the patriachal path that religions take (but not you) while at the same time using underpinnings from femininity (marriage, pregnancy etc) and then covering over and often perpetrating awful cruelties against women has to be brought forward for contestation all the time.

cofty

Ruby. How can you compare the protective environment of the womb with the earth's propensity to destroy millions of its inhabitants in natural disasters?

Metaphors are only helpful if they illuminate something real. Believers frequently substitute a metaphor for an actual answer.

PSacramento

I might be misinterpreting your overall message by the way you worded a few phrases. If so I'm sorry. I have posted the analogy this page and last.

Thanks, I wasnt sure which one you meant.

For the ends to justify the means ( which I disagree with) it means that the end result is worth it regardless of how we get there.

That isn't the case ( though it may seem like it on the surface).

The means, the suffering and the understanding that comes with that, is what gives validity to the end result.

To be like god and not have "earned" it means no sense of responsibility that goes with it.

Having gonna through the trials and tribulation of being human and arriving at "godhood", we have a complete and correct sense of the responsibility of being "like god", not only for us ( humans) but the whole planet, even universe.

humbled

When there is suffering without understanding--what is that?

Does that one who is not properly educated by religion and who suffers a searingly painful, prolonged and violent end---do they approach godhood?

When a dog tore up my neighbor's chickens, she asked me to help her. The ones who had no prospect of survival, I dispatched for her as quickly and gently as I could. Only the ones that were likely to live and be "happy" were treated and nursed toward recovery. There was no good in letting the terribly injured ones go through suffering.

You assume, PSac, that there is a full recovery for all sufferers? All suffering makes us candidates for godhood?

But the bible does not agree with this model.

Maeve

cofty

Psac. You are dispensing trite, ivory tower, generalities about suffering while completely ignoring the specific topic of this thread.

As usual believers answer the easy question nobody asked.

sunny23

So God puts humans on earth. Wants them to become more like him therefore he imposes physical suffering. You deny that he caused the earth to be faulty (pun intended) and yet you believe he has the power to stop Tsunamis. Do you not believe in the bible at all? Genesis gives God's purpose to mankind to fill the earth and live forever. Even Jesus references to God creating the first male and female in Mathew ch 19. He makes several other references to the OT. Do just cherry pick what you like from the bible?

what's the point in wanting mankind to live on earth forever without suffering only to then kick them out when they rebel out of trying to be more like you (as eating magic apples can do) so they can suffer hundreds of generations in order to become more like you?

Also, in order for your theory to work it means that in the after life the souls would need to remember all of their suffering in order for their character to have developed to be more like God. That's worse than the scientist magic pill analogy.

PSacramento

Psac. You are dispensing trite, ivory tower, generalities about suffering while completely ignoring the specific topic of this thread.

I recall you said it is about suffering caused by Natural "evil", right? and why God would allow it, yes?

I gave you a possible reason why He would allow it, whether anyone LIKES it or not, agree or not, doesn't make it any less a reason.

You may say that it makes God out to be a some sort of jerk, or worse even and that's fine, that is your opinion and you may even be right.

Doesn't change that it MAY be the reason and most certianly is a POSSIBLE reason.

cofty

it MAY be the reason and most certianly is a POSSIBLE reason.

No. It is an impossibility that that the god of Jesus, the god who "is love", would design an earth that would drown millions of its inhabitants with no better reason than it would somehow help them grow in some undefined way. Jesus told you what love means. In no possible way could it include the capricious annihilation of innocent people.

When god saw the tiny little wave spread out from it's epicentre, and it would have been trivially easy for him to calm it before any human even knew of it's existence. He didn't. He passivley observed it grow and rush towards the inhibitants of the Pacific Rim. He knew it would drown 250 000 men women and children and he did nothing.

It is morally repugnant that god would drown 250 000 Asians so that self-satisfied western christians could be experience the warm glow of compassion.

Your supposed answer is self-contradictory. We convered it in great depth in previous pages.

new hope and happiness

Jesus said " forgive them they no not what they do"

In that statement we were not asked to love all the people, and that statement allowed the rich to get richer snd the poor to get poorer.

Is this wrong?

If not what is morally repugnent?

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

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