God doesn't care, just deal with it!!

or he needs to lay off the beans

Straying a bit off course, but I just listened to a person on the radio who thanked God for helping him survive a battle with cancer. If (according to some people) God is really responsible for everything going on, he's the one that gave you the cancer to begin with. If God is also responsible for any team's victory, then isn't he also responsible when they lose as well? He can't just be given credit for the good things and not take any responsibility for the bad things.

Thankyou for shooting holes in something I poke at all the time.

I worked with a guy who was VERY religious (he went to seminary school and loved to try to convert us) and he used to tell us that god knew us from the moment of conception till the day we died. That he knew everything that would happen to us, and where we would eventually go.

That's all well and fine.. but when thing went wrong.. "god was testing him"

If god already knew where he was going and what he was going to do.. why the need for a test?

He never liked that question and eventually left me alone to my heathen (buddhist) ways

ncjay wrote: God is really responsible for everything going on, he's the one that gave you the cancer to begin with.

But he loves you!

because you are crunchy and good with bacon?

In reply to mad_machine:

Not that I'm trying to convert you, but this may (or may not) answer your question about testing:

http://www.gotquestions.org/why-does-God-test-us.html

You know... it seems like a lot of overly complicated magic is involved to explain the intangible. Almost like it is a work of fiction from a time when the populace was a little more naive. Like the mechanics of the solar system needed to be when the Sun used to revolve around the Earth. Then... a guy like Copernicus comes along and says (paraphrasing of course) "HEY, that isn't how it works at all. Everything you have been led to believe is wrong". It took a long time for people to take him seriously... but facts are facts and nobody believes the Earth is the center of the Universe anymore.

mad_machine wrote: That's all well and fine.. but when thing went wrong.. "god was testing him" If god already knew where he was going and what he was going to do.. why the need for a test? He never liked that question and eventually left me alone to my heathen (buddhist) ways

Welcome to the Problem of Evil (Why does a good God let bad E36 M3 happen to good people?). It's something that has been argued for a couple thousand years and there have been entire books discussing it without an easy answer. But then again, trying to give it an easy answer would be only slightly more absurd than saying the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.

But I can give one short answer to that little subset of the question: Why would God test someone if God already knows the answer? My own theory is the testing isn't for God's benefit. Ever heard a story of someone who went through something difficult and found yourself saying, "I have no idea what I would have done?" Perhaps, in some cases, God wants someone to actually know, either for their own benefit or so that they can later help others.

It's sort of like the father in "A Boy Named Sue" who knew his son would grow up tougher if he had an embarrassing name. Only God's not a cowboy. And may have picked up a taste for wine instead of beer or whiskey. Ok, so the analogy's getting worse the more you think about it, but there's a common thread in most attempts to discuss (not necessarily answer, but at least talk about) that Problem of Evil.

forget it. We all have our beliefs. I just don't like it when someone thinks I should believe what they do.

just deleted most of this post.

MadScientistMatt wrote: Welcome to the Problem of Evil (Why does a good God let bad E36 M3 happen to good people?). It's something that has been argued for a couple thousand years and there have been entire books discussing it without an easy answer. But then again, trying to give it an easy answer would be only slightly more absurd than saying the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.

There is an easy answer but it is one that is hard to fathom from a lifetime of looking at the problem from only one perspective. Sometimes you have to consider uncomfortable conclusions to see how to solve a problem in its simplest form.

DrBoost wrote: Ok, I like to watch Survivor (I know, I just lost some of the VERY little respect I had here), one of my guilty pleasures. Anyway, this last season there was a bible-thumper on. This dude kept going on about how he was doing the lords work by being on Survivor.

I watch Survivor too. And Amazing Race. About all I watch. And I completely agree. Whenever any of them say something like that my wife and I always say something like "Please, Jesus, let me win the game show". And joke about God taking time out of running the Universe to lend a hand in the plate spinning challange.

Duke wrote:

914Driver wrote: No I have serious logic with flawed issues. It's the gas fumes.

Man, you are *on a roll* lately.

Seem to be pissing off everybody.

Just a few notes:

Repenting on a deathbed:
Who you are now is a result of all your previous choices, God's influence, and your environment's influence. When you repent on your deathbed, you are responding to both your environment and any graces that allow you to choose repentance and see the need for it. It does not condone any previous wrongdoing, but allows you to make a break from it. Conversely, he who does good and later falls away doesn't get any sort of free pass for it. Who you are at the last moment of your life is a culmination of your whole life.

As an aside, deathbed conversions aren't particularly common. As you choose one direction and make repeated choices in that direction, you build habits of choosing that direction. That is, you develop a virtue or vice. It makes it harder to choose the opposite. Ironically, in my experience, when you choose the vice, it makes it harder to choose the good because you are less able to choose the good. This is why addicts have such a hard time breaking the addiction. They are less able to choose the good, despite sometimes truly desiring it. However, when you choose virtue, it makes it harder to choose the evil because, while still remaining completely free, you become disgusted by the evil and have no desire for it.

Skills:
Skills in and of themselves are neither good nor evil. It is all in how you use it. Someone able to make the best cocaine is obviously quite a proficient in chemistry, and could use that same skill to make better pharmaceuticals or whatnot. One IS supposed to use them, but they were given to them for the good of man. However, because of free will, you can use those same skills for evil.

I might have more to add later... (probably a quick bit on suffering)

BTW, do I sound like I'm condemning anyone here? In these sorts of conversations, I know it's easy for it to get heated. I'm just trying to answer everyone's questions/thoughts/etc.

Wow, you guys got all serious.

I'll tell you what I think, not that it matters.

If I have a tough project at work, I'll ask God to continue to give me the strength and ability to do it as well as I can. Or if I have a challenge with one of my kids, I'll ask God to give me the judgment and patience to help move them forward as He sees fit.

After getting through something difficult, I'll thank God for the grace to see it though, or the ability I was able to bring to bear. I think those things are appropriate.

Where I think people are sometimes a little misguided is when they ask God to make things happen. "Give me strength to do my best" is not the same as "let me win this challenge". I don't fault anyone who says those things, I just think the relationship with God they talk about a lot may not be as solid as they think. But, who knows. Maybe I'm wrong.

And as a point of clarification, I'm Catholic with some kind of weird cosmic wing to my faith. I'm using traditional Christian language here to make my point. If you know me, you won't often hear me talk about God. I'm usually more of a Matthew 6:6 kind a guy.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

MadScientistMatt wrote: Welcome to the Problem of Evil (Why does a good God let bad E36 M3 happen to good people?). It's something that has been argued for a couple thousand years and there have been entire books discussing it without an easy answer. But then again, trying to give it an easy answer would be only slightly more absurd than saying the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.

There is an easy answer but it is one that is hard to fathom from a lifetime of looking at the problem from only one perspective. Sometimes you have to consider uncomfortable conclusions to see how to solve a problem in its simplest form.

This is a pretty good definition of faith. Well done.

Seems silly to thank the invisible guy in the sky for a game show. Not that I really believe there is an invisible, omnipotent guy hanging around watching us and giving folks a poke now and again.

Is anyone on the continuum somewhere between full on Christian and atheist? Surely you don't have to condemn the idea of any kind of deity just because you don't buy into the party line of the stereotypical evangelical Christian.

Scott wrote: Is anyone on the continuum somewhere between full on Christian and atheist?

Yup. I went through a kind of atheist phase. Then I realize I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Some really, really good ideas in the Bible if you look through all the generations of people who told it as best they could and the people who wrote it down as best they could.

Actually, in between isn't the right way to put it. One over simplified idea is no better than the other. There's a lot of wonder out there. We're so programmed to find answers all the time we sometimes miss it.

DrBoost wrote: OK, this isn't meant to be a religious post despite the title. I just want to rant for a second and thus far, you have been an indulgent bunch. Ok, I like to watch Survivor (I know, I just lost some of the VERY little respect I had here), one of my guilty pleasures. Anyway, this last season there was a bible-thumper on. This dude kept going on about how he was doing the lords work by being on Survivor. He, at one point wussed out and wanted to quit but told the lord he would be there as long as He wanted him to be so he could bring praise to his name (won't even get into the fact that if you never utter his name, you can't be praising it...). Anyway, do these people REALLY think God will help them win survivor, a football game, or some acting award?? Seriously folks! If he was going to act in such a direct way I think there are much more meaningful ways he would do it, what with all the earthquakes, murders and missing children in the world. Maybe he would have prevented GM from building all those vehicles on the Lumina platform??? Ok, I'm done. Sweet and simple.

I think that Survivor (and the rest of its ilk) represents everything that is wrong in this world. It is truly LCD - think only of yourself, screw over everyone when you get a chance, lie and cheat to a $1 million, so I doubt that it would be something that any diety would truly support.

fast_eddie_72 wrote:

Scott wrote: Is anyone on the continuum somewhere between full on Christian and atheist?

Yup. I went through a kind of atheist phase. Then I realize I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some really, really good ideas in the Bible if you look through all the generations of people who told it as best they could and the people who wrote it down as best they could.

I get confused by this point when it comes up. I know this wasn't intended to be an explanation of why you hold the beliefs you do (and you certainly don't owe anybody an explanation, least of all myself), but the best explanation I can think of for the Bible is a bunch of stories written down by the educated/experienced, designed to help guide a bunch of people through the tribulations of everything from dealing with their fellow man to out-of-season shellfish. But I don't understand the leap from there to a literal word-of-God explanation for its existence.

I left the prior paragraph in, because I wasn't sure how much of the bathwater I was addressing...

Actually, in between isn't the right way to put it. One over simplified idea is no better than the other. There's a lot of wonder out there. We're so programmed to find answers all the time we sometimes miss it.

This is another one of those things I don't understand... There is a lot of wonder, and it is, in the truest sense, wonderful. I don't understand the need to say that something is the way it is because some deity made it that way in the absence of any other explanation. It seems much more complicated and unlikely as an answer than "I don't know," or "I don't know yet."

I'm occasionally fascinated and amused by the idea that the Universe is in no way compelled to behave in a fashion whose concepts are within the grasp of the human mind.

In any case, these are the thoughts this thread popped into my head. Nobody owes me any explanations.

"Earth? I don't know where that is."

In reply to ransom:

Okay, I guess fair warning. If you are offended by a view of God or religion other than a literal interpretation of the Bible, just stop reading now. I don’t mean to challenge anyone’s ideas and if it works for you, that’s great. If you don’t have any patience for “new age-y” mumbo jumbo, probably should stop too. I can get a little out there. It is what it is.

So, to your first point - I don't know if it's the educated trying to help people. I think it's more an effort to record for everyone what Jesus said. Jesus was a guy who kind of "got it". A lot of folks didn't quite get it for themselves (kinda like me) but knew he was on to something. Somewhere along the line, some of them said "This is important! We should try to preserve this for other people!" They tried their best. But not getting it for themselves, they lost something in the translation.

If you make a real effort and approach it with the right mind set, though, there’s a lot of it in there. Personally, I don’t think Jesus is the only one who got it or the only one whose thoughts on these subjects were preserved by others. And personally I think you can learn a lot from some of the others. And honestly, I think there are people today who get the same thing. Maybe more than ever before since they benefitted from the preserved thoughts of some of the ones who came before them.

As for your second part- this could be dicy. I don't pretend to understand this stuff. I was alluding to that in my last post. That lack of understanding is part of my faith. But here goes, for better or worse.

I look at the Universe, like you do, and say "wow". I don't understand it, but there it is. We can understand parts of it, and that's really neat. Science can tell us a lot and honestly that makes it even more amazing to me. But there it is. And there's no denying there is an order to it. Science is, after all, an understanding of the things that seem to happen for a reason.

We can't understand it all, but we can see that there is cause and effect. It's over our head, but it's not random. There is order to the Universe. And order implies intelligence. Now, did a deity "make" it? That's kind of approaching it from a very Human point of view, I think. Here's what I know. Whatever made the Earth, the Sun, the stars, the galaxies - all of it... whatever intelligence orders things made us as well. We tend to look out at the Universe and think "it must be cool out there." But we are the Universe. The very elements that make up our body were forged in the heart of long dead stars. It’s here and now. In us, the Universe has created a means to look at and ponder itself.

For me, attributing that intelligence to a third party is an unnecessary step. That intelligence and order that is way too big to fully grasp – that for me is God.

Dunno. I could go on for a while. But I have work to do. Not sure I can explain it at all and pretty sure I didn’t here.

scardeal wrote: because of free will

I guess this is a big one for me.

I always hear of Christians speaking of "God's plan" for insert desired person, business, country, etc to the effect of "God wants this to happen and because he is all knowing and all powerful, he wills it to happen."

That is completely incompatible with "Free Will" to me.

So in the bible does it allow for "God's plan?" Or this something that people have developed over the years to deal with things they don't understand?

In reply to z31maniac:

You won't find "God's Plan" in the reference section of the bible. You won't hear about it in most non-evangelical Christian churches either.

In reply to fast_eddie_72:

To my discredit, I frequently just look at the book and the people who wrote it down and forget about Jesus, lumping together all the stories, rules, etc... Regardless of where one stands on the existence of gods, it seems like there's a fair amount of evidence that there really was a guy named Jesus with some nifty ideas about how to be a human.

It does seem like there's an awful lot more there than direct ideas from Jesus in the book, and I tend to want to attribute that additional mass to the folks who contributed to writing (e.g. the practical information about what to eat when and so forth).

I think I get the gist of your notion on the second part. By way of comparison of notes (and not argument), I don't see the necessary link between order and intelligence. I think, perhaps, that I have the same sense of awe over there being no reason and no intelligence that you do for the intelligence you see in the order.

In any case, I guess this pretty much addresses the earlier question about whether there are takes anywhere between (or outside of) rigid, literal, and strictly-defined Christianity and atheism.

Although I'm quite convinced that that there are no gods (of any description to which one might attribute the title), I do prefer the idea that everybody gets their own beliefs, and we can all get along well enough to talk about them (or cars) without it being a huge division.

For now, I should also get back to work.