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AFLW 2024 - Round 10 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Religion So God isnt really all-powerful?
- Thread starter Malifice
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- Aug 1, 2002
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That is not biblical brah - it is justified by the shifting sands of immutable unchanging Tradition!
- Feb 14, 2002
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There are those who would argue that the New Testament is not biblical either, but if, as you say, the interchange Jesus says it, why do those who think what he wrote of some import ignore that dictum? Maybe I'm just confused. There's a first time for everything.
Flinch
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God these threads give me headaches.
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At least you got my name right.
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Meh pointless quoting scripture in a thread like this - that letter to the Galatians was telling one of the leaders of the Church their to release all their slaves. That was written by "First Paul" who was by far the most radical.
When "first paul" died he got superseded by "second Paul" who was deeply conservative. This is the Paul that Rick Perry would love. You get passages like this from Collissians 3:18
Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
So much for inerrancy!
To counter your point, it's very hard to find something if you're not looking for it. Like the Israelites of Isaiah 59, if you have your back to the Lord, you won't find him and will wander in the dark.
So seek the Lord while he may be found!
The freedom of slaves is a huge theme in the Bible, as hinted at in previous posts. Even in the Old Testament, God gave the slaves, foreigners and women a much fairer go (compared to the other cultures of the day) to show the equity of all mankind.
A belief in God gives you a reason to value all people equally (because all people are created in God's image and are valuable to him)
If you don't believe in God, how can you say all people are equal? Surely evolution would teach that might makes right. By what authority can YOU say slavery is wrong or women should have equal rights?
equality and equal are hazy concepts... as is our value to god i would have thought. we are of equal value to him? there are certain areas of equality that exist without the need for a god. our deaths for example.
if i don't believe in god, am i still equal to you even though i have no reason to value others equally? how important are mass murderers to god?
if i don't believe in god, am i still equal to you even though i have no reason to value others equally? how important are mass murderers to god?
- Thread starter
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- #160
You dont require a God to have a moral code, to be a good person, or to treat people and the planet with decency, dignity and respect.
Your reasoning is a little flawed there.
O
Old Spice
Guest
Some medieval Christians bent their minds to similar conundrums, with not very spectacular results.
Sorry if this has been covered, I'm as lazy as Yahweh.
Could God create a boulder so heavy that he could not lift it? If he can't create such a heavy stone, he's not omnipotent. If he can but can't lift it, he's also not omniptent.
Take that Baal.
O
Old Spice
Guest
The other thing to say, quite apart from the fact that everything we know about God is written by men at an historical juncture (not self-evident from the beginning - and this is a flaw that Islam identified by stating the Quran was direct dictation) you have to ask, what type of deity is this to follow?
Narcissistic and malevolent. If he controls the universe, why such awful perverseness. If he has strong limited agency, again, why no intervention.
Could he be the outgrowth of human credulity and lack of understanding / control over a malicious nature, a constructed heart in a heartless world?
So the Bloke took a day off, big deal. He created the world in 6 days, liked it so probably got on the gas Friday night and woke up with a massive hangover, so He went back to bed.
Through the authority of a basic understanding of human genetics which shows us how incredibly the same we all are and that our differences on a genetic level are in the fractions of a Percent
oh and the whole there is no objective morality, human society progresses etc etc etc I'm sure you've heard it all before
If you do believe in God how can you say mothers and male children should not be killed and female children should not be r*ped?
NUMBERS 31
MadBomberman
Cancelled
In Islam, we don't believe that God rested as resting is a sign of weakness and God is clear from that. We believe that God created absolutely everything in 6 days.
There is a wisdom in Creating everything in 6 days, which is to teach us not to be hasty in doing things. By everything, I mean absolutely everything like change, time, movements, directions, colour, darkness, light, water, humans, Angels, universe etc. We also believe that God does not resemble any of the creations. That means that God exist without a place and does not have hands, legs feet, body parts etc. Also, God does not have a beginning and everything else has a beginning.
This means that God has Power over everything.
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You have given us a litany of what god is not, where it isn't and what it doesn't do. It does not follow from this that god is all-powerful. It merely means there are a lot of things it doesn't do and be. It also leaves open the interpretation that god actually does nothing at all, is nowhere, and is a thing characterised by what it is not. Is this the message you were trying to convey?
MadBomberman
Cancelled
How did you possibly conclude that from what I said? God Created everything and therefore has power over everything.
Let me say it the other way around. The creations do not resemble God in anyway. Better?
O
Old Spice
Guest
Philosophical issues
But if God (the monotheistic god of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition) had a beginning, why didn't he reveal himself 3 millenia earlier and simultaneuosly to all mankind? If he was omnipotent for eternity, why was he crowded out by a raft of polytheistic gods, or Mazda?
Even if you accept he was there, why did he only reveal himself so late in human history?
The facts are that all we know about god is what men have written about him or the exclusive knowledge they claim to own. So really, faith in god is just faith in messiahs, and there have been plenty of those, such as Bar Kochba. Why do we believe some and not others?
Faith is really choosing to believe in one particular story. If there was an innate recognition, everyone would similtaneoulsy come to the same conclusion and believe in the same god, but very evidently they have not.
Historical Development
Polytheism was the most popular form of belief in antiquity. And polytheism was really just about an accumulation of power across city-states, from Egypt to Greece and to Rome. Local deities being incorporated into a pantheon to smooth the way for empire building.
The development of monotheism was an historical quirk of fate. Judea, as the Old Testament makes clear (Kings II, Ezra), was by no means any different to their neighbours in their polytheistic and animistic beliefs. Baal, Geba, Beer-sheba, the moon etc were all worshipped and only when the Judean exiles were permitted to return by Cyrus did a campaign of religious homogenisation take place, and by some not very subtle methods.
Inspired by the latent monotheism of the Persians - Marduk in particular - the Judean exiles sought to instill a monotheistic practice and adulation of Yahweh as a sort of binding proto-natonal figure. Situated as Judah was between the powerful empires of Egypt to the south and Syria and Assyria to the north, the people of Judah were variously harrassed by each and no doubt that made them very receptive to the idea of a cohesive religious idea, and so monotheism (the following of Yahweh) became the Jewish religious tradition.
Jesus as a Jew carried that into the Christian tradition which would attach itself to a decadent Roman culture on the decline. Once Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, it increasingly became a binding agent. From there it was adopted by the Germanic tribes and spread through the European landmass.
That's very long-winded, but I hope it illustrates that god is a very historical product. A man made one.
Father Jack
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Bible literalism is a very scary place to be. You have no idea of the feats of creative reasoning required to make all the pieces fit together. Actually, now that I think about it, it was pretty simple: ignorance. That's all you need.
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2 Corinthians 4:4 sums up the thoughts put forth in this thread.
Pie eyed
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I have consistent form which allows me to have a bit of a chuckle at the fact your are an Islamist who chooses to go by the moniker "MadBomberMan"
Pie eyed
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Beer was created at 2.00pm Saturday afternoon, Footy only 30 minutes later.
The Pies got up.
He did what any human would...Video Frenzy in Bed all day Sunday. Probably rubbed a few out too.
We are made in his image......I believe?
