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Free will...

  • Pretty close ITT to ironing out the ten commandments of entitlement that God should owe us.

    VTSmitty ●

  • By the way, for reference, this is essentially Christianity in a nutshell:

    1 .Decide to arrange for something other than yourself to exist.

    2. Create a being by the name of Lucifer with full knowledge that this being will betray you and ultimately cause an infinite amount of suffering unnecessarily.

    3. Allow an unfathomably horrific dimension of existence known as ‘hell’ to emerge created by yourself or perhaps Lucifer and allow that dimension to continue existing. Do not override or prevent such a thing. It will come into play later.

    4. Create objective unchanging moral prescriptions and base them upon whatever your nature happens to be and then label any action or thought contrary to these standards ‘sin’.

    5. Be sure to include in these moral prescriptions edicts for social and psychological health such as encouragement to beat ones children with a rod, permission to buy and sell slaves and will them as property to ones children for life, requirement that women not be allowed to teach or have authority over men and of course the instruction to kill anyone who expresses interest in worshiping other gods.

    6. Design a physical universe, planets, animals and vegetation all with the appearance of age. Be sure to include in your creation biological flaws redundancies and over-complications that appear as if they were the product of blind cumulative processes, perhaps a urinary tract that runs straight through the prostate gland or a unnecessary appendix prone to inflation and rupturing, or maybe a respiratory and digestive system forced to share the same plumbing, (these are just a few working ideas).

    7. Create a garden with a tree in it bearing fruit that when eaten provides knowledge of your objective moral standards, and create two sentient cognitive beings without knowledge or awareness of these standards and instruct them not to eat from the tree which would enlighten them (in other words, arrange it so that only AFTER they eat from the tree are they capable of understanding that doing so was a violation of objective moral standards).

    8. Warn these cognitive beings that they will undoubtedly die if they eat from this tree, but don’t follow through if they do. Endow a reptile with vocal chords, lips or some other means of speaking audibly to your cognitive beings enabling it to make a convincing case to one of them for eating from the tree. Do not prevent this or intervene.

    9. Now by this point make sure your cognitive beings have been equipped for reproducing themselves and multiplying, and because one of them has sinned, arrange that every single one of their descendants until the end of time will be born with an inherent sinful nature, defaulting in a future of everlasting torment. Do not by any means allow each of them to be born with a clean slate and the capacity for living a sin-free life if they desire as you did with your first two prototypes.

    10. Endow these cognitive beings with a ‘soul’ which keeps their thoughts and feelings and other cognitive faculties in existence forever one way or another. And then allow the sinfulness of these beings to be incompatible with your presence and let hell be the only other place that they can go once they exit the the physical world, do not make any attempt to spare these souls the eternal torment of hell such as allowing souls to stop existing altogether or creating an additional realm for them to reside besides with you or in hell.

    11. Over time allow these beings to populate the earth you’ve created, knowing with infallible certainty of course that after so many generations they will disappoint you enough that you find it necessary to kill all of them in a global flood and start all over from scratch.

    12. Now when this happens (again right on schedule) make an exception for one small family of cognitive beings who you deem righteous. Of course it goes without saying that your powers of omniscience allow you to know, again, with infallible certainty that this family too will ultimately disappoint you in the same way that those who you drowned, rendering the entire endeavor futile, but for now it’s best that you pretend not to know that.

    13. Instruct this small disappointment of a family to populate the entire world all over again by way of incest.

    14. Declare that until further notice the only way for these cognitive beings to rectify their sinful nature while on earth is to preform ritual animal sacrifices and other acts of senseless violence. Additionally when certain sins are committed by any one of your cognitive beings, demand that the surrounding community kill that being themselves.

    15. In the meantime perform many epic miracles for all to see and intervene often with your physical creations, stop the sun in the sky, part the red sea, turn rivers into blood, and women into pillars of salt, give men superhuman strength, speak to the thousands with a booming voice from heaven etc, but before these cognitive beings become advanced enough in the areas of science and communication that they could actually document, share, playback and verify these epic miracles, make sure you stop performing them all together.

    16. Decide at some point that the most pressing of your objective moral prescriptions are not as obvious to these cognitive beings as you once thought, take this opportunity to chisel your top ten moral concerns into two tablets of stone and commission one of your cognitive beings to deliver these tablets to the masses. (Note to self: Roughly half of these moral concerns should center around pleasing you, praising you and remaining loyal to you.)

    17. After several thousand years impregnate one of these cognitive beings so that she gives birth to your son in physical form, who also happens to be you, at the same time.

    18. Allow this cognitive being who is your son but also you to grow up and make several revisions to you/your son's original standards of morality then arrange for other cognitive beings to torture and kill you/your son, authorize this sacrifice of yourself as a means of granting all other cognitive beings immunity from the consequences of their sinful nature, which you allowed them to be born with in the first place.

    19. Do not however make this sacrifice free, establish that none of these cognitive beings shall be eligible for benefits of this sacrifice unless they actively believe that it happened. In other words, despite the quality of their intentions any cognitive beings henceforth who finds themselves unconvinced these events actually took place, is unwittingly designating themselves for the endless suffering of hell.

    20 . With that established, be sure to refrain from making it clear and knowable to the rest of the world that these events actually took place, ensure that no cognitive being after the first century has the luxury of witnessing your son who is also you say or do anything to indicate he was a living god. Again, make sure that all of this occurs before advancements in science and technology are available to verify for those who aren’t present.

    21. Arrange so that the only surviving record of these events will be offered anonymously by non-eye witness’s translated to a language different from the one you/ your son will speak written no earlier than thirty years after you/your son preformed these miracles and makes these clams, however do make sure that these records feature the precept that believing in something without evidence is morally superior to investigation and verification.

    22. Be sure that after only a few decades the only accounts of these events in existence are copies of copies of copies which will be verifiably altered and added to in historically and theologically significant ways from generation to generation, sect to sect. Do not preserve the original copies of these accounts, do not protect them from revision, do not set in place any mechanism for protecting them from being interpreted in hundreds upon hundreds of ways most of which being heretical and therefore punishable.

    23. Do not bother to employ your omniscience in such a way as to discern which of these cognitive beings are truly rebelling, and which simply don’t know how to distinguish you from other versions of god which do not in fact exist.

    24. Do not make it clear to these beings that you are are even here. Allow for your very existence to remain an easily debatable, easily questionable, easily doubtable proposition. Allow billions and billions of souls to be unthinkably tortured for all of eternity regardless of their character, integrity, bravery, responsibility or conduct because they had not correctly assumed that the right set of propositions were true by the time their lives on earth were over.

    25. And finally when all is said and done, demand that you be praised for this plan.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    Holy strawman batman!

    No, I won't speak for CMXI, but a truly moral god would:

    1. Not care if you believed in him or not.
    2. Ensure that hell does not exist
    3. Offer the option to let a 'soul' (whatever that is) not exist
    4. Create a far more habitable world for his little being that he loves so much to live in
    5. Actually treat his beings with respect and kindness, instead of instilling in them the idea that 'they all deserve hell'.
    6. If he did decide to judge you, he would judge you exclusively on the merits of your life.
    7. If this judgement decided your eternal fate, he would ensure that everyone knew of it before dying, so they could live their lives accordingly.


    1. Not care if you believed in him or not.
    If you did not believe in him why would you follow his rules?
    2. Ensure that hell does not exist
    No punishment for crime is what you're saying.(would not want to live in that world would you?)
    3. Offer the option to let a 'soul' (whatever that is) not exist (punishment of crime)
    4. Create a far more habitable world for his little being that he loves so much to live in.
    It was that way until man screwed it up.
    5. Actually treat his beings with respect and kindness, instead of instilling in them the idea that 'they all deserve hell'. ( gave us a way to not go to hell by letting his own son die for me. ( that's love in my eyes)
    6. If he did decide to judge you, he would judge you exclusively on the merits of your life. So if someone killed your wife or kids and the judge said " he was a good boy up until then, so he can go free" how would you feel?
    7. If this judgement decided your eternal fate, he would ensure that everyone knew of it before dying, so they could live their lives accordingly. This happened its Christ dying on the cross.

    DawgCommander ●

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    By the way, for reference, this is essentially Christianity in a nutshell:

    1 .Decide to arrange for something other than yourself to exist.

    2. Create a being by the name of Lucifer with full knowledge that this being will betray you and ultimately cause an infinite amount of suffering unnecessarily.

    3. Allow an unfathomably horrific dimension of existence known as ‘hell’ to emerge created by yourself or perhaps Lucifer and allow that dimension to continue existing. Do not override or prevent such a thing. It will come into play later.

    4. Create objective unchanging moral prescriptions and base them upon whatever your nature happens to be and then label any action or thought contrary to these standards ‘sin’.

    5. Be sure to include in these moral prescriptions edicts for social and psychological health such as encouragement to beat ones children with a rod, permission to buy and sell slaves and will them as property to ones children for life, requirement that women not be allowed to teach or have authority over men and of course the instruction to kill anyone who expresses interest in worshiping other gods.

    6. Design a physical universe, planets, animals and vegetation all with the appearance of age. Be sure to include in your creation biological flaws redundancies and over-complications that appear as if they were the product of blind cumulative processes, perhaps a urinary tract that runs straight through the prostate gland or a unnecessary appendix prone to inflation and rupturing, or maybe a respiratory and digestive system forced to share the same plumbing, (these are just a few working ideas).

    7. Create a garden with a tree in it bearing fruit that when eaten provides knowledge of your objective moral standards, and create two sentient cognitive beings without knowledge or awareness of these standards and instruct them not to eat from the tree which would enlighten them (in other words, arrange it so that only AFTER they eat from the tree are they capable of understanding that doing so was a violation of objective moral standards).

    8. Warn these cognitive beings that they will undoubtedly die if they eat from this tree, but don’t follow through if they do. Endow a reptile with vocal chords, lips or some other means of speaking audibly to your cognitive beings enabling it to make a convincing case to one of them for eating from the tree. Do not prevent this or intervene.

    9. Now by this point make sure your cognitive beings have been equipped for reproducing themselves and multiplying, and because one of them has sinned, arrange that every single one of their descendants until the end of time will be born with an inherent sinful nature, defaulting in a future of everlasting torment. Do not by any means allow each of them to be born with a clean slate and the capacity for living a sin-free life if they desire as you did with your first two prototypes.

    10. Endow these cognitive beings with a ‘soul’ which keeps their thoughts and feelings and other cognitive faculties in existence forever one way or another. And then allow the sinfulness of these beings to be incompatible with your presence and let hell be the only other place that they can go once they exit the the physical world, do not make any attempt to spare these souls the eternal torment of hell such as allowing souls to stop existing altogether or creating an additional realm for them to reside besides with you or in hell.

    11. Over time allow these beings to populate the earth you’ve created, knowing with infallible certainty of course that after so many generations they will disappoint you enough that you find it necessary to kill all of them in a global flood and start all over from scratch.

    12. Now when this happens (again right on schedule) make an exception for one small family of cognitive beings who you deem righteous. Of course it goes without saying that your powers of omniscience allow you to know, again, with infallible certainty that this family too will ultimately disappoint you in the same way that those who you drowned, rendering the entire endeavor futile, but for now it’s best that you pretend not to know that.

    13. Instruct this small disappointment of a family to populate the entire world all over again by way of incest.

    14. Declare that until further notice the only way for these cognitive beings to rectify their sinful nature while on earth is to preform ritual animal sacrifices and other acts of senseless violence. Additionally when certain sins are committed by any one of your cognitive beings, demand that the surrounding community kill that being themselves.

    15. In the meantime perform many epic miracles for all to see and intervene often with your physical creations, stop the sun in the sky, part the red sea, turn rivers into blood, and women into pillars of salt, give men superhuman strength, speak to the thousands with a booming voice from heaven etc, but before these cognitive beings become advanced enough in the areas of science and communication that they could actually document, share, playback and verify these epic miracles, make sure you stop performing them all together.

    16. Decide at some point that the most pressing of your objective moral prescriptions are not as obvious to these cognitive beings as you once thought, take this opportunity to chisel your top ten moral concerns into two tablets of stone and commission one of your cognitive beings to deliver these tablets to the masses. (Note to self: Roughly half of these moral concerns should center around pleasing you, praising you and remaining loyal to you.)

    17. After several thousand years impregnate one of these cognitive beings so that she gives birth to your son in physical form, who also happens to be you, at the same time.

    18. Allow this cognitive being who is your son but also you to grow up and make several revisions to you/your son's original standards of morality then arrange for other cognitive beings to torture and kill you/your son, authorize this sacrifice of yourself as a means of granting all other cognitive beings immunity from the consequences of their sinful nature, which you allowed them to be born with in the first place.

    19. Do not however make this sacrifice free, establish that none of these cognitive beings shall be eligible for benefits of this sacrifice unless they actively believe that it happened. In other words, despite the quality of their intentions any cognitive beings henceforth who finds themselves unconvinced these events actually took place, is unwittingly designating themselves for the endless suffering of hell.

    20 . With that established, be sure to refrain from making it clear and knowable to the rest of the world that these events actually took place, ensure that no cognitive being after the first century has the luxury of witnessing your son who is also you say or do anything to indicate he was a living god. Again, make sure that all of this occurs before advancements in science and technology are available to verify for those who aren’t present.

    21. Arrange so that the only surviving record of these events will be offered anonymously by non-eye witness’s translated to a language different from the one you/ your son will speak written no earlier than thirty years after you/your son preformed these miracles and makes these clams, however do make sure that these records feature the precept that believing in something without evidence is morally superior to investigation and verification.

    22. Be sure that after only a few decades the only accounts of these events in existence are copies of copies of copies which will be verifiably altered and added to in historically and theologically significant ways from generation to generation, sect to sect. Do not preserve the original copies of these accounts, do not protect them from revision, do not set in place any mechanism for protecting them from being interpreted in hundreds upon hundreds of ways most of which being heretical and therefore punishable.

    23. Do not bother to employ your omniscience in such a way as to discern which of these cognitive beings are truly rebelling, and which simply don’t know how to distinguish you from other versions of god which do not in fact exist.

    24. Do not make it clear to these beings that you are are even here. Allow for your very existence to remain an easily debatable, easily questionable, easily doubtable proposition. Allow billions and billions of souls to be unthinkably tortured for all of eternity regardless of their character, integrity, bravery, responsibility or conduct because they had not correctly assumed that the right set of propositions were true by the time their lives on earth were over.

    25. And finally when all is said and done, demand that you be praised for this plan.

    Sounds like you want God to baby powder your butt and pat you on the head and just call you a good little boy.

    DawgCommander ●

  • DawgCommander said...

    1. Not care if you believed in him or not. If you did not believe in him why would you follow his rules? 2. Ensure that hell does not exist No punishment for crime is what you're saying.(would not want to live in that world would you?) 3. Offer the option to let a 'soul' (whatever that is) not exist (punishment of crime) 4. Create a far more habitable world for his little being that he loves so much to live in. It was that way until man screwed it up. 5. Actually treat his beings with respect and kindness, instead of instilling in them the idea that 'they all deserve hell'. ( gave us a way to not go to hell by letting his own son die for me. ( that's love in my eyes) 6. If he did decide to judge you, he would judge you exclusively on the merits of your life. So if someone killed your wife or kids and the judge said " he was a good boy up until then, so he can go free" how would you feel? 7. If this judgement decided your eternal fate, he would ensure that everyone knew of it before dying, so they could live their lives accordingly. This happened its Christ dying on the cross.

    "If you did not believe in him why would you follow his rules?"

    GREAT question. You're right. If god had a rule such as, "Tuesday is dress like a banana day" I wouldn't follow it if I didn't believe in him. You know what that means? God has placed a restriction on what his rules can be - they have to be justifiable. If God had a rule like, "Don't murder people", I WOULD follow that because it is entirely justifiable.

    "No punishment for crime is what you're saying."

    No. There absolutely can be punishment for crimes. But not eternally. In a finite life on one planet, it is intrinsically impossible to do enough evil to 'deserve' an infinite amount of punishment. Hence, hell is evil by it's very nature.

    "punishment of crime"

    Why must these punishments (or, if you're an omnipotent god, more realistically rehabilitation) be done exclusively after your life?

    "It was that way until man screwed it up."

    See previous posts regarding paradox and insanity of punishing billions of people for the actions of two of their ancestors.

    "gave us a way to not go to hell by letting his own son die for me. ( that's love in my eyes)"

    You have a very, very twisted view of love.

    "So if someone killed your wife or kids and the judge said " he was a good boy up until then, so he can go free" how would you feel?"

    Considerably better than if I found out billions of people who have lived outstanding moral lives are suffering in eternal torment because they weren't born into the right religion.

    "This happened its Christ dying on the cross."

    Yeah, god was just too lazy to save a video or evidence or come back down and demonstrate this truthfully.

    See previous statement of sending billions to hell because they happened to be born in the wrong area of the world.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • DawgCommander said...

    Sounds like you want God to baby powder your butt and pat you on the head and just call you a good little boy.

    Sounds like you didn't read it. That's just 'god's perfect plan' for us.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • CMXI said...

    Not sure what that has to do with an answer to my question. Let's try this: If your great-grandfather screws up, should you suffer for it?

    Still waiting for an answer. It's a yes or no question.

    signature image signature image signature image

    CMXI

  • CMXI said...

    Still waiting for an answer. It's a yes or no question.

    If it makes you feel any better, I post a list of all the outrageously stupid/hypocritical/evil things in god's glorious plan, and the response was that I apparently want god to 'baby power my butt'.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • Ok, I quit, god is not real I don't believe anymore.

    DawgCommander ●

  • DawgCommander said...

    Ok, I quit, god is not real I don't believe anymore.

    You're no fun. Quitting just because you can't/won't answer a question is pretty weak. Don't you want to hear about other viewpoints so you can educate yourself?

    signature image signature image signature image

    CMXI

  • CMXI said...

    You're no fun. Quitting just because you can't/won't answer a question is pretty weak. Don't you want to hear about other viewpoints so you can educate yourself?

    lol
    The conversation was starting to go in circles. Did not want to make the trip all the way back around again. If we didn't agree the first time around didn't see the point of it.
    Sorry I didn't see the post where you ask me that question.
    Yes, I think we have to live with the mistakes of the past, my grand kids are going to have to suffer because of the Bush/ Obama administrations.

    DawgCommander ●

  • DawgCommander said...

    lol
    The conversation was starting to go in circles. Did not want to make the trip all the way back around again. If we didn't agree the first time around didn't see the point of it.
    Sorry I didn't see the post where you ask me that question.
    Yes, I think we have to live with the mistakes of the past, my grand kids are going to have to suffer because of the Bush/ Obama administrations.

    That's not the same as you going to jail because your great grandfather murdered someone (for example).

    signature image signature image signature image

    sf2k4 ●

  • brem22 said...

    Question for amrollZ71...

    How can god have given us free will AND be omniscient?

    If God already knows the future, then aren't we destined to corroborate with his knowledge of the future and not have true free will to deviate from it? Doesn't our free will contradict an omniscient god?

    Does God have free will? Wouldn't God himself be bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself? Forever and ever?


    Short Answer:

    You can do whatever you like, but God already knows you will F&%$ it up.

    Long Answer:

    I have seen a number of different responses to this hypothetical:

    1. God knows all possible decisions you might make (i.e., he knows all possible lives you might live). Under this theory, God may encourage good choices, but you remain free to F&%$ it up.

    2. God is not only omniscient but also omnipotent. God knows the future but, as an all-powerful God, he can change the future or allow it to change in response to the choices we make. In other words, if you F&%$ it up, it is still your fault.

    3. Not all Christians believe in the version of free will posed by your question. Calvinists, for example, are already quite certain that you are predestined to F&%$ it up. (In fact, some very well-known Christians throughout history have taught there is no free will, including St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.)

    4. Your future is not created yet. It is part of God's ongoing creation. And what God decides to create or allows to be created is influenced by the choices we make. (Under this theory, omniscient is limited to mean all knowledge that is currently "knowable."). In other words, once you decide to F&%$ it up, the rest of your bad future becomes certain and therefore known.

    5. God is observing us making choices but not controlling that choice. (This is closer to a Deist view of God that regards God like a watchmaker who wound everything up at creation.) Under this theory, God's knowledge of your choice does not absolve you of responsibility when you F&%$ it up.

    6. The concept of time applies to man but not God. Remember, God is not only omniscient, he is also omnipotent. As a result, God exists in all times, past, present and future. God, therefore, is not only offering us a choice, but has already received our decision. In other words, from God’s perspective, you have already told God that you decided to F&%$ it up.

    There are, of course, counter-arguments that I have seen to several of these responses. However, the hardest ones to counter involve arguments that appeal to God’s omnipotence. If God is all powerful, then he is powerful enough to both be omniscient AND give us free will. After all, any rules you may try to construct to limit God suggest by their very nature something less than omnipotence.

    Deadpoet

  • I have a couple related questions.

    Why do all Gods need/want devoted slaves (beings that follow their every whim, commandment, etc. and worship them continuously)? And why are all Gods tyrants (eternally and brutally punishing everyone unless they are a good devout slave)?

    By definition God is omnipotent, omniscient and "perfect"? Isn't boredom (the only logical reason for creating people to be slaves, giving them the free will to choose not be a slave and then judging/punishing them for that choice) an imperfection?

    And why should an omnipotent being give a damn if some of their billions of creations decide against being devoted slaves? Yet they all do.

    More to the point, why do Theists feel the need to be slaves so keenly that they invent Gods to whom they can enslave themselves?

    This post was edited by JarheadBuck on 2/23/2013 at 3:11 PM

    JarheadBuck

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    By the way, for reference, this is essentially Christianity in a nutshell:

    1 .Decide to arrange for something other than yourself to exist.

    2. Create a being by the name of Lucifer with full knowledge that this being will betray you and ultimately cause an infinite amount of suffering unnecessarily.

    3. Allow an unfathomably horrific dimension of existence known as ‘hell’ to emerge created by yourself or perhaps Lucifer and allow that dimension to continue existing. Do not override or prevent such a thing. It will come into play later.

    4. Create objective unchanging moral prescriptions and base them upon whatever your nature happens to be and then label any action or thought contrary to these standards ‘sin’.

    5. Be sure to include in these moral prescriptions edicts for social and psychological health such as encouragement to beat ones children with a rod, permission to buy and sell slaves and will them as property to ones children for life, requirement that women not be allowed to teach or have authority over men and of course the instruction to kill anyone who expresses interest in worshiping other gods.

    6. Design a physical universe, planets, animals and vegetation all with the appearance of age. Be sure to include in your creation biological flaws redundancies and over-complications that appear as if they were the product of blind cumulative processes, perhaps a urinary tract that runs straight through the prostate gland or a unnecessary appendix prone to inflation and rupturing, or maybe a respiratory and digestive system forced to share the same plumbing, (these are just a few working ideas).

    7. Create a garden with a tree in it bearing fruit that when eaten provides knowledge of your objective moral standards, and create two sentient cognitive beings without knowledge or awareness of these standards and instruct them not to eat from the tree which would enlighten them (in other words, arrange it so that only AFTER they eat from the tree are they capable of understanding that doing so was a violation of objective moral standards).

    8. Warn these cognitive beings that they will undoubtedly die if they eat from this tree, but don’t follow through if they do. Endow a reptile with vocal chords, lips or some other means of speaking audibly to your cognitive beings enabling it to make a convincing case to one of them for eating from the tree. Do not prevent this or intervene.

    9. Now by this point make sure your cognitive beings have been equipped for reproducing themselves and multiplying, and because one of them has sinned, arrange that every single one of their descendants until the end of time will be born with an inherent sinful nature, defaulting in a future of everlasting torment. Do not by any means allow each of them to be born with a clean slate and the capacity for living a sin-free life if they desire as you did with your first two prototypes.

    10. Endow these cognitive beings with a ‘soul’ which keeps their thoughts and feelings and other cognitive faculties in existence forever one way or another. And then allow the sinfulness of these beings to be incompatible with your presence and let hell be the only other place that they can go once they exit the the physical world, do not make any attempt to spare these souls the eternal torment of hell such as allowing souls to stop existing altogether or creating an additional realm for them to reside besides with you or in hell.

    11. Over time allow these beings to populate the earth you’ve created, knowing with infallible certainty of course that after so many generations they will disappoint you enough that you find it necessary to kill all of them in a global flood and start all over from scratch.

    12. Now when this happens (again right on schedule) make an exception for one small family of cognitive beings who you deem righteous. Of course it goes without saying that your powers of omniscience allow you to know, again, with infallible certainty that this family too will ultimately disappoint you in the same way that those who you drowned, rendering the entire endeavor futile, but for now it’s best that you pretend not to know that.

    13. Instruct this small disappointment of a family to populate the entire world all over again by way of incest.

    14. Declare that until further notice the only way for these cognitive beings to rectify their sinful nature while on earth is to preform ritual animal sacrifices and other acts of senseless violence. Additionally when certain sins are committed by any one of your cognitive beings, demand that the surrounding community kill that being themselves.

    15. In the meantime perform many epic miracles for all to see and intervene often with your physical creations, stop the sun in the sky, part the red sea, turn rivers into blood, and women into pillars of salt, give men superhuman strength, speak to the thousands with a booming voice from heaven etc, but before these cognitive beings become advanced enough in the areas of science and communication that they could actually document, share, playback and verify these epic miracles, make sure you stop performing them all together.

    16. Decide at some point that the most pressing of your objective moral prescriptions are not as obvious to these cognitive beings as you once thought, take this opportunity to chisel your top ten moral concerns into two tablets of stone and commission one of your cognitive beings to deliver these tablets to the masses. (Note to self: Roughly half of these moral concerns should center around pleasing you, praising you and remaining loyal to you.)

    17. After several thousand years impregnate one of these cognitive beings so that she gives birth to your son in physical form, who also happens to be you, at the same time.

    18. Allow this cognitive being who is your son but also you to grow up and make several revisions to you/your son's original standards of morality then arrange for other cognitive beings to torture and kill you/your son, authorize this sacrifice of yourself as a means of granting all other cognitive beings immunity from the consequences of their sinful nature, which you allowed them to be born with in the first place.

    19. Do not however make this sacrifice free, establish that none of these cognitive beings shall be eligible for benefits of this sacrifice unless they actively believe that it happened. In other words, despite the quality of their intentions any cognitive beings henceforth who finds themselves unconvinced these events actually took place, is unwittingly designating themselves for the endless suffering of hell.

    20 . With that established, be sure to refrain from making it clear and knowable to the rest of the world that these events actually took place, ensure that no cognitive being after the first century has the luxury of witnessing your son who is also you say or do anything to indicate he was a living god. Again, make sure that all of this occurs before advancements in science and technology are available to verify for those who aren’t present.

    21. Arrange so that the only surviving record of these events will be offered anonymously by non-eye witness’s translated to a language different from the one you/ your son will speak written no earlier than thirty years after you/your son preformed these miracles and makes these clams, however do make sure that these records feature the precept that believing in something without evidence is morally superior to investigation and verification.

    22. Be sure that after only a few decades the only accounts of these events in existence are copies of copies of copies which will be verifiably altered and added to in historically and theologically significant ways from generation to generation, sect to sect. Do not preserve the original copies of these accounts, do not protect them from revision, do not set in place any mechanism for protecting them from being interpreted in hundreds upon hundreds of ways most of which being heretical and therefore punishable.

    23. Do not bother to employ your omniscience in such a way as to discern which of these cognitive beings are truly rebelling, and which simply don’t know how to distinguish you from other versions of god which do not in fact exist.

    24. Do not make it clear to these beings that you are are even here. Allow for your very existence to remain an easily debatable, easily questionable, easily doubtable proposition. Allow billions and billions of souls to be unthinkably tortured for all of eternity regardless of their character, integrity, bravery, responsibility or conduct because they had not correctly assumed that the right set of propositions were true by the time their lives on earth were over.

    25. And finally when all is said and done, demand that you be praised for this plan.

    Wow!!
    Sure to you a long time to compile such cycnisism and doubt..!
    Was it worth it??? Don 't know if it taught anybody anything tho-

    Itchin

  • Itchin said...

    Wow!! Sure to you a long time to compile such cycnisism and doubt..! Was it worth it??? Don 't know if it taught anybody anything tho-

    Got it from the internet.

    Actually, I paraphrased this to my parents when they asked me why I don't believe in god. My dad now believes in evolution and my mom is questioning her faith.

    So, yes, it was worth it.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • Doesn't the presence of original sin prove that we have free will and God does not know exactly what is going to happen? Either he created Adam and Eve and they had free will which they used to choose to sin, creating original sin, which we as humans "pay for" over the course of our lives.

    Or, he knew the outcome this KNEW Adam and Eve would sin thus created humans knowing we would have to pay for said sin (that he already knew would happen).

    The latter is kind of a dick move IMO.

    signature image signature image signature image

    sf2k4 ●

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    Got it from the internet.

    Actually, I paraphrased this to my parents when they asked me why I don't believe in god. My dad now believes in evolution and my mom is questioning her faith.

    So, yes, it was worth it.

    Wouldn't want to answer for that before almighty God. That's scary stuff.

    The Future Is Bright! Hotty Toddy

    Rebel_30 ●

  • Rebel_30 said...

    Wouldn't want to answer for that before almighty God. That's scary stuff.

    Actually, I'd be quite interested into ole Yahweh's rebuttal to that terrible plan for us.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • I am in the minority as far as Christians are concerned, but I believe in predestination and election. I believe God knows all and has known it before He created anything. When people say 'He looked ahead into time", they forget that He created time for us. He is eternal therefore time doesn't apply to Him.

    The Future Is Bright! Hotty Toddy

    Rebel_30 ●

  • Rebel_30 said...

    I am in the minority as far as Christians are concerned, but I believe in predestination and election. I believe God knows all and has known it before He created anything. When people say 'He looked ahead into time", they forget that He created time for us. He is eternal therefore time doesn't apply to Him.

    OK so god is a dick because he set my path and made me go to hell.

    We are both atheists. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours

    OmegaBuckeye

  • Rebel_30 said...

    I am in the minority as far as Christians are concerned, but I believe in predestination and election. I believe God knows all and has known it before He created anything. When people say 'He looked ahead into time", they forget that He created time for us. He is eternal therefore time doesn't apply to Him.

    If god knows exactly what we are going to do, even before we do it, that renders this entire life pointless.

    Most christians think this life is, in essence, a test. You prove yourself to be whatever combination of 'not a dick' and 'faithful' god requires, then you get to heaven or fail and burn forever.

    The idea that god already knows the results of the test prior to us taking it renders the whole thing a giant, moot waste of time.

    ramssuperbowl99 ●

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    If god knows exactly what we are going to do, even before we do it, that renders this entire life pointless.

    Most christians think this life is, in essence, a test. You prove yourself to be whatever combination of 'not a dick' and 'faithful' god requires, then you get to heaven or fail and burn forever.

    The idea that god already knows the results of the test prior to us taking it renders the whole thing a giant, moot waste of time.

    Especially if he set all the pieces in place and made all the rules.

    We are both atheists. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours

    OmegaBuckeye

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    Actually, I'd be quite interested into ole Yahweh's rebuttal to that terrible plan for us.

    You're request will be granted one day. Unfortunatey for you it will sound like this, unless you choose a different path.

    Luke 13:27 NKJV

    But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’

    The Future Is Bright! Hotty Toddy

    Rebel_30 ●

  • ramssuperbowl99 said...

    Most christians think this life is, in essence, a test. You prove yourself to be whatever combination of 'not a dick' and 'faithful' god requires, then you get to heaven or fail and burn forever.

    Most Christian I know, believe that if you believe God sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, and raised him from the dead, then you are saved, and all sins, past, present, and future are forgiven.

    I'm sure many Christian interpret that differently, and many believe if you aren't baptized you can't go to heaven. I don't believe that personally.

    Just clarifying the path to heaven belief system

    Carry on.

    VTSmitty ●

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