Food For Logical Thought... (page 2)

glenster

I see no logical impossibility. I make the analogy of believing in God
presiding over life as being like believing in life with its good and bad. If
you can do that, you know how someone can do it. With God you can add a hope for
a nice afterlife as sweetener on the deal.

zeb

It ever annoyed the crap out of me where the wts quoted and ran from the Old scriptures. They never seem to pay any heed to the new unless its the "Apostle Paul.." ad nauseaum.

I often thought it would be good to go to a conv where the "Apostle Paul" was never mentioned once.

EdenOne

I nowadays lean towards - although I don't make it a dogmatic assertion - that in some cases of natural phenomena (the flood and the destruction of Sodom being two of them) God acted opportunistically, that is: He knew beforehand that certain natural phenomena would occur.* He knew the implications of it. Then he manouvered the events with mankind so that it appears to be his doing, this way letting people believe that God caused it to happen as a way to instill fear of God into people; when perhaps He was merely taking credit for something that it would inevitably happen one way or the other.

Eden

* As an example, we're nowadays just starting to understand the complex mechanisms behind earthquakes and volcanos, and we're starting to be able to predict those events with an increased degree of accuracy. Imagine God is able to know beforehand all those natural phenomena with 100% accuracy.

Julia Orwell

Maybe these things happened, and God had nothing to do with them just like today's cyclones and earthquakes. However, to the mind of bronze age peoples when gods and spirits were everywhere, it was easy to give God the credit. Stories grow in the telling. Even today you'll get nuts like the Westboro Baptists saying God is causing these random things to happen as some sort of punishment. Most people in this day and age however, don't petition their gods for rain or try to appease them so they don't send a plague: they know why these things happen take more control of matters, rather than thinking in terms of magic and good and bad.

Seraphim23

Braincleaned I stopped believing in creationism and accepted evolution, as well as rejecting the literal flood idea and seeing the account as more of a parable, yet the idea of God still makes sense to me. What made me change was my desire for truth and that any truth I may have be based on evidence as far as this is possible. So that said, being in a cult is one thing, and believing things that evidence consistently contradicts is another thing, but a belief in a God is possible while not rejecting good scientific evidence.

Pain and suffering and a God are not inconsistent with each other although I agree with you that many Christians view of how to explain it are terrible and logically floored.

abbasgreta

Don't know the answer. Maybe the disobedient angels scenario/offspring has something in it? Jesus mentioned the peoples seemingly carefree (for want of a better word) lifestyle"right up until Noah got into the boat" in Matt 24 and "they didn't realise (or believe??) what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away" (NLT - no NWT they "took no note"). Heb 11:7 in the NLT, "It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to SAVE HIS FAMILY from the flood. He OBEYED God, who WARNED him ABOUT THINGS THAT HAD NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world." That is interesting. In 1 Peter 3:19 again in NLT: ....when God WAITED PATIENTLY while Noah was building his boat. ONLY 8 people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood......v21 ......"Baptism saves....as a RESPONSE to God"...." Peter mentions the flood and the patience of God again later," who does not desire any to be destroyed ( both at the flood, it would seem, and at the end of the Age), but to repent". Culpability based on lack of faith in God back then, and now? Sounds like it. Could be. Don't know. An event, however, so truly horrendous, it prompted God to make a covenant with a rainbow sign that it would never happen again. That's pretty heavy. Will be nice to know the ins-and-outs of it all one day.

Newly Enlightened

We just came across this gem. Reason this one out. For those who believe that there was a flood and that Noah was a preacher of righteousness....

This is from a documentary we watched and a book we are reading....

When God talked to Noah and told him he was destroying the Earth, JUDGEMENT HAD ALREADY BEEN PASSED. Plus, he told Noah how big to build the ark. There was going to be no more people since even 10 more people would have thrown the size of the ark and food supply off. There was no salvation held out to anyone else.

Where else in the bible, except for 2 Pet 2:5, does it say Noah preached? Why would Noah waste time preaching if there wasn't going to be any more humans saved?

The Book of Enoch, which goes into great detail about the pre-flood era and does not mention him trying to save anyone. Even in Enoch's day there was already a Nephilim problem. I know WTBT$ says that the Nephilim were hybrids and unable to reproduce, but consider this, when the 10 spys crossed over into the land of Canaan, one of the spys remarked, "This land is full of giants, Sons of the Nephalim" So, the question is, What did they know about the Nephalim that they would even make such a comment?

So if they could reproduce, here's a crazy thought...What if the human race was being bred out of existence just like the Neanderthals? And Noah and his family were the last righteous and PURE humans left?

glenster

PS to my earlier post:

The basic concepts of God and atheism don't come with character determinants,
names for God, interventions, etc. All-beneficence is an added stipulation I
wouldn't recommend: if God were all-beneficent we'd all live in heavenly circum-
stances forever and we don't. Nothing of ethics or the known things prove God
whether God exists or not. Giving the bad things of the world as proof God isn't
is as illogical as giving intelligent design as proof God is.

BU2B

This is a good question. I dont know how JWs are cool with this. Drowning must be one of the worst and most terrifying way to go. Why werent they just put to sleep, especially since they were not guilty of something in particular.

Vidiot

The Biblical god (particularly the OT version) is violent, jealous, and scary...

...but only if Biblical literalist fundies are right...

...and I'm pretty sure they're not.

There's a quote by Marcus Aurelius that I really like (parenthics and italics mine):

"Live a good (virtuous) life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

I'm mostly agnostic at this point, but I'll add my own (on-topic) thought: if God's real, "He" is probably nothing like the deity portrayed in any scriptures.

Food For Logical Thought...

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