A theological question I heard yesterday..

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1. Faith is necessary to EVERY belief system.
Even I (and I doubt that there are people MORE
skeptical) can see some in myself.

2. God has revealed what he has chosen. And that is
ONLY what we can understand. We don't know whether this
is a good or an evil thing. We don't know much at all. Clearly,
something so powerful could deceive us (ah, but himself?). Now,
one could just define that God is Good, and all that God desires
is such, but I tend to have too much hubris for that solution. Rather,
I use my own judgment, and come to VERY different answers. Presuming
I were to believe, of course.

If God were evil and just wanted to destroy us He would have just killed Adam, Chavah and the snake and the rest of the world would have been better off.

Why would evil take such a simple solution
rather than the imposition of far more misery
over time?

That's true, wether our belief system is and even in our personal lives we always have some faith in some things and faith in some people, even the more skeptical as you put it, has.

In my teenage years I stopped believing, started questioning those things, hence 'losing my faith' as they would put it, that faith to religious dogma. Which it is that and not exactly "facts", of course some things are actually historical events, but other stuff like rituals and traditions and dogmas, etc. are things that are taken as "believing without seeing" - faith.

Actually God did that sort of thing, the Flood, the story tells that God killed all earth population but 8 people, now the rest of population who died, there were children and babies also, it is obvious to asume there were. I wonder why they were not saved and they were killed too, innocent children and babies. Sounds terrifying now.

Also, the killing of an entire society, genocide? Sodom and Gomorrah, because, according to Ragtime, it was because of homosexuality. Although I think the story also discribes incest.

Exactly. Fact is anything that we have been able to verify it's existance; such as something that has been seen and proved to have happened, by witnesses, or of some hard evidence left behind to sy that thing actually happened. Faith is the belief that something has happened, something that can't necessarily be verified, but something the person believing to have existed. So therefore, you have faith that your god exists, because you believe in him or it. Fact is that god cannot be proven to actually exist in a physical form, doesn't deny the belief to someone who has faith, it just can't be proven. Or if you prefer to look at it this way, faith is that god created everything, which is something that can't be proven, but fact is that man created god, because no other being can create by thought process the idea of a god, so without us god does not exist.

Sure, but he always perpetuated the opportunity
for misery. No, the great foe doesn't work in
such a simple and clean manner. Everlasting
torment seems to be His motto.

What is that quote about revenge best being served cold, and savoured? If that's his game, then it's obvious why some of these Christians are so f****d up, both spiritually and psychologically. And the more they preach this stuff, the harder they are making it to get their message across. Well, that's their problem.

I guess He wants everyone to have the choice to accept Him and serve Him willfully or else not.

Exactly. Those who will suffer the chains of oppression
receive some small boon. f**k that. I'll take it all down
first.

On the Biblical timescale, God didn't even give laws until 3000 years after Creation. People had to rely on their on consciences for that time. It's not really oppression unless you've gained a taste for this world.

parakeet: I think you've been playing too much Sid Meier's Civilization, because that's about the time scale that your god seems to represent.

if that's really the case, then the question is this, if the laws were written near 3000 years after creation, then how people behaved if they didn't have written rules? doesn't make much sense if that was only by word or something, and then having the Great Flood over people who didn't follow the unwritten rules, and then have them finally written until years later.

When the flood suppose to happen btw? 2,000-2,500 BC? I don't remember well.

Parakeet has virtually written off all of Egyptian, Sumerian (Mesopotamian), Chinese, aboriginal and any other ancient civilization because they didn't conform to his god's written laws and time-frame. Nice one, you big Jessie. Who are you going to wipe out next?

That is why God's Laws were written later, because Judaism came later.

The problem is with the question: You're anthropomorphizing an entity you don't understand.

It only seems clever to simple minds. You're trying to apply naturalistic logic to a godlike entity. It's a nonsensical statement.