No Justice in the Curse

Faith & Science Conversation
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Continuing the discussion from Finding God again?:

Right on Patrick. IMHO this whole “test” of life hinges on the four omnis of God. Omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.

The flood is indeed a unjustified massacre. Unjustified in the scale and scope of punishment. All the innocent life forms die along with the guilty. Now back to the omnis.

Predestination is the crux of it all. It’s not our predestination that matters. It’s God’s knowledge of our destinations. God knows the end from the beginning. God is everywhere and everytime. He knows your life before you live it. He knew Adam and Eve would make the choice. Yet He cursed all life forms for that one decision He knew would happen. Why? He knew that 6 million Jews would be killed by the Nazis in good part because the Jews were the fore ordained crucifiers of Jesus. Go figure. Why then the test of this life as many Xians like to call this one precious life we have.

Many people say that A&E had free will as well as we do. The faithful say God wants us to make our own decision for or against Him of our own free will. He doesn’t want us to love him from fear but from love? Is there indeed free will? Is there indeed love given freely to God? Did A&E have free will?

They did, and we do, from a relative perspective. But. But… from God’s perspective humans do exactly as He knows they will. Therefore in the long-run of God’s existence … no one has free will. At this moment God is in the future being worshipped in heaven day in and day out (incredibly boring if you ask me) by every human who made the decision to follow His way and not Satan’s way. So the fix is in. But from your perspective you can’t see the fix. You think you have free will, and you do, from your perspective, but not God’s perspective.

So what is this cursed life a test for?

  • Some Xians will say that the test is for us to accept or love God. Why bother? He already knows who passes His test and who does not.
  • Some other Xians say that this “test” is to prove to the heavenly host (angels and possibly other worlds) that God’s way is right and Satan’s is wrong? Really? How freaking dense and stupid is the heavenly host? You would think that the heavenly host would figure out the best choice just from the experience of two creations, A&E? Hell no. The heavenly host is dense beyond the density of a black hole. So far, per the bible, 6000 years and 50 Billion humans have lived, suffered and died on this planet. That is the curse, to live, suffer and die. Not only that 50 billion but countless numbers of other innocent life forms were cursed too. Rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, spiders, lizards, hawks, eagles, trees, plants, beetles, bats… etc etc etc etc.

So what is the purpose of this crazy live, suffer, die test? To whom’s benefit? Are we are on a stage for the heavenly host’s sick twisted entertainment? Sure seems that way. (however evolution explains the purpose of living suffering and dying perfectly).

My daughter who is 8 listened to this passage, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, from the venerable Bible that many think can coexist with reason, logic and science. After reading it to her I then I said to her. “See, if you are rebellious it is within my rights as your parent, per the bible, to have you killed. Do you agree?”. She yelled an emphatic. “NO!” I asked her, “Why not? It’s in the greatest holy book of all time.”. She replied, “Cuz it’s STUPID!”. I patted her on the back and said, “Awesome. You are excellently correct, and I am proud of your wisdom.”.

RESOURCES:
How many humans in 50,000 years. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/fire-in-the-mind/2013/08/11/how-many-people-ever-lived/ … From that I take a shot at 50 Billion in the last 6000 years. It’s random guess. However, it does not, whether accurate or not, diminish the scale of “living, suffering and dying” that God cursed all life forms with who had not one single iota of involvement in the eating of that fateful fruit.Continuing the discussion from Finding God again?:

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Thank you for writing this. I thought I was the only here who saw these terrible inconsistencies. I was seven years old in 1960’s at Catholic School. I was told that because I was pure I could receive First holy Communion. But I had to believe that the Priest was going to transform the thin wafer into the ACTUAL body and blood of the man nailed to a cross 1965 years old. I was petrified, what did 2000 year old corpse taste like? Once I got it and ate it, it tasted like a flat unsalted cracker. I realized right then, that it was just a flat unsalted cracker. Every time a nun was say some thing that sounded odd, I just didn’t buy it. One Friday in 1965, the nun said that I had sinned because my mom inadvertently packed a salami sandwich in my metal lunchbox and Hell awaited those who sin. So what do it do? I poofed Hell out of existence. Gone was Hell. It didn’t exist and it has never come back in 50 years since then. I did keep Heaven for along time. But after 911 I evaporated Heaven so that the hijackers had nowhere that they could go.

I really enjoy the Pope this week. He said may times “Please pray for me, if you don’t believe, then please just wish me well.” That pretty much sums it up. I wish him well.

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I really don’t blame the nuns for anything. It was the times that I grew up in. They were doing their best and I am sure that they had my best interests at heart. But as a child, I really did equate a Friday salami sandwich with sin and sin with hell. To make matters worse, she wouldn’t let me eat that unholy sandwich, in fact three nuns hovered over this sandwich. They then coerced two students (skinny little girls who didn’t eat a whole sandwich) to give up halves of the PBJ sandwiches to me. Unfortunately, I was allergic to peanuts and my lips swelled up greatly and I had to go to the nurse …

Today, 50 years later, we would be outraged at a teacher who did that. We would expect a sign to be place in the cafeteria announcing “peanut dust present”

Seriously, we really have to be careful of what we tell children. That is why I am against telling children terrible stories like the Flood and certainly the Abraham and Issac story.

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In my opinion, the rubbish of transubstantiation and the like is just that, rubbish. All of it. I don’t care how theologically sound the source of the myths and doctrine and dogma are.

Why create a hell to punish sinners? What is the purpose of making any life suffer for an eternity? The only purpose is to hurt the sinner and place fear into the chosen few and the heavenly host. Besides that, hell is not in the bible. Hell is a manifestation of imperfect humans long after CE. The Origin of Hell-Fire in Christian Teaching. That is a Xian leaning site on the notions of hell and purgatory. There are a plethora of philosophers, famous thinkers and politicians who have come to the conclusion that hell, even if God exists, does not exist. As it makes no logical sense.

Xian and Islam religions are veritably cults of death and suffering. It’s all about suffering and death.

And as I said in the topic of this conversation. There is no justice in the Curse. What is this test of living, suffering and dying for? It makes no sense at all since God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent and omnipotent. He, God, already knows in advance of a person’s birth what choice they will make. He knew Lucifer would rebel and Adam and Eve would fall before He created them. Since the whole purpose is to arrive in heaven and worship and love God for eternity why have a test as to who is worthy of such a lofty place if the fix is in, if God, who is omnipresent in the past, present and future is in the future with the chosen as I type.

Now if God does not know the choices you or I will make using our free will. Well, then God is not a God because if that is the case He loses all four omnis.

And quit honestly, if the God of the bible does exist I sure as hell am not going to bend a knee and kiss His feet because He is a cruel and horrid creator. A creator that makes “imperfect” humans and damns them and all life around them and all life into the future and all life in the Universe because of ONE disobedience. That is completely NUTTS.

Think of it this way.

You have a child. The child misbehaves once. So you abandon the child.

Any human with a reasonable capacity for empathy and justice would consider you a monster. And justifiably so. But you, the monster that you are in that abandonment of your child would pale in comparison to God’s injustice since you don’t have the power to curse all life present and future.

That is what God did to Adam and Eve.
They disobeyed one time. He curses them with life, suffering and death.
The “suffering” was never part of the deal in the command given unto Adam in Genesis 2:16-17. In fact the “death” was supposed to be “IN THE DAY” of the transgression.
God lied. Adam and Eve did not “die in the day”. Nope.
They get a curse of far greater magnitude.
They get the curse of life, SUFFERING and death. There is no mercy in that “suffering” part of the curse.
And not only do they get the curse. But all life on earth gets that curse. And all life to come gets to curse.
That is 50 Billion Humans in 6000 years who have lived, suffered and died on this planet. Let alone the now 7 billion on earth who have the curse as well.
And not only them, but all life on earth. Uncountable suffering is laid upon all life, trees, bears, lambs, dogs, cats, cute little rabbits. They all got the curse because two people disobeyed ONE TIME.

THAT IS NOT JUSTICE.
That is the action of a petulant vindictive evil nasty creator.
And guess what.
God is the ONLY entity capable of leveling that horrid curse.

God is everything we wish we were and everything we wish we were not.
Therefore if the thoughts of God die, then God dies. Because God is purely a human construct.

And Patrick was right on. He made hell go away in his thoughts, the only place it could exist. Then he made heaven go away in the same fashion.

Time for the red pill Eddie so you can see just how deep into the human psyche the rabbit hole of faith goes.

It’s time for the world to take the red pill and get rid of ALL religions.
If we don’t our species will perish and there will be nary a trace of human kind left because we wasted our lives in death cults and when we gained the power of the atom all we could do was think of heaven and how much sooner we could get there and ■■■■ all the rest of the heretics to hell. A hell and a heaven that have ABSOLUTELY no tangible proof of existence.

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@ninksink

It would be nice if we could blame everything on God, esp. if God did not exist.

However there are many people who do not believe in God, in heaven and hell and I don’t see that they are any better off than us. The Communists are a good example. I know that some non-believers call them ideologues with the same problem as Christians. Maybe they don’t count.

How about Buddhists? They don’t believe in God or heaven and hell. Are Burma and Cambodia better off? Why don’t people migrate over there if they do not like the way Christians behave and believe?

I guess you would be surprised to know that many Christians do not believe in predestination? The omnis are products of philosophy, not the Bible. Does that make you feel better, or do you enjoy being angry?

I do not know if Hell exists, but I do believe that people are responsible for what they do and who they are. The only way this can be is through life after death. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others that I can think off will be held responsible by a just God, but more importantly millions of caring people will enjoy the fruits of their love in the presence of a caring and loving God.

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Roger,
Of course blaming everything on God is counterproductive if he doesn’t exist. But if he does exist, shouldn’t he be blamed for something? Perhaps for seeming not to care?

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Hitler got what he deserved when he put a bullet into his own head.

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@Patrick

The Father sent the Son into the world to save it from itself.

What have you done?

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I fathered two sons, educated them, protected them from themselves, loved them.

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“The omnis are products of philosophy, not the Bible.”

Incorrect.

  • Omnipotence: Luke 1:37, Gen.18:14, Job 42:1-2, Jer. 32:17, Jer.
    32:26-27 (God claims it himself) Jer. 32:26-27 Then came the word of
    the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of
    all flesh: is there anything too hard for me? Matthew 19:26, Mark
    10:27, Rev 19:6 (even the word omnipotence is used there)
  • Omniscience: 1 Samuels 2:3, Psalm 147:4, Psalm. 10:30, Hebrews 4:13 Matthew 6:2-5 God knows all your secret prayers. After all what good
    is prayer if God is not omniscient?
  • Omnipresence: Prov 15:3, Luk 17:21, Job 34:21, Hebrews 4:13
  • Omni-benevolence: Luke 18:19

I am not angry. I am just pointing out that the curse leveled by God after Adam and Eve disobeyed one time has no justice in it what so ever. Not to them and surely not for you who was not born as you were not in the garden and you were not involved in the plot.

Evil deeds will always be done by evil people. But religions and blind faith encourage good people to do evil things. The London bombings in 2005. Those were met out by Muslims who were educated and not oppressed and were known to be nice people. But faith in a heaven that is evident without any tangible proof along with their holy book’s pledge that those who martyr themselves by killing the heathen are guaranteed a place in heaven.

By the way, whose heaven is the true heaven? Islam heaven or the Xian heaven? Can either prove their vehement bent?

Again, I am not angry. But I sure as hell am flummoxed that the faithful can be so blind to the fact that the God of the bible and all other gods ever conjured up are simply mental models of what we wish were were along with all that we are. Everyone in every belief has a different model of their god. That is why there are Wahhabists, Shittes, Sunnies, Catholics, Baptists, SDAs, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, 7th Day Baptists, Lutherans, ad infititum… all with their version of faith being better than the others. So much so that they are willing to die and kill in order to placate their God. And this is not only about extremists, but about the supposedly innocent moderates. Moderates tacitly enable the extremists, and it is moderates who become fundamental extremists.

And who better to be the example than God himself. He curses all life forms after A&E disobey once. He drowns in his flood untold numbers of humans including fetuses in pregnant supposedly evil women, old people, children, the crippled, etc. Along with all other life forms on the earth including the fish of the sea since all that fresh water would desalinate the oceans and all the life in it dies (funny that there are no fish on the ark, maybe because fish are not cute?). Oh, but He is so kind to save 8 people and 2 of every kind of animal whilst for a year the rest drown. Then there are the massacres of all the Mideonites (Numbers 31… oh wait, not all of them, gotta keep the young virgin girls alive after the Hebrew slays her family before her eyes… so she can be that soldiers wife), the Moabites, the Jebusites all killed by the hand of Hebrews at God’s orders. There is God commanded abortions to test the fidelity of a woman to her man. There is the command that a man can see a woman he desires, then he can rape her and then she must marry him (did anyone ask the woman raped if she wants this evil jerk to be her husband?). And all of that and God knows in advance the exact events to occur including me typing this in response to you.

“The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”, Sam Harris.

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Ninksink, although I would not publicly voice them in such vitriolic language, in my youth my thoughts of the ‘God of the Old Testament’ paralleled yours. However, rather than throwing out all of scripture as misleading lies, I chose to treat it as ‘inspired’ but not ‘inerrant’. The author(s) of Genesis 1 were inspired; the author(s) of Genesis 2,3 &4 got the message in reverse: Knowledge of Good and Evil was not a forbidden fruit. It was the Gift of Conscience, a Mind that could free us from being slaves of instinct, just as Pinnochio became a human as soon as he listened to Jimminy Cricket. (A parable that should rate as scripture.)

You might enjoy reading more about Original Blessing and the invitation extended to humanity to become Created Co-Creators. Its made me more comfortable, but you might see that as self-deception.

What is your purpose in referring to Christians as “Xian”? Just relieving frustration?
Al Leo

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Xian… short for Christian as Xmas is short for Christmas. Simple as that. I didn’t come up with it, just saw it somewhere in the internet and liked it.

All gods are manifestations of the human mind. Simple as that.

Think of it this way. If you were born in Sudan to a Muslim family you would be raised Muslim and you would by a significant margin end up following the Abrahamic religion of Islam until you had children and raised them as you were raised. Same goes for Japan and Buddhism… etc. And you would “believe” that your faith is the correct one. Well, perhaps not Buddhism, they tend to be a bit more lenient. But the Abrahamic religions, not only do the primary ones, Judaism, Islam and Christianity each think the other is a heretic, but even within their own ranks they adopt a flavor and believe that one flavor of the day, week, month, year, decade… is the “chosen”. Most of the faithful don’t even know or understand the prayers they yabber. Many Muslims (but not all) bow to Mecca five times a day and recite in Arabic (and don’t even understand that language, just parrot it), but then again lotsa Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers are chanted and not really thought through much… but they “believe”.

Oh and forgiveness. That is a funny one. The sinner prays for forgiveness. Some feel somehow without proof at all that they are forgiven. Well the proof is their brain. The brain is with you 24/7… hmmm sound omnipresent-ish does that?, and of course “your” model of a god in your thoughts will speak to you… it’s simply you talking to yourself.

Atheists simply, and this is said often by many folks, go one god more in their rejection of gods than the other five religions do… well Hinduism depending on your belief system there… it’s got lotsa gods… sigh.

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@ninksink

Correct me if I’m wrong but you seem to be a fan of Richard Dawkins… am I wrong in this assertion? Some of your quotes, seem very similar to his.

You wrote, “If you were born in Sudan to a Muslim family you would be raised Muslim and you would by a significant margin end up following the Abrahamic religion of Islam until you had children and raised them as you were raised.”

Yes. You’re correct. Most people who are Christians end up raising kids as Christians. Same as atheist parents raising their kids like atheists. Same as Muslims raising their kids as Muslims. I fail to see your point, here? What you seem to not know is that many people come to believe in God, as well as many Christians, Jews, Muslims lose their faith in God. As well as many Jews convert to Islam. And many Catholics convert to Mormonism. One big example is Paul, who killed dozens of Christians, ends up becoming Christianity’s biggest supporter. With the way you write it’s as if your “born in a circle” and will never “leave that circle”… and that’s just false.

You wrote, “It’s simply you talking to yourself”

If you’ve never had a spiritual experience, then don’t criticize other’s who have had spiritual experiences.

You wrote, “All gods are manifestations of the human mind mind. Simple as that.”

Yes, and I’m sure that hundreds of Christians, stubbornly decided not to let go of their manifestations, and to be killed by lions in the Roman Coliseum, because they thought… hey why not? I’m sure that’s why the New Testament writers went from country to country, risking their lives,suffering persecution, telling people about the resurrection of Jesus, just to see if they would buy it. I’m sure that’s why Paul the apostle, stopped hunting down Christians for their heresies against HIS manifestations, and instead started worshiping the manifestations of the Christians… because Christianity was VERY popular at that point in time. I’m sure they all got together in a corner somewhere and started laughing their heads offs at the practical joke they pulled on the world…

-Tim

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@Patrick

That is great. God does the same for all of us when we allow God to do so.

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@ninksink

If all gods are manifestations of the human mind, it cannot be very simple, because you cannot fight something with nothing. If human minds are sick enough to believe what you say we believe, then where do the healthy ideas to come from?

Who is to convince humans to love one another, if human minds are lost under the power of the Selfish Gene?

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Really? I don’t recall him being there when my son was born 4 month premature. I do remember doctors’ and 1992 technology keeping him alive. I don’t recall getting any help from him when they were sick. But I do remember Doctor’s giving them the best and latest medically advanced treatments. And certainly he didn’t give me any help with college tuition for both of them. If he was doing things on behalf of me, my wife, and my kids, he sure hide his actions from all of us.

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@Patrick

Where do you think the doctors and their knowledge came from?

Magic?

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Do you REALLY believe it’s that simple, ninsink? So exploring the ways there might be a Divine influence in our lives–in the Universe in which we live–this is a proper subject only for the simple minded? Just like quantum physics is a manifestation of the human mind–simple as that!

As Timothy remarked, your defense of atheism borrows a great deal from Richard Dawkins. That’s OK. I’ve read almost all of his publications and truly admire his communication skills and his reasoning. My reasoning tells me, IF there is a Creator of this vast universe, that Creator could not possibly ‘give a fig’ about what happens to such an insignificant creature as myself on a tiny planet circling an ordinary star–one of hundreds of trillions of stars scattered through space. What pride! What chutzpah to think so! Unless–and this is the all important unless–I had felt an undeniable Presence of some unworldly force acting in my life.

I can almost hear you snickering, ninsink. Here is this kook, who claims to have spent a lifetime in science, and he is claiming he has experienced miracles?? Call the paddy wagon! However, the majority of the times I have felt this Presence, it was not something that obvious. It could easily been overlooked, if I had not been open to it–obviously something you and Dawkins would never allow. But one occurrence was obvious, at least to three other agnostic scientists who witnessed it. It was not a ‘Joshua stopping the sun’ type of miracle–just an occurrence that had an almost zero chance of happening–and it accomplished an obvious purpose.

Unfortunately you, Dawkins and most of my agnostic scientist friends, have not had such experiences. Mores the pity. You will just have to take my word for it–it can make for a happier, more purposeful outlook on life. At least it did for me.
Al Leo