MediumTex wrote:
Mountaineer wrote:
I really am saddened when I read some of these posts as to what you are bringing upon yourself - I truly hope many of you will repent and go to where God has promised to be. Maybe your ears will be opened; I hope so.
But your sadness presupposes that you are right in your beliefs, which may or may not be true. That's the question we are trying to work through here.
If it's true to you, but it's not true to me, then that just means there is a question regarding what is true, it doesn't mean that I am necessarily wrong and you are necessarily right.
I WOULD SAY TRUTH IS TRUTH REGARDLESS OF WHO BELIEVES WHAT. IN OTHER WORDS, I THINK THERE IS SUCH A THING AS ABSOLUTE TRUTH.
One method of testing a belief system is to take its dogma and see how well it works in extreme cases. If it doesn't work in extreme cases, then that means it doesn't work. If we are saying that we think any voice in our heads that says to kill a baby is wrong, then that opens the door to a discussion about whether it was wrong back in the Old Testament as well, and whether God killing babies himself might have been wrong, or perhaps evidence of a sadistic disposition.
If God is, as I suggested might be the case based on his recorded actions, actually a very sadistic being and we are all sort of like ants under his magnifying glass, why would it upset God for me to point this out? If someone argues that he is not sadistic in nature, even though he seems to have done some pretty sadistic things (he killed every person on earth except that old drunk pervert Noah and his family), I would say that actions speak louder than words.
If you are telling me that I ought to be careful about doing things like suggesting that God might be a sadistic being, why should I be careful? Should I be careful because I don't want God to send a lightning bolt through my head or curse my family or kill someone I love? If I truly should be worried about those things, doesn't that tend to support the idea that maybe God is pretty sadistic? Who kills a person's baby because he didn't like something that was said about him?
What is the best argument for God NOT being a sadistic being?
BECAUSE HE SAYS SO AND DOES NOT LIE.
The fact that he made us and says he loves us doesn't tell us that much--the same thing is true of many abusive parents, and many men who murder their wives and girlfriends say they did it out of love. I want to know how genocide, baby killing, rape, executing homosexuals, and sentencing people who don't hear the message to eternal suffering in a pit of fire can be characterized as anything but sadistic? If you say that it is an unpleasant, but necessary, means to an end, isn't that something that Hitler might have said? In fact, isn't what Hitler did to the Jews sort of a microcosm of what God has been doing to the Jews for 2,000 years, except when Hitler killed them their suffering ended, but what God has in store for Jews who don't recognize Jesus as the Messiah (which is pretty much all of them) is suffering that will NEVER end. In 100 million years, those Jews will still be in Hell burning, wishing their souls could die, but knowing it will never end...they will just suffer...forever. That is sadistic.
The good news is that I am only making these arguments to help loosen up our thinking about the nature of God based upon what the Bible tells us, and personally I am inclined to completely ignore the Old Testament God as a grumpy figment of the imagination of a primitive people who lived hard lives, and I think that the New Testament God can easily be interpreted in a slightly different way that does away with Hell as a literal place of eternal suffering.
THE FIRST TESTAMENT IS MAINLY A STORY OF HOW PERVERTED AND ASTRAY MANKIND GOES WHEN THEY ABANDON GOD. THE BIG GOING DOWN THE TOILET BOWL.
What if Jesus's primary insight was that the Kingdom of God was inside of us? We look to the clouds and the temples and the church leaders to tell us where God is, but what if he was inside each of us all along? What would that mean? It would mean that Heaven and Hell are places inside of us as well. Heaven is where our spirit goes when we have understanding and enlightenment, and Hell is where our spirit goes when we commit evil acts based upon our own understanding of what evil is. The two places represent the pinnacle of internal suffering and the pinnacle of internal happiness.
Evidence from the Old Testament supports my position. In the Old Testament God was concerned with how his children lived in this life. There was no afterlife. It all happened here in this realm during the period a person was alive. That's where existence is, which means that's where everything associated with existence must also be.
Does that mean it's okay to do whatever you want? Of course not. If I know that I will live in my own personal Hell for the rest of my life because of something I did, I will have one more good reason NOT to do it.
There was a high profile pastor from Oklahoma a few years back who started preaching basically that God's promises were not in the grave, but rather in this life and in each moment. He was, of course, immediately thrown out of his church, but I applauded his courage to speak his heart.
When I read the words of Jesus, I don't read the words of a sadistic immortal being who turned himself into a hippy country preacher so that the people he created could kill him for telling them to be better people; rather, when I read the words of Jesus, I read the words of a Jew who saw the flaws in Judaism and assumed that the Messiah would be the one who fixed those flaws, the one who was able to speak the truth about the way humans can truly commune with the divinity that is in each of us without first running it through the smudged and distorted lens of institutional religion. It was a revolutionary message, and those messages are usually the kind that get the messenger killed, and that's how it went with Jesus.
To me, though, to say that Jesus is the same entity as the guy in the Old Testament who favored killing the relatives of those he was unhappy with is too much for me to swallow. I have too much respect for the Jesus I read about in the New Testament to associate him that closely with the cruel and sadistic being in the Old Testament that, on balance, seems to have delivered more misery to humanity than joy.
ONCE AGAIN, HUMANITY DOES IT TO ITSELF - NOT THE WAY GOD DESIRES IT TO BE. THEY SCREWED THEMSELVES VIA MAKING THEMSELVES GOD (I.E. TRUSTING IN THEMSELVES OVER GOD). PRETTY MUCH LIKE TODAY.
Sorry if any of that steps on any toes.
CERTAINLY DOES NOT STEP ON MINE.
Learn all the fallacies of argumentation and master them! 
