Abra you have it right on the money! But your a tad off on a few things. Please allow me to explain.

While its true that God is the creator. And its also true that mortal man is not greater than God it is NOT true that God should serve man.

Man chooses to serve God because man loves God. (Man in general) That's not to say ALL men love God but the one's who do choose to serve.

Man does this in manny different ways. He follows God's commandments,he rejects sin,he prays,he does what God tells him to, so on and so forth etc etc.

So you are correct in all the points you say your are not. God does make life forms in order to turn them into "Slaves" if you really want to call them that. But they are slaves by choice. They can stop being slaves anytime they wish. They can reject some teachings and claim others. However if some teachings are rejected the desired outcome may change. An example being "Honor thy father and thy mother" It goes on to say that you shall have long life and it shall go well with you. I have done this in my own life. When I obey the parents I get good results and when I don't Something bad usually happens. You could say it does not go well with me.

God however does not serve his creation. If he did lucifer or as we in the faith call him/her/it "Satan" then this created being would still be in heaven because God would have served him when he attempted to become higher than God.
Instead he gets his *** kicked and thrown out.
This is also true throughout the bible where men serve God. We see this with Moses,Noah,Heck even jesus prayed once in a while. I don't know if he served but he was the example that the believer is supposed to follow.

As for your part about the Jelous God who lusts to be served this speaks for itself. "You shall have no other gods before me" is in the bible he goes on to say "For I am a jealous God"

Congrats Abra you were right. Nuff said.

Yep, I'm familiar with the mythology.

That's why I reject it.

I'm glad you at least know the "Mythology" Better you know what it is you are talking about rather than you not and you sound like a total idiot.

I'm glad you asked this, more often than not when I present this question this is the answer I'm given "how is it God's fault."

And I present you with a different perspective, how is it that you are able to let your God slide knowing that there are millions born into poverty? How do we have to account for every tragedy we have caused and yet God is able to slide by with not so much as a question to its choice or choices?

Whenever I'm asked how it is God's fault I'm left thinking how is it not God's fault, if there is indeed a God, how is it left off the hook for such tragic existences being played out in the world? This is the logic that to this day has kept me from believing wholeheartedly in a God, because in my mind it is a flawed logic to simply wash such a beings hand's of any responsibility. That's kind of like saying it is okay to kill as long as they were going to die anyway, well, at least then it isn't our fault, correct?

Well, most Christian proselytizers reject other spiritual philosophies and religions off-the-cuff without even having a clue what they are about.

I was raised into Christianity so I know the religion quite well. However, after expanding my knowledge of spirituality to include various philosophies throughout the world I've found that various forms of Eastern Mysticism make far more sense.

On a personal note I find Wicca to be quite attractive and romantic. Most people don't realize this, but Wicca doesn't define God, Wicca is merely a means of revering God, and it does so quite elegantly, IMHO.

What God could object to being praised so highly?

not quite, to kill is an OVERT ACTION, which is different than questioning Gods 'inaction'


if we started as one man and one woman, than we were given reign of the earth and WE are responsible for the different environments and situations which arose from that rule,,,,,God gave us the ability to use our own discretion and when OUR choices end badly(not just for us but for our environment and thus our decendants and children), I hardly see any reason to hold GOD responsible

we had just as much ability to make better choices which would lead to better environments,,,

And why would a God leave these decisions to us? A God that is not only almighty, but as far as I can tell near perfect. Why then would such perfection leave such blemishes as humanity to follow them? Honestly, the only way I can fathom a God truly existing is if it has absolutely no concern for humanity but moreso for other living beings such as animals or insects.

Humans by nature anymore are typically selfish and egotistical, war, business, you name it. We just want to get to the top and stay there until we are too old to stand at the top. I can't with any logic fathom a God or Gods wanting to preserve that, much less give it a shiny palace to stay in after it dies.

As have I and as do I. That in no way means our experiences are equal nor that yours is any kind of proof that the Creator you postulate isn't anything but indifferent to suffering of humans. Or, that in my case, said suffering WASN'T caused by something that was grossly _imperfect_.

Yours?

Oh, no doubt, someeone will say that this Creator had some kind of plan with a higher purpose for visiting these sort of ills. But then I have to ask, what loving parent would be such a sadist to inflict near-death upon their children on the 'theory' that it would make the strong and moral???





If that's true, why not just abort after the soul is created and let them avoid all this terrible experience and get whisked right into paradise without all the temptation and sin?




That sounds like non-life to me. It's all about the journey, not the destination and I'd prefer the Road Less Followed. I'd rather see humankind distill the grapes of its own future godhood than skin its knees in geneflection to the non-existent.


-Kerry O.

that is not the nature of every human, humans have choices and they live with the consequence of the choices they make, and often times so do those who love them


God takes a gamble on us and I am glad he feels we are worth it even if its sometimes hard for US to see it,,

This is what I'm trying to figure out, how, with the multitudes of perfect beings in the insect, animal, and plant kingdom...can you say that God feels we are worth it? What makes anyone think that God is waiting for humans and not some other living being?

See the selfish nature of humanity? We are already under the frame of mind that God is waiting for us and not something else, no offense intended of course...but it does prove my point a little.

It depends on what god you are thinking of. After all Zeus was once believed to be a “real” god with “real” power. Folks, just like the ones on this page, once defended him in no uncertain terms. Today no one believes that Zeus is a god, let alone real. There is no word to describe a non belief in Zeus, yet we all know he doesn’t exist. No one needs to declare themselves as a Zeus atheist; just thru reason we all know there is no Zeus.

The only way we can know if the Christian god is real is for him to reveal himself; and not in some “I read it in the bible” way; but, in a real undeniable way. If the Christian god exists then he needs to violate the laws of physics; he needs to do it today, not in an “it happened 2000 years ago” way, but today. Make the sun not shine for a day (not with clouds but in a real undeniably measureable way), bring angles to earth for us all to see, raise the undeniably dead. Anything other than I read it in the bible. Something that is completely and undeniably seen and measured would prove it to me. The Creationist believe the earth is young and the Grand Canyon was formed by god, then this god should close the Grand Canyon immediately if not sooner. Just make it completely go away; that would be undeniable and you would have a believer in me. Please just try to answer this without quoting the bible.

I cant speak for others here, I can say God thinks Im worth it because I am here and he has given me the resources to go back home with him,,,this belief has nothing to do with whether insects and animals go back with God as there is nowhere in my faith that insects or animals are given equal spiritual standing or responsibility as human

Well actually, through reason, we should all know that the biblical god can't be true either. The main reason that people gave up on Zeus is because that particular legend had Zeus living on Mt. Olympus and everyone is satisfied that with today's technologies we have been able to show that no gods live on that mountain.

The defenders of the biblical god claim that since that god is said to exist in some spiritual heaven it's impossible to disprove his existence. But that's not really true at all.

The fact is that his existence can be disproved simply via that contradictions that exist in the fables that describe what he is supposed to be like.

To begin with, the entire biblical fable holds mankind's fall from grace responsible for bringing pain, suffering, disease, etc., into the world. In the the fable even has mankind's fall from grace responsible for god making thorns grow on plants, etc.

Well, we now know that thorny plants, disease, death, and all manner of imperfections existed long before mankind appeared on the planet. So based on reason it is simply unreasonable to continue to believe in a religious fable that holds mankind responsible for bringing these things into the world.

The biblical story of God has already been disproved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Moreover, you the inconsistencies of the fables themselves. The fables claim that this God is unchanging and is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. Well, at one point he deals with the sins of mankind by drowning out all the sinners. Then at another point he supposedly has a major change of heart and sends his son to die to pay for the sins of man. That's a blatant contradiction to what the God was supposed to be like in the first place (i,e, unchanging in his character) A God who changes his mind is an untrustworthy God, you never know what he might change into next.

So the bible fails even with respect to its own claims, thus it can be dismissed on grounds of reason just on that point alone.

There is no good reason to believe it.

Moreover, there are other scenarios that can explain it away that have no problems of reason associated with them at all.

For example. All we need to do is recognize that the Old Testament (or Torah) was nothing more than a Zeus-like myth. Then looking at the New Testament it's easy to see that those rumors could have easy been started based on that old mythology, along with some guy who taught that "He and the Father are One"

Well, teaching that we and the father are one is pantheism. And that was a popular philosophy at the time in the form of Mahayana Buddhism. Most everything that Jesus taught makes perfect sense in terms of Mahayana Buddhism, save for some of the claims that he supposed claimed to have been sent by God specifically, but again, those are most likely hearsay rumors rather than something that he actually taught or claimed personally. Or maybe he did claim those things. He could have been a kook for all we know. After all, once he's recognized to be just another mortal human then anything goes.

In any case, that explanation of the fables has no problems associated with it. It's perfectly reasonable. Yet to believe that Jesus was the son of the God of the Old Testament is totally unreasonble, Jesus clearly didn't even agree with the moral values that had been taught by the God of the Old Testament, how could he possible have been the son of that God?

The only reason that so many people love Jesus is because they actually dislike the God of the Old Testament and Jesus did a great job of renouncing all the nasty stuff associated with that God.

It's truly ironic, because if you take Jesus out of the picture and just go with the Old Testament, you basically end up with Islam which most Christians totally loath. The old testament god has people killing heathens and sinners with no mercy. As well as condoning revenge as in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Jesus renounced all of that and taught people to turn the other cheek. He wasn't even close to teaching the same things that the previous god commanded people to do. How could he have been speaking for the same God? Clearly he wasn't. He had to have been a mortal man who was trying to teach something better.

So when it all comes down to the wire, the biblical fables should indeed be recognized to be just as mythical as the fables of Zeus, they have absolutely no more merit at all. None. The biblical fables are every bit as unreasonable as the fables of Zeus.

Just because the god supposedly lives in an untouchable spiritual realm doesn't change the fact that we can see that the fables are grossly inconsistent and unreasonable anyway. They are inconsistent with both; what we know of the real world, as well as with their very own premises of what their god must be like.

There's no more reason to believe in these fables than to believe in Zeus. They're just as silly.

Well ok Let open our minds just a bit and look at this from another perspective shall we?

Think back to the story of Noah and his ark of animals. It says that God saw mans evil ways and was sorry that he had created man. Were not going to talk about noah because that isnt part of the point I'm attempting to make here.
OK so God says "I'm sorry I made people" What does he do? He kills them all.

Lets look at sodom and gomorah he dint like them either and he killed them all.

The point? If God don't like ya he kills ya. Me and you are still here! He must have some reason for keeping humans alive!

Another thing, God does not love humans for what they do,or think. He loves humans for what they are. That is what makes the love unconditional!

When you go to the pet store and pick out a dog why do you choose the dog? Because you like dogs! Why not the rat or the cat or the frog? Because you like dogs. The dogs love is also unconditional it loves you because you are the leader of the pack.

Same way with God, he loves us because he likes people! Just like people like dogs.

Also on another point I read earlier. If God did not want man to have free will, don't you think he would have simply built robots? or unthinking people? After all why give humans a brain and the free will to use it! Because that's what he wanted. That's why we have the freedom to do what we want. There's even freedom to NOT beileve there is a God at all! amazing how that works out.

He must have liked the dinosaurs a lot, he kept them around for 165 million years.

We haven't even been around for 1 million years yet. In fact, we've got a very long way to go to even get to that age. Of course, I suppose that could depend on how far back the primate line you want to actually call "human".

The earth has not been around for 65 million years! It's been around for maybe 6000

Besides that this isn't a evolution based thread!
I was attempting to answer a question. If you want to debate evolution your posting to wrong guy. I have'nt done enough research to know enough about evolution

Where do you get that idea?

And what are we supposed to do with all these dinosaur bones? Hide them?

Sorry, being well educated in the sciences I wasn't aware that people were still 'debating' these things.

There's no debate within the scientific community. I think the only people who are still holding out hope that science is wrong are the religious zealots who realize that if they accept the facts of life they'll have to abandon the stance that their ancient Zeus-like mythology can't possibly be true anymore than Greek Mythology was.

Reject scientific knowledge! Save a mythology!

I get it.

Good point of view, but you're not taking it entirely into concept. We have free will, as in we can do anything we wish when we want it and how we want it. If God didn't "allow" people to be born in places with disease and or poverty that would mean he would have taken someone's free will away.

And God allows these things such as poverty, disease, ect to happen because you know that saying "you don't know what you got till it's gone"? Goes along with say like spoiled rich kids. They don't know what it feels to not have, to come across hard times in life, ect. So how are they to appreciate what they do have if they never had it? We appreciate the things we do have and praise God for we know how it felt to not have such a life.

Another example. Say someone had all the jewellery and gold they could ever need. They wore gold bracelets, gold necklaces, gold rings, ect on a daily basis. Compared to someone that saved up for years upon years to get one specific gold necklace they have always wanted. So they worked hard all those years and sacrificed things to achieve this. Would that person not appreciate that necklace more then the other person appreciated all the jewellery they had? Sure they would, because they would know how it felt not to have and would know how hard they had to work to achieve this.

And no it's not all about treasures, gold, silver, ect. But it was the easiest way to explain what I was meaning.