better, faster, cheaper , pick two

[joflasher]

Okay, first off, God people? Don't. Just...don't. And if you have to, leave me out of it. And if you can't do that and the holy spirit moves you to physically get in my face, block my forward momentum and start spewing hatred 6 inches from my nose, don't expect me NOT to rip you a new one, not on a Monday.



Yes, that includes the rude bastard ranting about the abomination of homosexuality while standing outside of Legal, munching down a lobster roll. Dude, I can see the lobster stuck in your back molars, so back up before I shoulder check you into a mental clinic. You, you Leviticus quoting idiot, need to read that twice damned book instead of hitting people with it. Leviticus condemns shellfish just as strongly as it does any drag queen, no matter how fresh and tasty it is. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure the book of Matthew condemns hypocrisy too.

And since I'm here, lets talk about the Christian God, shall we? All knowing, all powerful, and all loving. Sorry but just like NASA, you only get two of the three. Sure, the Bible says you can have it all but it's not exactly self consistant, you know? I suggest you start with Isaiah, where God admits to creating all the evil and darkness in the world. Creator of every evil in the world doesn't exactly scream "loving" to me.

If Christian God were truely all knowing and all powerful, why in the world would anyone worship him? That being is as guilty of every single rape, death and torture that goes on in this world. He has watched every murder, every genocide, every unspeakable horror we do to one another and does not step in. The Christian God has to be the most evil creature to have ever been thought up by the human imagination. Worthy of fear, perhaps, but never worthy of worship.

Yes, I've heard the conter arguments against this line of reasoning. Without evil, without suffering, there could be no mercy, no self sacrifice in the world and God could not show you his compassion and forgiveness. You know what? Those are symptoms of evil, not goals to strive for in their own right. You don't stab a guy in the back just so you can be merciful and carry him to the hospital afterwards.

So pick two, loving, omnipotent, or omniscient. And whichever two you pick, the Bible is going to tell you you're wrong. Deal with it.

And while you're at it, at least PRETEND to live according to the rule book you'd force on everyone else. Just for a lark, you know...this involves actually reading it. All of it, not just the sections your conservative radio host of choice tells you to.

Comments

[amet.livejournal.com]

*cheers*

[rhiamon.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that was fantastic! Well said, VERY well said! Can I worship you? ;)

[flasher.livejournal.com]

Sure. I accept tithe in the form of dark chocolate and dry red wine.

[zyrain.livejournal.com]

I hate bible thumpers just as much as anyone, but the counter argument to evil's existence isn't so that good can exist. It's most often attributed to free will.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy for more info on the logic explanations (not religous) of how this could be true.

My favorite one is that a world without evil is a world without free will, which is one of pure slavery.

[starherd.livejournal.com]

That's the counter-argument I find the most believable.
It's not just that you won't notice light if there's no dark for contrast;
it's that if you're not capable of stupidity (inflicted upon others or no),
you can't be capable of brilliance, either.
(Pardon; I find that most evil is a form of stupidity, etc.)
The abilitiy to be either is based on your own will.

The guy eating the lobster, for instance, was exercising his free will to make an utter ass of himself.

Anyway. I like my God better than the one that these people tend to claim is the same thing.

[flasher.livejournal.com]

I don't by that one. The millions of people in this world who aren't mass murdering fuck heads don't live in slavery. You don't need atrocity in the world in order for people to have free will.

[flasher.livejournal.com]

By the way, you stand by and watch a child get raped and could have stopped it with a word, you aren't going to get off by saying you had to allow the rapist to have free will. Why does God get a guilt free card, here?

[zyrain.livejournal.com]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy#The_free_will_theodicy

Some instances of moral evil also themselves involve violations of free will—e.g., rape, and these present a slightly more complex problem. For God to step in and deny the violator his freedom would also be to protect the victim's freedom. In such cases, whose free will is more valuable—which instance of coercion would be worse? It is morally implausible that, given that choice, the best thing to do is to respect a rapist's freedom to rape rather than the victim's freedom not to be raped. So, for moral evil involving coercion—the value of free will may not justify God's inaction. However, all or nearly all evil involves people abridging each other's freedoms. But the problem the theodicy addresses is not whether the rapist abridges another's freedom (they do), but whether God will abridge anyone's freedom. For God to intervene on either side would abridge freedom. God's permitting a rape to occur is logically no different than his permitting any other moral evil to occur, making this criticism of free will theodicy circular.

[flasher.livejournal.com]

Still morally reprehensible and definitely not the work of a loving god.

[prusik.livejournal.com]

I think you may have just recapitulated some very (IMHO) important results of 18th Century philosophy. Voltaire wrote CANDIDE as a way of mocking various philosophers of the Enlightenment (mostly Leibniz, I think) and their notion that a perfect God creates a perfect world and any perceived imperfections is due to lack of Godly perspective. That is, things may look evil but they actually ultimately serve a greater good. (Again, real philosphers will undoubtedly correct me.)

Of course, Candide finds himself at the scene of all sorts of pointless horrors and atrocities which can't possibly serve any sort of greater good. The question that we are left with is how can an all powerful, all knowing, all loving God allow these things.

The rebuttal to this, oddly, is to reaffirm the rather reductive version of Leibniz's ideas which Voltaire was sending up. i.e., "Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." That is, to say the best of all possible worlds. Or to put it another way, if one had a conversation with God, he would say that if you were to see all the alternative worlds that could exist, you'd agree that the one he chose was the best.

So, we get an omniscient God, but we lose omnipotent, since God clearly can not be all-powerful in this scenario.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the matter at hand: the rude , homophobic, vile spewing bastard (except maybe to ask why God allows such). As hard as it may be to do, and I speak as, apparently, the object of his affections, maybe the right thing to do is to find humor in him condemning homosexuality with Leviticus while eating a lobster roll and move on. I mean, while we're at it, he has undoubtedly shaved his beard and mixed different fabrics in his clothing. Why limit ourselves to food?

In that situation, I hope I'd have the presence of mind to laugh at time rather than get pissed off. (I suspect I would get pissed off, unfortunately. I can be a depressingly unmindful person. I usually don't figure out what I'm supposed to do until after the rant. *sigh*)

I forget who it is that said that dueling ended when people who walked onto the field of honor only to find themselves laughed off it.