Do you believe in God?

[Ghost Lap]

Having unexplained experience is not that big of a deal. There are many ways they can happen and many people have probably experienced them at one point in time or another. I absolutely have. Nothing about them suggests the existence of gods though.

That depends entirely upon the one experiencing them, and to how personal they are to the experiencer. At some point in our lives we will all likely experience things that make us question our own existence and part in all that is to a very deep level. Some are more readily open to accept the likely possibility of a higher power or universal will, other flowers may need more time (or several more lifetimes rather) to fully bloom and open up to the strange nature of reality.

 

[Famine]

Some are more readily open to accept the likely possibility of a higher power or universal will, other flowers may need more time (or several more lifetimes rather) to fully bloom and open up to the strange nature of reality.

Here's that sentence, complete with the intimation about other people's intelligence, re-written on the opposite assumption...

Some are more likely to simply assign it to a higher power or universal will, and may need more time - if ever - to fully bloom and open up to our incomplete knowledge of the strange nature of reality.

... which is that people who are so ready to ignore all the knowledge we have and how we gained it to reflexively assign anything they don't immediately comprehend to an unknowable deity rather than accept the fact that not everything has to have an answer right now and an answer may take generations are, in fact, the immature-thinking closed-minded ones.

Which is just as unhelpful.

But snidey's gotta snide, I guess.

 

[feral and bad]

I've had some pretty horrific things happen to me in my life time (true story), some where Christians were involved in a very bad way, and no amount of time will change that perspective, therefore God?

No blessings in disguise.

If there was such a thing as 'God' he/her/or whatever the **** it is, is a right proper asshole!

Edit: And don't give me that ''it's a test'' bollocks either. Some people are just arseholes that use churches as a front for their arseholeness. There's also the plain arseholes that don't need a front as well.

I am sorry for your negative experiences.
I completely understand the anger and frustration brought on by other people, especially those who claim beliefs that
their behavior denies.
I find it especially frustrating when those who are supposed to lead and help do the most damage.
It often seems that those who should be helping others into God's Kingdom are doing their absolute best at keeping people out.

Unfortunately, people are people. This is not an excuse, it is just a sad and unfortunate fact.
Some people are completely unable to tame their own personal demons.
Some people don't even try.
Some people find an easy way to prey on others is by using the cloak of respectability.
I know that I have let people down. I know that I have hurt people.
All I can do is try to make it right, ask for forgiveness and try to do better.

I do not wear Christian paraphernalia, or have Christian bumper stickers or symbols on my vehicles, because my biggest fear
is of having a lapse of judgement that would give someone a reason to be angry at God.

Best Regards.

 

[FPV MIC]

I am sorry for your negative experiences.
I completely understand the anger and frustration brought on by other people, especially those who claim beliefs that
their behavior denies.
I find it especially frustrating when those who are supposed to lead and help do the most damage.
It often seems that those who should be helping others into God's Kingdom are doing their absolute best at keeping people out.

Unfortunately, people are people. This is not an excuse, it is just a sad and unfortunate fact.
Some people are completely unable to tame their own personal demons.
Some people don't even try.
Some people find an easy way to prey on others is by using the cloak of respectability.
I know that I have let people down. I know that I have hurt people.
All I can do is try to make it right, ask for forgiveness and try to do better.

I do not wear Christian paraphernalia, or have Christian bumper stickers or symbols on my vehicles, because my biggest fear
is of having a lapse of judgement that would give someone a reason to be angry at God.

Best Regards.

You missed the 'therefore God?' bit.

You'll readily put good things down to god but not the bad, that's on people. Why is that?

A better explanation for everything other than 'God did it' is '**** just happens'.

 

[Exorcet]

That depends entirely upon the one experiencing them, and to how personal they are to the experiencer. At some point in our lives we will all likely experience things that make us question our own existence and part in all that is to a very deep level. Some are more readily open to accept the likely possibility of a higher power or universal will, other flowers may need more time (or several more lifetimes rather) to fully bloom and open up to the strange nature of reality.

As @Famine pointed out, you're the one that comes across as not ready to accept reality. Unexplained means unexplained. It doesn't mean god did it. Just like UFO's are unidentified, not aliens.

The god hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence, or it serves no real purpose.

It often seems that those who should be helping others into God's Kingdom are doing their absolute best at keeping people out.

This is what happens when a system is based in nonsense yet claims to know the truth. I just recently had to sit through someone else express their willingness to completely sever ties with a very close friend because that friend has the "wrong" beliefs. This was a direct result of "coming closer to God" and studying The Bible. As always a person is responsible for the decisions they make, but religion is really good at bringing out the worst in people. This is in part because it's so often full of misinformation and tends to push people away from rational thought. You can essentially justify anything you want no matter how ridiculous and then get it in your head that you have the moral high ground for doing so.

Christianity is especially bad because it claims that it's god is all powerful and perfect and then makes all people the scapegoats for things would obviously be that god's fault. If you see religious figures leading people astray often, I'm not surprised.

 

[feral and bad]

You missed the 'therefore God?' bit.

You'll readily put good things down to god but not the bad, that's on people. Why is that?

A better explanation for everything other than 'God did it' is '**** just happens'.

I am sorry, I guess I do not understand the "therefore God" part of your sentence.
I don't know that I put good things down to only God, at least reviewing my post it did not read that way to me.
I do know that left to my own devices, there is nowhere near as much good that comes out of me as when I try and act as I believe that God would want me to act. I ask Him regularly to make me more like Him. It is my belief that if I try to act more like Him than me, then everyone is better off.
My only frame of reference that I have concerning behavior with motive, is unfortunately myself.

It is true that things happen, I happen to believe that are usually causal events though.

I hope that I have clarified things, instead of making them more murky.

Christianity is especially bad because it claims that it's god is all powerful and perfect and then makes all people the scapegoats for things would obviously be that god's fault. If you see religious figures leading people astray often, I'm not surprised.

Christianity is exactly as bad as Judaism and Islam. They all share the same God and their perception of Him.
Are you saying Christianity is making scapegoats of "all people" because God gave them free will?
What things are 'God's fault'?
I don't see Christianity blaming "all people" because the universe isn't expanding at the rate Christianity has deemed appropriate.
I am going to need you to show me examples of when "all people" are scapegoats for things that are obviously "God's fault".

I don't know that religious figures lead people astray often. I just know that leading people astray once is too often.

Regards.

 

[Exorcet]

Christianity is exactly as bad as Judaism and Islam.

Completely agree.

Are you saying Christianity is making scapegoats of "all people" because God gave them free will?

God created everything and also knows the future, yet the blame for sin is placed on humans. Adam and Eve (Especially Eve) specifically. The only reason there was a forbidden to tree for them to eat from was because God wished for this happen.

What things are 'God's fault'?

If a being is omnipotent, then everything is that being's fault. Nothing can exist without the consent of an all powerful entity. God condones murder, theft, death, disease, etc. This is by definition. There is a solution, which is a less than all powerful god, but Christianity does not promote this belief.

I don't see Christianity blaming "all people" because the universe isn't expanding at the rate Christianity has deemed appropriate.
I am going to need you to show me examples of when "all people" are scapegoats for things that are obviously "God's fault".

The blaming of humanity for things that must be allowed by God is foundational to Christianity. God is the one that set the events in the Garden of Eden into motion. If you want to say that Eden is not literal, then there is still a problem in that God should be able to remove all negative aspects of life from this world instantly, yet does not. People have attempted to argue around this, but the reasoning is always faulty. One example is arguing that pain is necessary. It's not. Pain doesn't have to be painful. It could simply be informatory. Or to go beyond that, humans could have just been created in such a way that we didn't need pain.

 

[HenrySwanson]

Something like this??

Spinoza's God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

The Enlightenment thinker was branded a heretic, but his philosophy overflows with subtle religious insights

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

Since this didn't get a response from whom I quoted, what do others make of it?

 

[Danoff]

Yes, I believe that I understand this.
I do not understand how this answers my original question though.
The question was:
" So how would one judge whether an event was indeed bad, without the perspective of time?"

Thanks again.

However you judge whether an event is bad with the perspective of time, you can do the same with less time. What is "bad" about your event is not the time, it s the contents of the time - so your criteria can be used across less time, or more.

 

[GBO Possum]

The god hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence, or it serves no real purpose.

⬆️ Elegantly put.

What things are 'God's fault'?

Some would say things like cancers, tsunamis, asteroids causing extinction events etc. Of course they might just be a result of probabilistic outcomes of physics and chemistry, and have nothing to do with things for which we are yet to discover evidence of their existence.

⬆️ Inelegantly put.

 

[Imari]

Actually, I did discuss the elevation in mood as I needed a prescription and gave a full disclosure since I was initially self-prescribing it.

I don't believe you. That would mean that you were aware of highly relevant information yet didn't include it in your initial post.

Were you trying to be misleading?

If you'll look at the OP I didn't mention the change in mood or affect since I was aware of that from the moment I started taking it high-dose.

You know, when someone writes stuff like:

I felt a similar sensation that lasted for a period of months and at the beginning of it I seemed to "sense" things differently and it felt like an altered state of consciousness - similar to how I imagine a "good" trip is on certain hallucinogens. Everything seemed to fall into place perfectly, day in day out and I still can't explain how that manifested.

The closest thing in terms of how it felt is the film Limitless.

...it's not that hard to read that as a change in mood or affect. And the reference to Limitless is a reference to mood and affect as well, if you're familiar with the drug in that movie.

Your OP was completely clear as to what was going on with even the slightest effort to read between the lines. When someone describes an altered state of consciousness and twice likens it to drug experiences (hallucinogens, Limitless), the obvious question is "so what drugs were you on?"

Looking at that period objectively would make a lot of people question reality, and what control we truly have in it.

So? There's lots of things outside our control. This is not surprising news. It's not proof of anything other than that we as humans are not omnipotent.

Understand that I'm not defaulting to god, just as I don't when I talk about my deja vu experiences (or other seemingly unexplainable events).

I'm aware, but you're defaulting to the supernatural. It's functionally the same thing - mysterious powers we can't understand did something we can't understand for reasons beyond our comprehension. It's okay to say that you just don't know instead of trying to make up a story.

Since this didn't get a response from whom I quoted, what do others make of it?

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[MatskiMonk]

It's all absolute guff until you experience these things for yourself, and then quite often you're hesitant to even share such experiences with anyone for such predictable reactions.

The event occurs, and you have the experience...

Fine, no problem.

You could explain it and understand it in terms of predictable and observable human psychological and physiological traits.

Fine, no problem.

You instead decide to link it to some kind of out of body related interplay between your consciousness and the cosmos, for which there's no evidence.

Problem.

 

[feral and bad]

God created everything and also knows the future, yet the blame for sin is placed on humans. Adam and Eve (Especially Eve) specifically. The only reason there was a forbidden to tree for them to eat from was because God wished for this happen.

You apparently believe that God is a deceiver. He tells us not to do things because He actually wants us to do them
I think that the manner by which He knows the future is unknown and we will not know it until it is appropriate for us to know.
I choose to believe, however rightly or wrongly, that God knows the future because he stands outside of time and has already observed everything that will ever happen. Knowing what will happen is obviously not the same as making something happen.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was put there for Adam and Eve to choose to glorify God by obeying him. God is sovereign and all powerful, not a puppeteer.

I think that anyone who proclaims that they know what God wishes, without a concrete foundation for that statement is probably mistaken. To be clear, a concrete foundation would be in God's word or by personal revelation. His wishes can not be against His character.

Lets call your statement what it is. An attempt to avoid responsibility. "Humans were set up."
The reality is that they were told what to do and chose to disobey.

If a being is omnipotent, then everything is that being's fault. Nothing can exist without the consent of an all powerful entity. God condones murder, theft, death, disease, etc. This is by definition. There is a solution, which is a less than all powerful god, but Christianity does not promote this belief.

Again, all powerful does not equal puppeteer.
God gave us the right to choose. He could rescind that right, but that is not in accordance with His character. He wants us to choose Him. He wants us to choose to obey Him. By way of His power, if He were to decide to, He could make us choose Him and behave accordingly, but that behavior would be against His character.

There is a large amount of text in the Bible about choice, wisdom and discernment.
What would be the point of this if we couldn't choose?

There may be a conflict in the idea of omnipotent and the reality of God's omnipotence.
God cannot do anything outside of His character. An example is that even though He is all powerful, He cannot lie or sin.

Another attempt to avoid responsibility. "God lets us do this. It must be what He wants.".

The blaming of humanity for things that must be allowed by God is foundational to Christianity.

No it isn't.

To my knowledge the foundational things to Christianity are:
The deity of Christ.
Salvation by grace through Jesus Christ alone.
The resurrection of Christ.
The gospel.
Monotheism.
The Holy Trinity.
The return of Jesus and the hope of eternal life.

I can find no reference to your statement about the foundational requirements of Christianity.
Can you supply a source?
I would seriously doubt any information about what a particular religions' foundational
requirements are when given by someone who has no belief in that religion.

God is the one that set the events in the Garden of Eden into motion. If you want to say that Eden is not literal, then there is still a problem in that God should be able to remove all negative aspects of life from this world instantly, yet does not. People have attempted to argue around this, but the reasoning is always faulty. One example is arguing that pain is necessary. It's not. Pain doesn't have to be painful. It could simply be informatory. Or to go beyond that, humans could have just been created in such a way that we didn't need pain.

Again, attempts to blame God, instead of taking responsibility.

He gives us a choice between positive and negative and lets us choose.
If God wanted to create perfect beings like himself, he could, but again if they were
perfect they would logically choose Him. It is not for me to speculate what His purpose
is in creating us the way we are, I do know that people choosing Him in spite of their
less than perfect circumstances glorifies Him.

Really? You are trying to claim that pain is not needed?
Pain is not necessary if we are perfect. If we are imperfect it is. If we make bad choices it is.
Pain has a purpose, an incremental warning system. Anyone who has ever observed the behavior
of people knows that they need a pretty rigorous warning system. If you think they don't, then
I refer you to what are referred to as automotive idiot lights and the mechanical ruin incurred by people ignoring them. Pain exists to tell you something is wrong and needs to be dealt with.

Sounds a lot like, it is God's fault, we are poorly designed. Again, an argument against personal responsibility.
Person: "Something hurts, it is God's fault."
Pain:"Your body exceeded the design parameters, get help and if you are responsible, don't do that again."

There are certainly examples where pain is not the direct result of a person's behavior or choice. We live in an imperfect world and there are things operating in this world that most people have no idea about. I would refer you to Job 38 and 39 where God responds to Jobs questions/accusations.

I don't think that parents are entirely responsible for the behavior of their children. A parent creates and sets a child in motion, by your logic, the parent is then entirely responsible for the activities of the child. Sounds like a good argument for the child to avoid responsibility.
"I didn't ask to be here and you made me what I am."

Best Regards.

However it is that you judge whether an event is bad with the perspective of time, you can do the same with less time. What is "bad" about your event is not the time, it s the contents of the time - so your criteria can be used across less time, or more.

I must be misunderstanding. In order to evaluate something one must use perception and perspective. Anyone who has ever built or repaired things has said "that is good", or "that will work". Then moments later, has said "oops". So obviously, the judgement made with less time was wrong for some reason. Judging an event to be good in a little time, is then proven not to be good with more time. Is it wrong to infer that judgements made with different amounts of time are not necessarily equal?
Thanks for helping to set me straight.

 

[Danoff]

I must be misunderstanding. In order to evaluate something one must use perception and perspective. Anyone who has ever built or repaired things has said "that is good", or "that will work". Then moments later, has said "oops". So obviously, the judgement made with less time was wrong for some reason. Judging an event to be good in a little time, is then proven not to be good with more time. Is it wrong to infer that judgements made with different amounts of time are not necessarily equal?
Thanks for helping to set me straight.

No, it is that in that moment it is good and in the next it is not. If you get drunk, it's not bad at the time you're drunk. You probably feel good at the time. The act doesn't become bad at that same moment when you wake up the next day, with more time and a hangover. It was still good when you were drunk (by at least some criteria). It's just that at a different instant (the next day) it's not good. Perhaps at some future time it will be good again, who knows? The point is not that you must evaluate all activity at the end of the universe, the point is that whatever you think the "goodness" or "badness" of an activity or event is depends on when you are making that judgment. Your judgment of it is not a single value but a string of values across time.

There is no one answer, there are many. You cannot upend your evaluation of an activity or event just because you view the past with rose colored glasses. It was what it was and it is what it is.

 

[Ghost Lap]

As @Famine pointed out, you're the one that comes across as not ready to accept reality. Unexplained means unexplained. It doesn't mean god did it. Just like UFO's are unidentified, not aliens.

The god hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence, or it serves no real purpose.

It's all God baby, this so called reality is but a dream in God's mind, albeit a very consistent one. What sort of evidence do you really need honestly, the fact that this universe/reality alone even seemingly exists should be more than enough. If it's not well then you'll just stay lost until you inevitably come to the same point of realization that millions before you already have throughout all of human history.

 

[Danoff]

What sort of evidence do you really need honestly

Some would be a start.

That the universe exists confuses you (and others). But do not take this confusion as evidence of conjecture. This is called "argument from ignorance".

 

[Daz555]

What things are 'God's fault'?

In the established view that this god is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creator - then everything is this god's fault. It's actually more than that - everything that ever happens is this god's deliberate decision.

 

[HenrySwanson]

I don't believe you. That would mean that you were aware of highly relevant information yet didn't include it in your initial post.

The Baclofen was just one factor, but as explained before couldn't possibly explain the events that were happening in my life at that time. Also, there were other stages in my life where I wasn't on Baclofen and I felt different to previous years.

Incidentally the story of how I came to find out and use Baclofen ties into how I saw the universe as suddenly "helping" me. It was a completely random bit of reading at precisely the right time that led to me trying it - and it seemed a miracle drug as it helped with alcohol cravings, social anxiety and essential tremor.

You know, when someone writes stuff like:

...it's not that hard to read that as a change in mood or affect. And the reference to Limitless is a reference to mood and affect as well, if you're familiar with the drug in that movie.

It was more than a change in mood and affect though, and that's the things baclofen can't explain.

Your OP was completely clear as to what was going on with even the slightest effort to read between the lines. When someone describes an altered state of consciousness and twice likens it to drug experiences (hallucinogens, Limitless), the obvious question is "so what drugs were you on?"

As said in this post, not all of it was whilst on Baclofen.

So? There's lots of things outside our control. This is not surprising news. It's not proof of anything other than that we as humans are not omnipotent.

It's not about omnipotency - rather free will, and how this life is predestined.

An example that doesn't have drugs involved is the TV show The Devil's hour. There's spoilers about what it's really about, but if you look at videos explaining the end you can see what I mean. To make it creepier I was waking up at 3:33 for a few weeks before that show aired, which is something one of the protagonists was doing as well.

I'm aware, but you're defaulting to the supernatural. It's functionally the same thing - mysterious powers we can't understand did something we can't understand for reasons beyond our comprehension. It's okay to say that you just don't know instead of trying to make up a story.

I'm saying that there's so much more that we don't understand, and this reality (to me) seems bound by things that won't be explained in this lifetime.

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I was aware of that page, but was wondering what GTPers thought.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I'm saying that there's so much more that we don't understand

This standpoint still presupposes that there is something, understood or not, that must link multiple events together when no link between them is required for them to occur.

From your perspective a sequence of events occurring may seem so low probability that they couldn't have just occurred naturally and independently - yet the sequence of events that had to occur even within your own lifetime for you to even be observing those specific events, let alone the chain of events that had to occur for you to even exist in the first place, are more ridiculously unlikely than the thing you're focusing on, if you were to try and tie them together.

 

[feral and bad]

No, it is that in that moment it is good and in the next it is not. If you get drunk, it's not bad at the time you're drunk. You probably feel good at the time. The act doesn't become bad at that same moment when you wake up the next day, with more time and a hangover. It was still good when you were drunk (by at least some criteria). It's just that at a different instant (the next day) it's not good. Perhaps at some future time it will be good again, who knows? The point is not that you must evaluate all activity at the end of the universe, the point is that whatever you think the "goodness" or "badness" of an activity or event is depends on when you are making that judgment. Your judgment of it is not a single value but a string of values across time.

There is no one answer, there are many. You cannot upend your evaluation of an activity or event just because you view the past with rose colored glasses. It was what it was and it is what it is.

Thank you for your time and explanation. If you would indulge me some more questions, I may yet prove teachable.
In general, realizing that they are exceptions, do most things tend to move toward a point of stasis?
If they do, then would the objects value at the point of stasis then be the most common with respect to time?
And then given the most common result with respect to time, would we not be able to render a final judgment of said thing?

Thanks again.

 

[feral and bad]

In the established view that this god is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creator - then everything is this god's fault. It's actually more than that - everything that ever happens is this god's deliberate decision.

Is it your view that no one is responsible for their decisions, God is responsible for everything, and that he never gave us the ability to choose?
Thanks.

 

[Ghost Lap]

In the established view that this god is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creator - then everything is this god's fault. It's actually more than that - everything that ever happens is this god's deliberate decision.

Have you ever considered the possibility that all is actually unfolding perfectly and exactly as it should according to the will of a higher power?

 

[UKMikey]

Have you ever considered the possibility that all is actually unfolding perfectly and exactly as it should according to the will of a higher power?

Even were there a shred of evidence to do so, I shudder to think how child leukemia - to cite one of what must be countless examples - is part of a deliberate and "perfectly unfolding" plan.

 

[Danoff]

Thank you for your time and explanation. If you would indulge me some more questions, I may yet prove teachable.
In general, realizing that they are exceptions, do most things tend to move toward a point of stasis?
If they do, then would the objects value at the point of stasis then be the most common with respect to time?
And then given the most common result with respect to time, would we not be able to render a final judgment of said thing?

You mean the stasis of "heat death" of the universe? I guess. Given trillions of years, the energy in the universe should be more stable and distributed than it is today, and I suppose from that perspective you could take stock of your life - though I think this particular perspective is not very helpful.

I think you probably meant that your view of an event tends to settle out over your lifetime. But of course new events may cast them in a different light. For example, if I throw something away, it might be positive in the short term, neutral in the long term, and then 20 years from now suddenly I realize I needed it and lament having thrown it out. Selling or buying bitcoin, or a car, can do something similar over long timescales.

Again, there is not a single determination of the personal value of a particular action. Your judgment of it varies across time. Your judgement now is valid now, your judgement then was valid then. The rosey retrospective makes it easy to sweep away the pain of having sold bitcoin too low, for example.

But if I really want to dig things up, I wish I had bought a black lotus card when I was 13 and into card games. My rosey retrospection can't seem to let me lament the lost million dollars.

 

[Exorcet]

You apparently believe that God is a deceiver.

I don't believe in any gods.

He tells us not to do things because He actually wants us to do them

That fits but I think of it as being more like he creates situations where he knows the outcome already, basically setting things up such that they must fail.

I think that the manner by which He knows the future is unknown and we will not know it until it is appropriate for us to know.
I choose to believe, however rightly or wrongly, that God knows the future because he stands outside of time and has already observed everything that will ever happen. Knowing what will happen is obviously not the same as making something happen.

Those are the same when you are also the one that put everything into motion. Adam and Eve can't eat from a tree that doesn't exist. God being all powerful should have the ability to intervene anywhere at any moment. Knowing what will happen while having the ability to stop it with zero effort on your part is the as making something happen.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was put there for Adam and Eve to choose to glorify God by obeying him. God is sovereign and all powerful, not a puppeteer.

God already knew what would happen with the tree. There was no need for it. You yourself point out some very glaring problems with the story, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I think that anyone who proclaims that they know what God wishes, without a concrete foundation for that statement is probably mistaken. To be clear, a concrete foundation would be in God's word or by personal revelation. His wishes can not be against His character.

I'm not proclaiming anything I'm taking it from what is supposed to be a source, The Bible.

Lets call your statement what it is. An attempt to avoid responsibility. "Humans were set up."
The reality is that they were told what to do and chose to disobey.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. God is obviously at fault by being the one that set up the whole situation, but religion tries to deflect the blame on the victims (humans). If humans were told what to do and picked wrongly, it's because they were not equipped to make the correct decision (god made flawed humans).

Let's also not ignore that all of humanity was punished for the actions of two people. Completely nonsensical. No one has any responsibility for events that happened when they did not even exist.

Again, all powerful does not equal puppeteer.

You're condoning God's actions in throwing humanity out of Eden because you think it's consistent with free will.

What is the difference between the story of Eden and God intervening in something like an attempted murder? Why can't God throw the would be murderer into jail? The most common answer I get is free will, but that would make the events of Eden a violation of free will.

God gave us the right to choose.

And also attached eternal consequences to the choice, after deciding not to make us smart enough to pick wisely. If God existed, he would lose nothing no matter what we chose, so the willingness to condemn people comes off as less than benevolent.

He could rescind that right, but that is not in accordance with His character. He wants us to choose Him.

So create us to choose him. Problem solved.

He wants us to choose to obey Him. By way of His power, if He were to decide to, He could make us choose Him and behave accordingly, but that behavior would be against His character.

There is a large amount of text in the Bible about choice, wisdom and discernment.
What would be the point of this if we couldn't choose?

What is the point in forcing this choice anyway? It makes God sound strangely human, in a bad way. Needy and petty. I don't demand that lesser creatures worship me. It serves no purpose and if they choose not to, well that's their choice to make.

There may be a conflict in the idea of omnipotent and the reality of God's omnipotence.
God cannot do anything outside of His character. An example is that even though He is all powerful, He cannot lie or sin.

Another attempt to avoid responsibility. "God lets us do this. It must be what He wants.".

Stopping a murder is not lying and I'd hope it's not sinning. It would also be consistent with actions that God has supposedly taken in the past.

No it isn't.

To my knowledge the foundational things to Christianity are:
The deity of Christ.
Salvation by grace through Jesus Christ alone.
The resurrection of Christ.
The gospel.
Monotheism.
The Holy Trinity.
The return of Jesus and the hope of eternal life.

I can find no reference to your statement about the foundational requirements of Christianity.
Can you supply a source?
I would seriously doubt any information about what a particular religions' foundational
requirements are when given by someone who has no belief in that religion.

The Bible is supposed to be the word of God, so what it contains is pretty foundational.

Belief is not required to study religion, and even if it was I was an absolutely convinced believer and received religious education in and out of school.

Again, attempts to blame God, instead of taking responsibility.

He gives us a choice between positive and negative and lets us choose.
If God wanted to create perfect beings like himself, he could, but again if they were
perfect they would logically choose Him. It is not for me to speculate what His purpose
is in creating us the way we are, I do know that people choosing Him in spite of their
less than perfect circumstances glorifies Him.

Here are the glaring problems I mentioned earlier. Yes, a god as described by Christianity could have made us perfect. There was a deliberate choice not to, and as a result all imperfection stems directly from God. If being perfect makes choosing God inevitable then that would give God what he wanted and would leave us with total free will while preventing any form of mistakes on our part. It's the only reasonable option for a perfect being to take if that being must create something else to interact with.

Unfortunately though, the need to interact with some other being already doesn't make sense for a god. This god being three people would have already had company in the first place, so the question of "why" looms pretty large.

Really? You are trying to claim that pain is not needed?

It very obvious is not. Does your PC electrocute you when there is a problem, or does it simply display a warning screen? Pain does not have to hurt, it only has to alert us of a problem. The latter bis is also only necessary if there are problems, which as I explained would have to be the fault of a god in the first place.

Pain is not necessary if we are perfect. If we are imperfect it is. If we make bad choices it is.

It's not necessary even if we're imperfect. Imperfection explains how it can exist though, and imperfection rules out gods like those of the Abrahamic religions.

Pain has a purpose, an incremental warning system. Anyone who has ever observed the behavior
of people knows that they need a pretty rigorous warning system. If you think they don't, then
I refer you to what are referred to as automotive idiot lights and the mechanical ruin incurred by people ignoring them. Pain exists to tell you something is wrong and needs to be dealt with.

Why do human designed warning systems avoid the use of pain?

Sounds a lot like, it is God's fault, we are poorly designed. Again, an argument against personal responsibility.
Person: "Something hurts, it is God's fault."
Pain:"Your body exceeded the design parameters, get help and if you are responsible, don't do that again."

God: "I could give them perfect bodies to avoid the need for a warning system, but no, I don't think I will. I could also make their warning system work in such a way that it doesn't completely overwhelm their nervous system to the point where it can create additional problems or false alarms, but no, I don't think I will."

Computer:"Hey the command you asked me to execute caused me to run out of memory. By the way I'm not going to stab you as a result because that won't fix the issue in any way."

The flawed beings seemed to have a better system than the perfect one in this case.

There are certainly examples where pain is not the direct result of a person's behavior or choice. We live in an imperfect world and there are things operating in this world that most people have no idea about. I would refer you to Job 38 and 39 where God responds to Jobs questions/accusations.

We do live in an imperfect world, but we can't take the blame for things we did not do. According to The Bible we started off imperfect. You agree to this much as you said that if we were perfect, we would choose God. How can we be blamed for our own existence when we had no control over this?

What is the take away from Job? All I see is a random list of stuff that the write claims to be the result of God.

I don't think that parents are entirely responsible for the behavior of their children. A parent creates and sets a child in motion, by your logic, the parent is then entirely responsible for the activities of the child. Sounds like a good argument for the child to avoid responsibility.
"I didn't ask to be here and you made me what I am."

Best Regards.

Parents aren't perfect beings. This makes a difference doesn't it? Nonetheless, people that choose to become parents are do have some control over how and when to bring children into the world and they are responsible for the results that stem from that. Choosing to have a child while taking drugs that could impact the child's development is not a smart decision, and the harmful effects on the child would be the fault of the parent. If the parent happened to be all powerful as well, then there is simply no excuse for anything.

We don't have the luxury of being able to know our children before their birth. We can't predict who they will be and even if they will be happy. We can try to push things in a favorable direction, but there is never a guarantee of success. On the other hand a god as described by Christianity sees all possibilities and can bring any of them into being with no effort. There is no justification for choosing a world that is less than perfect.

It's all God baby, this so called reality is but a dream in God's mind, albeit a very consistent one. What sort of evidence do you really need honestly, the fact that this universe/reality alone even seemingly exists should be more than enough. If it's not well then you'll just stay lost until you inevitably come to the same point of realization that millions before you already have throughout all of human history.

What sort of evidence do I need? How about something to at least narrow down the choices. Which realization are you referring to? The realization that Zeus and his pantheon control everything? That Ahura Mazda is the one true god? That nirvana is the path to enlightenment? That death in battle is best way to Valhalla?

Not even the believers can choose the right gods. This makes it very difficult to support the idea that there is a clear sign pointing to any one god as being more real than the rest.

If it was so self evident, then prove it. It should be easy. As easy as as proving other self evidence facts like the stillness of the Earth and motion of the Sun.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Have you ever considered the possibility that all is actually unfolding perfectly and exactly as it should according to the will of a higher power?

At this stage it becomes impossible to argue and remain with the AUP. You worship the being that inflicts the most horrific torture mankind has ever imagined... Christians are brutal terrorists.

 

[Ghost Lap]

Even were there a shred of evidence to do so, I shudder to think how child leukemia - to cite one of what must be countless examples - is part of a deliberate and "perfectly unfolding" plan.

We all go through ** in life do we not? We could all sit here and moan and complain about it all and say what an A-hole God or whatever you wanna call it is. The truth is as human beings were a merely just small pieces of flesh a bone in an entire universe full of physical matter, a human being going through such ** is no different from a tree being cut down, or a celestial object smashing into another celestial object. It's all just physical matter interacting with physical matter so what reason is there to even care or give a ****?

Unless of course there's more to a human being than just their physical vessel, maybe the soul or spirit or consciousness or whatever label you wish to give it, maybe that certain "something" that is beyond physical actually gets something out of it all in the end from going through a relatively short period of apparent physical **** and suffering.

 

[Exorcet]

We all go through ** in life do we not? We could all sit here and moan and complain about it all and say what an A-hole God or whatever you wanna call it is. The truth is as human beings were a merely just small pieces of flesh a bone in an entire universe full of physical matter, a human being going through such ** is no different from a tree being cut down, or a celestial object smashing into another celestial object. It's all just physical matter interacting with physical matter so what reason is there to even care or give a ****?

This is only making religion sound less appealing. Trees and celestial objects don't feel. People do and I very much want to avoid situations where they feel pain and suffering. When religion belief causes people to forget this, it's alarming.

 

[Ghost Lap]

This is only making religion sound less appealing. Trees and celestial objects don't feel. People do and I very much want to avoid situations where they feel pain and suffering. When religion belief causes people to forget this, it's alarming.

First of all I don't care about religion, I follow my own path and my own destiny.

Secondly, how do you know that trees or celestial objects don't feel? Are you a tree or a celestial object yourself, are you merely a mass of atoms and protons and electrons and whatever other scientific gobble you come up with for describing reality?

Thirdly, it doesn't matter what you want to avoid, or what I want to avoid, you think the universal will or God cares about what you or I want?

 

[MatskiMonk]

Thirdly, it doesn't matter what you want to avoid, or what I want to avoid, you think the universal will or God cares about what you or I want?

What you will forgive is people smashing, hacking and slicing the limbs off newborn babies with machetes.