Religion?

Maybe he uses people to intervene?

Quote:

war and genocide are as natural to humans as building a dam is to a beaver. God is blatantly aware of this, and I imagine was when he had planet earth on the drawing board.

Don't make the mistake of believing that an infinite all knowing being operates on a human system of morality. Why should he?

In which case, what the frag is the point of praying to him for miraculous intervention? What's the point of even attempting to institute a system of human morality, when all "god" had in mind for us is a mirror image of his dog-eat-dog universe? Aren't we blaspheming by not murdering each other, as he obviously intended?

Red Brigade wrote:

Why would he not interfere once in a while with all his powers to help some suffering people?

Well from a christian perspective, he did. AKA the new testament.

proletarian wrote:

Maybe he uses people to intervene?

This. In a sense.

Order227 wrote:

In which case, what the frag is the point of praying to him for miraculous intervention? What's the point of even attempting to institute a system of human morality, when all "god" had in mind for us is a mirror image of his dog-eat-dog universe? Aren't we blaspheming by not murdering each other, as he obviously intended?

^Falsely presupposes that humans are designed solely to murder each other.

I award you zero points.

proletarian wrote:

Maybe he uses people to intervene?

Why would he use people if he's all powerful? Even if he uses people it takes way to long.

The victory of the Red Army was a miracle. DUH.

Quote:

In which case, what the frag is the point of praying to him for miraculous intervention?

God doesn't help you because you pray. You pray because God helps you. Mostly we pray to Jesus or the Saints anyway.

Quote:

What's the point of even attempting to institute a system of human morality, when all "god" had in mind for us is a mirror image of his dog-eat-dog universe? Aren't we blaspheming by not murdering each other, as he obviously intended?

Nah, the only blasphemy that is taking place here is coming from you. I seriously don't even get how you could reach the conclusion that God wants the Earth to be the way it is. Ever heard of human freedom?

Jingle_Bombs wrote:

Falsely presupposes that humans are designed solely to murder each other.

You said that war and genocide is natural to humans as building damns is to beavers. Doesn't that mean that humans are designed to kill each other?

Red Brigade wrote:

You said that war and genocide is natural to humans as building damns is to beavers. Doesn't that mean that humans are designed to kill each other?

Note the word "solely", then read it again. You can't blaspheme by not murdering people, because that too is you as a human working as designed, along with everything else you do. You don't get broken human beings.

Quote:

You don't get broken human beings.

Eh, shouldn't you believe in the Fall of humanity as a protestant, along with original/ancestral sin etc.?

lol, God certainly does not "use" people, and if you're expecting the apocalypse, well that just seems dumb. How can you be a historical materialist if you believe god intervenes in any way whatsoever?

Red Brigade wrote:

Why would he use people if he's all powerful? Even if he uses people it takes way to long.

Time is not linear to God. Patience is probably the Abrahamic God's best virtue. He uses people because if God just came in and shot lightning all over the place to make things happen, we wouldn't have choice, and God loves us enough to give us a choice.

Rob-O wrote:

lol, God certainly does not "use" people,

Just because you say so?

Quote:

and if you're expecting the apocalypse, well that just seems dumb

I'm not,. Even my bible professors admit that mark 13 and revelation were just books written to appease a Jewish culture in the First century.

Quote:

How can you be a historical materialist if you believe god intervenes in any way whatsoever?

. The same reason that you can be a biologist and believe in the intervention of God. Science is an explanation of phenomena, not a means to disprove the existence of God. God uses science to explain phenomena. Clockmaker theory bro.

Quote:

Just because you say so?

What? There is no mechanism in the universe that would allow him to do so. The evidence of him doing so is based on a book that kinda has ulterior motives for making you believe that he has.

Quote:

I'm not,. Even my bible professors admit that mark 13 and revelation were just books written to appease a Jewish culture in the First century.

You can't simply reject a part of the New Testament if it does not please you.

Quote:

The same reason that you can be a biologist and believe in the intervention of God. Science is an explanation of phenomena, not a means to disprove the existence of God. God uses science to explain phenomena. Clockmaker theory bro.

No, this is different. Marx was specifically concerned with removing the idea that one can see God in the way that history has progressed. All things can be explained and flow from one another. If God is intervening to change the course of human history, then how can you use the past to predict the future? God could just decide to intervene, and then you're SoL.

Rob-O wrote:

What? There is no mechanism in the universe that would allow him to do so. The evidence of him doing so is based on a book that kinda has ulterior motives for making you believe that he has.

Is is a stupid argument. If God was intervening, there could be obvious reasons that you wouldn't notice, Him being all sovereign and infinite and stuff.

Rob-O wrote:

You can't simply reject a part of the New Testament if it does not please you.

Sure I can. There is plenty of shit that can be interpreted in the bible. Just because Paul made up some story about the end of times doesn't mean he got it right. Maybe it's metaphorical, maybe it's bullshit. It's my faith, not yours. I can interpret my faith however I want

Quote:

No, this is different. Marx was specifically concerned with removing the idea that one can see God in the way that history has progressed. All things can be explained and flow from one another. If God is intervening to change the course of human history, then how can you use the past to predict the future? God could just decide to intervene, and then you're SoL.

Did you read my post? God is more than capable of using science to exert his influence on the world.
He is God, He doesn't have difficulty doing much of anything.

You can't argue about faith through logic. If God made it possible to argue His existence through logic, everybody would believe in Him. This is why these threads are always a bad idea.

Quote:

He is God, He doesn't have difficulty doing much of anything.

This a thousand times over. "There is no mechanism that would allow Him to do so", oh yeah right, MAKES PERFECT SENSE. Not.

Quote:

You can't simply reject a part of the New Testament if it does not please you.

lecturing other people about their faith is virtually always a terrible idea.

Quote:

Is is a stupid argument. If God was intervening, there could be obvious reasons that you wouldn't notice, Him being all sovereign and infinite and stuff.

Why? Apparently he has exerted his influence before, many times. And for a very specific period of time as well, too. Apparently all so that we as humans can enjoy the universe, but to what end? Why would he wait 6 billion years in order to do so? Why would he have "designed" evolution in such a way that it led to many incarnations of "human-like" primates (read up on all the orders and suborders if you wish) who seem about as well-adapted for the world as humans and who only differ from humans in extremely minuscule ways? I'm not asking to what end, I'm just wondering about the logistics of it. Doesn't seem all that likely that he would create the universe and only care about it for what amounts to like 5 thousand years or so.

Quote:

Sure I can. There is plenty of shit that can be interpreted in the bible. Just because Paul made up some story about the end of times doesn't mean he got it right. Maybe it's metaphorical, maybe it's bullshit. It's my faith, not yours. I can interpret my faith however I want

Then you're not a Christian. You're just another dude who picks and chooses from a book because he like some things, and not others, and ignores the fact that not picking and choosing from the book you worship is a central part of the faith.

Then again, that's your prerogative. To me it's just some book that other humans wrote, and it makes perfect sense that you would disregard the word of other humans you disagree with. However, if you at all believe that the bible was divinely inspired, then where does that leave you?

I guess what I'm saying is that it's a logical choice, for sure, but not a Christian one, and certainly not one based on faith. Faith is the opposite of logic, the belief in a position absent of the evidence that would be required to reasonable believe it.

Quote:

Did you read my post? God is more than capable of using science to exert his influence on the world.
He is God, He doesn't have difficulty doing much of anything.

If you're just saying that God created the rules of the universe, then that doesn't sound like intervention to me. But even that, that doesn't make sense. The rules of the universe are determined by logical properties that matter and energy would hold based on their composition. The universe is the way that it is completely by chance. The universe ACTS the way it is because that's the only way that it can act. Things have properties, and these properties determine how they act. That's why the Abrahamic God doesn't make sense. The world is as it is because it is what it is, without needing something to give it rules to go by. Maybe something was necessary in order to create it. Doesn't matter to me. But humans certainly came about not against all odds at all. Life itself did not seem to arise against all odds. You should watch the Cosmos episode on evolution, it's pretty interesting and he talks about life on other planets and how the probability is probably high that it exists. And if it does exist, and exists in intelligent form, does that mean that God did not create the universe for humans? Or are those just a symptom of the properties of the universe?

Quote:

You can't argue about faith through logic. If God made it possible to argue His existence through logic, everybody would believe in Him. This is why these threads are always a bad idea.

Sure you can. Christians just don't like it because their faith is predicated on an absence of logic, in fact the very point of faith to begin with. But still, that doesn't seem to be preventing you from arguing about it.

Quote:

lecturing other people about their faith is virtually always a terrible idea.

And going against the word of God is a terrible idea too, right?

Quote:

This a thousand times over. "There is no mechanism that would allow Him to do so", oh yeah right, MAKES PERFECT SENSE. Not.

My point is that everything that happens in the universe is directly affected by another thing and so on and so forth. Cause and effect does not happen in the world, it's really more just a series of things that are predicated on one another and that happen in a certain way because another thing happened in a certain way. Scientific equations, things that help you predict what will happen when you do a certain thing, are based not on the idea that one thing causes another, but that all things are in relation to each other. To that end, there is no way for God to really insert himself into things. Which is good, because it means we can't blame him for random catastrophe. But that also means we can't attribute him to random goodness.

Also, the 90's called. They want their immature sarcasm back.

Proletarian wrote:

Patience is probably the Abrahamic God's best virtue

Patience can't be the best virtue when a genocide is happening and innocent people are being slaughtered.

Mabool wrote:

Eh, shouldn't you believe in the Fall of humanity as a protestant, along with original/ancestral sin etc.?

I'm pretty non-denominational when it comes to christianity. The last time I went to church was over a decade ago, and I don't even know what the Fall of humanity is.

I have a bible, I read it maybe once a week, and I draw my own conclusions. That's how it rolls.

There has been no fall of humanity, unless it can one day be proven that we've devolved from the apes. Otherwise, we're the pinnacle of life on Earth (so far).

Order227 wrote:

Otherwise, we're the pinnacle of life on Earth (that we know of).

Fixed.

Kinda looks like Kraken.

No one can define anyone's faith. But everyone presumes to, for their own purposes. That's why organized religion has proven to be such a bloody affair.