Occasionally a theist makes an argument so amusingly stupid that it would be a shame not to share it with a larger audience. This is one of those occasions.
On another thread, we’ve been discussing the unloving way in which God — supposing that he exists at all — is treating the victims of Hurricane Harvey (and the soon-to-be victims of Hurricane Irma, unfortunately). In the course of that discussion, fifthmonarchyman — a Christian — made the following, er, memorable argument:
I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
– Isaiah 45:7
keiths:
Yes, and creating disaster for his children is exactly what every loving father sets out to do. Right, Mung?
Nothing says “I love you” like drowning someone or wiping out their possessions.
At that point fifthmonarchyman got the bright idea that he could defend God by arguing that God is not our father. He wrote:
quote:
the Originator of the heavens and the earth! How could it be that He should have a child without there ever having been a mate for Him – since it is He who has created everything, and He alone knows everything? – Sura 6:101
and
and say: “All praise is due to God, who begets no offspring, and has no partner in His dominion, and has no weakness, and therefore no need of any aid” -and [thus] extol His limitless greatness. – Sura 17:111
end quote:
That’s right, folks. Fifthmonarchyman quoted the Quran to argue against the idea that God is our father — forgetting that the latter idea comes straight from Jesus. What are the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer? Our Father.
Seeing fifth — a Christian — use the Quran to argue (unwittingly) against Jesus is one of the stupidest moves I’ve seen in a long while. I therefore renominate fifth for the title of World’s Worst Apologist.
After posting his comment, fifth belatedly realized that he had just thrown Jesus under the bus. He tried to undo the damage:
Get it keiths ?
A loving father is not the default understanding of God. Not by a long shot.
To know him as Father you need to have met his Son. Once you have met his Son you are simply not dissuaded when bad things happen.
peace
It’s a bit too late to backpedal, fifth.
This is a good time to quote Augustine again, on the topic of Christians who make fools of themselves:
…we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
The inanity goes even deeper. I’ll elaborate in the comments.
Just because God has certain abilities, it doesn’t mean He has to use them all the time…
Same applies to evolutionists. They say evolution is a fact and anyone who questions this fact is omni-ignorant…
Yet, evolutionist claim they have the ability to falsify evolution and but so far they have been omni-impotent…
Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
LoL. Omni-ignorance. I love it.
omni-absent, omni-selfish, omni-ignorant. The omni-not-god.
I’d be angry at God too if I was omni-impotent.
My favorite is omni-evolutionary-miraclevolution that can do it all even if its faithful are omni-clueless as to how or what omni-mechanisms done it…
lol good night!
Let the boys take over and enjoy some groping…
Mung,
If?
That explains your new avatar.
Jesus loves keiths too.
And when we sin we rebel against God,perhaps?
God’s doesn’t love goats? Baby goats are adorable and tasty.
So God only loves the sinners He know will not always remain a sinners.
Maybe the parable should be the shepherd only looks for the lost sheep he knows will be found ,the rest he doesn’t look for.
If God is withholding his love from some who he knows will not repent, the judgement has already been made. Before He even creates them
You never can be sure
Mung:
newton:
fifth definitely doesn’t think so:
Can’t you just feel the love?
It’s positively infinite!
temporal distinctions don’t make a lot of sense when speaking of an atemporal God
Well for one thing there are different sorts of love.
I love my wife and I love pizza
I don’t love my wife in exactly the same way I love pizza.
For another thing If God had loved the reprobate in exactly the same way he loved the Church he would be an eternally frustrated demigod who desperately wanted something that he is forever unable to have.
If a Shepard is truly omnipotent and he looks for something he finds it
peace
Atheist logic- God does not love me unconditionally when I mock him and deny he exists and bully and berate his beloved therefore he doesn’t exist.
peace
If a loving God actually existed, He would strike me down where I stand!
fifth:
And as we all know, the only people dying, suffering, or losing their homes in the hurricane are the atheists.
Everyone else is doing just fine. God is showering his unconditional love on them, after all.
1) We have already established that Christians don’t think sufferings in this life compare to the good things we have in store for us, but instead believe our sufferings are “birth pangs” necessary to get us from here to there
2) You really did not pay a lot of attention in Sunday school did you
quote:
as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
end quote:
Romans 3:10-13
peace
He probably sang “Jesus loves the little children” and accused Jesus of being a racist.
fifth:
And we have established that loving people don’t set out to drown the people they love or destroy their homes and possessions — even if they think those people will go on to have eternal life in heaven. They don’t want to destroy those people. Why? It’s obvious. They love those people. Destruction is something that people visit on those they hate, not on those they love.
Yet God is busy right now inflicting horrible suffering on people in the Caribbean and in Florida. Including believing Christians. You claim that believing Christians are his sheep, who are precious to him. Why is he tormenting them, then? It makes no sense for a loving God to do that. You know that it makes no sense. Yet you go on believing in a loving God. Why? Pure emotion.
The evidence is telling you something you don’t want to hear, so you get angry and say “Fuck the evidence, and fuck the truth. I don’t want the truth, I want Jesus.”
Go ahead and throw your temper tantrum, but when it’s over, ask yourself: Do I really want to be fighting the truth all the time? Am I really such a child that I can’t face reality without the crutch of Christianity? Especially when I can clearly see that Christianity is false?
God, if he exists at all, is clearly not the loving God you imagine him to be. He’s drowning people, destroying homes, ruining lives — including those of believing Christians. It couldn’t be more obvious: Christianity is false.
Time to put aside childish things, fifth. Let go of the security blanket and face the truth.
keiths:
vjtorley:
But again, don’t you see how ad hoc that is? You’re making two completely unwarranted assumptions, for no other reason than to rescue the notion of a loving God.
If you’re going to make completely unwarranted assumptions, you could just as easily make assumptions that indict God rather than acquitting him. But of course, you want to acquit him. You want to believe he is loving. You’re not seeking the truth, you’re seeking a loving Jesus, and you’ll fight the truth if necessary to hang on to him.
keiths:
vjtorley:
That seems a pretty unloving attitude for God to take. Why make love conditional on belief? Why not show love to everyone, forever, regardless of whether they believe in him? Don’t you agree that it would be the loving thing to do?
I don’t recall ever making that syllogism.
I just enjoy watching self-proclaimed Christians like yourself reveal themselves to be the basest of apologists for genocide, slavery and every other bronze-age cruelty while simultaneously defending the author of all this misery as ‘infinitely loving’.
Gently scratch Christianity and what you find is self-loathing and misanthropy masquerading as wisdom.
Just spotted this on one of the many Irma livestreams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTlMLxyQmfI
edit: the chap filming has just been telling his audience that hurricanes are caused by evil thoughts so I guess that’s his truck.
That what I am saying there is no final judgement ,they always have been judged. And from what I understand you are saying God treats us differently based on that judgement.
Yes that was my point to keiths earlier. But withholding divine love as I understood you saying is not any kind a love. Does God share His infinite love with the apostolate?
This makes no sense to me, God’s love is conditional on being loved back? You are making God’s ” emotional state ” dependent on His creation’s love? I have doubts that an immutable being outside time can logically could be so emotional as you think, it seems so temporal and changeable.
Then it seems God is not omnipotent when it comes to love.
The thing is Fifth your version of God seems similar to keiths, just you believe in Him and keiths doesn’t.
yes of course, It’s just that the apostate will never understand that he is loved.
quote;
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35)
end quote:
Yes they have always been judged by God (John 3:18) the finial judgment is really about making our true character known to everyone else those whose knowledge is limited .
No of course not.
I am describing what God’s love looks like to his enemies.
Those who know him better have an entirely different perspective.
My point is that his enemies have no excuse for saying he does not exist just because they don’t experience him as loving.
peace
Not at all.
I just think that the way to understand God’s love is to look at the Cross and not at the latest natural disaster.
Since folks like keiths refuse to accept the love given to us at the cross they will always have a warped impression of God’s compassion.
That is no excuse for not believing he exists
peace
It seems to me that your version of God is weak and impotent and subservient.
But I’d bet that both of us would have a better understanding of what each other believed if we were not limited to reading drive by comments on an obscure website that is supposed to be about discussing intelligent design instead of theology.
As it is many folks here are not even sure if you are a believer.
peace
Nope, he is omnipotent especially when it comes to love
quote:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Romans 8:29-31
end quote;
peace
https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2012/02/13/is-god-the-author-of-sin-jonathan-edwards-answer/
quote:
God may hate a thing as it is in itself, and considered simply as evil, and yet . . . it may be his will it should come to pass, considering all consequences. . . . God doesn’t will sin as sin or for the sake of anything evil; though it be his pleasure so to order things, that he permitting, sin will come to pass; for the sake of the great good that by his disposal shall be the consequence. His willing to order things so that evil should come to pass, for the sake of the contrary good, is no argument that he doesn’t hate evil, as evil: and if so, then it is no reason why he may not reasonably forbid evil as evil, and punish it as such.
end quote:
Johnathan Edwards
peace
I don’t take this position but some folks think God is showing his love to the reprobate forever when he refrains from annihilating them like they deserve and instead merely confines them to hell to minimize the harm they can inflict on others.
I’ll bet you would even characterize that act of compassion as unloving
peace
keiths wants God’s love to be unconditional. For some odd reason he thinks that you believe that God’s love is unconditional. Did you ever say that God’s love is unconditional?
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-gods-love-unconditional
Your response to the charge of atrocity apologia – is yet more atrocity apologia?
As I’ve argued many times previously the ‘greater good’ argument is garbage – a being who is allegedly omnipotent does not need to perform A in order to bring about B. That’s pretty much the sine qua non of omnipotence.
Your god allegedly created and sustains the entire Universe, and yet he cannot resolve the problem of the Amalekites without butchering children? Are we to believe an omnipotent god was unable to extricate the Jews from Egypt unless he first slaughtered the first born sons? No reasonable mind would believe such drivel.
But wait…..perhaps he can’t – then he fits no description of omnipotent worth entertaining.
Infinite love.
LOL,, are you serious???
By that logic if God was omnipotent surely he could make a square circle or create a rock so heavy even he could not lift it!!!!!!
Think man
A moments reflection should be sufficient for you to understand that Omnipotence doesn’t mean you can break the laws of logic or violate the principle of causality. .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox
quote:
For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent
end quote:
Augustine of Hippo
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume that you are merely suggesting that you think you are smarter than an omniscient being.
OK I’ll give you a chance to explain yourself oh great wise one.
How exactly would you go about duplicating the manifold effects of the passover while also eliminating the cause?
peace
Woodbine:
fifth,
Do you believe that God was unable to resolve the problem of the Amalekites without butchering them all, including the children?
Decent people think it’s monstrous to deliberately target children during war. Imagine the outcry if the US deliberately bombed the madrassas of the Taliban, for example.
Yet when God slaughters children, it’s fine, according to you. Is that God’s way of showing his “love” for them?
What makes you think all of them were butchered?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haman
peace
Mung, to fifth:
No, I don’t, doofus.
Look Mung, I know you’re feeling impotent and angry because you can’t defend your faith. It must really suck to be so helpless. But that’s no reason to lie about what your opponents say. Why add dishonesty to your impotence and anger?
Omni-Ignorance.
Atheist logic: God doesn’t exist because the bible that I think is fiction records a command that was never actually carried out that in my opinion is not decent.
LOL
peace
More Atheist logic. God does not exist because certain actions I don’t think he ever actually did would not be popular if they were carried out by Donald Trump
LOL
peace
I’ll need to get back to work soon. I trust you can keep up the education of the omni- ignorant in my absence. 😉
peace
Who is talking about logical contradictions? Not me.
We’re talking about the hopeless ‘greater good‘ arguments that Christians trot out in defence of your god.
Is re-situating the Jews without slaughtering Egyptian first born sons a logical contradiction?
Show your working.
Think man.
Are seriously trying to defend God’s genocidal edict because it was never fully carried out?
Hey guys….don’t be giving Hitler a hard time for ordering the Final Solution….I mean it’s not like he got them all!
Jesus fucking Christ.
Woodbine:
Amen. Fifth really is the World’s Worst Apologist.
Fifth,
Please, please give the URL of this thread to your pastor and fellow congregants. I want them to see that when you go to bat for Jesus, you strike out. Again and again.
quote:
“The destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany [is the goal]. … It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.” —
end quote:
“Air Marshal Arthur Harris, Commander in Chief, Bomber Commander, British Royal Air Force, October 25, 1943
and then there is this
from here
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-new-way-of-war-killing-the-kids
peace
quote:
Children have accounted for increasingly large chunks of those deaths. In 1995, UNICEF reported that roughly two million kids had been killed in wars over the previous decade—more children than soldiers. “Children are not just getting caught in the crossfire, they are also likely to be specific targets,” Graça Machel, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, declared in the first U.N. “Children in War” report, in 1996.
end quote:
fifth,
How does that contradict my statement?
Think, man.
And remember — send the URL to your pastor.
Think man.
If God does not exist how could he ever give a genocidal edict?
peace
Problem: Jews stuck in Egypt, Pharaoh won’t let them go.
Solution: Teleport Jews somewhere safe. Jews are sufficiently amazed, covenant with God. Pharaoh is sufficiently scared, gets on with his life.
How hard was that? For an omnipotent being who created the Universe it must rank pretty low on the effort scale.
But clearly I’m mistaken – so FMM, at what point did we need to start killing the children?
Ditto for the Amalekite “problem”. An omnipotent God could easily fix things without the need for warfare at all, much less the indiscriminate slaughter of children.
This is just a story made up by a bunch of superstitious people in order to justify a genocide.
Fifth is dumb enough to believe that God really commanded it.