Bad Attitude

If this is the best god can do, I'm not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. In any well-managed universe, this guy would have been out on his all-powerful rear end a long time ago. George Carlin

Originally posted by 667joe
If this is the best god can do, I'm not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. In any well-managed universe, this guy would have been out on his all-powerful rear end a long time ago. George Carlin

except the universe is not a well managed company, god doesn't answer to nobody so nobody can fire him, and there is always the "can be a lot worse" view.

how would you like random gamma bursts on the surface of the earth? shouldn't you thank god there aren't any of those instead of complaining there aren't chocolate rivers flowing everywhere?

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
except the universe is not a well managed company, god doesn't answer to nobody so nobody can fire him, and there is always the "can be a lot worse" view.

how would you like random gamma bursts on the surface of the earth? shouldn't you thank god there aren't any of those instead of complaining there aren't chocolate rivers flowing everywhere?

So, if you were god you would allow all the suffering. Not very nice of god if that is the case.

Originally posted by 667joe
If this is the best god can do, I'm not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. In any well-managed universe, this guy would have been out on his all-powerful rear end a long time ago. George Carlin

Though Christ controls history, by reason of His permissive will (with respect to the angelic creation during this rebuttal

phase of the appeal trial), these brief parenthetical dispensations of human history are played out in the devil's world.

Originally posted by 667joe
So, if you were god you would allow all the suffering. Not very nice of god if that is the case.

Lion's share of human suffering and misery (individually and collectively) since Adam and Eve has been and still is self

induced. Nobody plays games with God or messes with His Divine Integrity. Your vision of god, joe, is much too small.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Lion's share of human suffering and misery (individually and collectively) since Adam and Eve has been and still is self

induced. Nobody plays games with God or messes with His Divine Integrity. Your vision of god, joe, is much too small.

Face it. Believers all say god is perfect but the world he created is not perfect. God invented tooth decay, the ebola virus, small pox, prostate problems, etc. If there is a god, George Carlin is correct........ god badly messed up. For me, the more rational answer is that there is no god.

Seems more like the work of a committee of poorly-paid administrators than a perfect superbeing to me. Toothache for goodness sake! Monkeys have decent teeth, pigs have decent teeth, porcupines have decent teeth. Sharks get frickin' excellent teeth, and we get these pathetic little rot-garden pegs. Very good evolutionary reasons for them... don't seem likely from a design point of view though.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Lion's share of human suffering and misery (individually and collectively) since Adam and Eve has been and still is self

induced. Nobody plays games with God or messes with His Divine Integrity. Your vision of god, joe, is much too small.

Now there is a very bizarre yet often stated belief. If I was a Jew in Auschwitz, a Kulak in Stalin's Russia, a Chinese peasant in the path of Japanese aggression, a Chinese teacher in the path of Mao's Cultural Revolution, a Cambodian confronted by the Khmer Rouge killing machine, an American Indian in the path of the white American guns or receiving their chicken pox infested blankets, a black slave on an Atlantic slaving ship, an old woman burning as a witch, or a Black person in the Southern States lynched by white supremacists, or even an Irish monk in the path of a Viking raid...

All these I would concede that the fault lay with the behaviour of humans and not with any God or gods. But to describe that and more suffering as self induced displays a level of casuistry that is breathtaking.

The suffering you mention was certainly not self induced, but further, an omnipotent god was cruel not to have prevented it. Again, the simpler solution is that there is no god.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
except the universe is not a well managed company, god doesn't answer to nobody so nobody can fire him, and there is always the "can be a lot worse" view.

how would you like random gamma bursts on the surface of the earth? shouldn't you thank god there aren't any of those instead of complaining there aren't chocolate rivers flowing everywhere?

One can always take some scenario and contrive some way to make it worse. That such hasn't materialised is no basis for asserting the existence of a god (or thanking such an entity).

Yes random gamma bursts would be rubbish...so is cancer.

On the otherhand, the notion of a 'perfect' god (and even if you don't champion such a thing, some of your colleagues here do), is at odds with a universe that can be in some way improved.

Originally posted by finnegan
Now there is a very bizarre yet often stated belief. If I was a Jew in Auschwitz, a Kulak in Stalin's Russia, a Chinese peasant in the path of Japanese aggression, a Chinese teacher in the path of Mao's Cultural Revolution, a Cambodian confronted by the Khmer Rouge killing machine, an American Indian in the path of the white American guns or receiving their ...[text shortened]... be that and more suffering as self induced displays a level of casuistry that is breathtaking.

While your list is presumably representative and not meant to be taken as exhaustive, let's nonetheless use them as samples of faulty analysis, beginning with the Jew in Auschwitz (it is presumed that the reader understands Auschwitz as simply one of many arenas in which Jews were slaughtered for being Jewish).

What led to the Final Solution, if not a submission to the progressive encroachments on freedom exhibited by German citizens, Jew and Gentile alike? In piecemeal fashion, they incrementally inched the blade closer to their own heart--- all of them, Jew and Gentile alike. While it was the Jew in the furnace (certainly not alone; as many Christians--- along with other undesirable--- who perished beside them) physically, what was left of the people who pushed the buttons, or turned the blind eye? This isn't something one simply gets over.

Self-induced? Absolutely.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
While your list is presumably representative and not meant to be taken as exhaustive, let's nonetheless use them as samples of faulty analysis, beginning with the Jew in Auschwitz (it is presumed that the reader understands Auschwitz as simply one of many arenas in which Jews were slaughtered for being Jewish).

What led to the Final Solution, if not a s ...[text shortened]... urned the blind eye? This isn't something one simply gets over.

Self-induced? Absolutely.

I'm struggling to interpret your reasoning here, but it seems to be to the effect that collective groups of people are responsible for a situation in which many other, perfectly innocent and arguably including many very very good people and certainly including many pious people were cruelly butchered. This kind of collective guilt certainly features in the bible many times. Somehow you are letting your IDEAS reduce actual people - individual human beings - to mere cogs in a machine. In that way, your religious thinking is as blind to human reality as that of Stalin or Mao. Ideas are more important to you and have more weight than actuality.

You cannot make (yes, for example) Anne Frank personally liable for the sins of her ancestors, or those of the Germans. She did not self-induce her disgraceful fate. Anne Frank did not personally submit to progressive encroachments on anything that might conceivably merit her fate.

Originally posted by 667joe
So, if you were god you would allow all the suffering. Not very nice of god if that is the case.

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So, if you were god you would allow all the suffering. Not very nice of god if that is the case.
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Take your own life joe for an example.

Now, you no doubt have had a lot of unpleasant suffering, right? I mean this God has allowed you much suffering over the years. Right ??

At the same time, hasn't God also allowed you many days of happiness too ?

I mean with all those days of suffering that the "mean" God let you pass through, didn't God also give you many days in which, ie.

You were happy with your hobbies,
Reasonably well fed,
Reasonably well sheltered and clothed,
Reasonably well loved by friends,
Reasonably free to choose a course of action on your own.

Didn't God also allow you some days of contentment, enjoyment of various things, friendships, love, opportunity?

I mean did you ever stop at the end of 365 days and just pray " God, in spite of the sufferings here and there I had, I would just like to remember that in this last year, I did also have a number of happy and peaceful days. Thankyou."

Did you ever look at someone else and say "At least God, I want to thank you that I was spared THAT particular situation."

I mean have you seen someone with cancer, a brain tumor, cripple, mentally ill, maimed, died at a young age, hospitalized, or something else. Did you ever stop and thank God that at LEAST you were spared some other unfortune ? Could thinks be worse for you in any way ?

Instead of seeing the misfortune of others and jeering that God is terrible and mean to them, you could say "Well, God I at least thank you that I do not have THAT particular situation."

Did you ever try to count the number of things you could be thankful to God for? Sure, you have had some suffering in life. So have I. So has everybody. But along with this didn't we have some things we also could be thankful to God for?

Tell us joe. Is your position that there is absolutely NOTHING in all your years for which you could conceivably be thankful to God for?

Originally posted by finnegan
an American Indian...receiving their chicken pox infested blankets

Just for the record - those were British, not British-Americans giving out those blankets.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Just for the record - those were British, not British-Americans giving out those blankets.

Maybe so, but they were the ancestors of modern Americans, not modern Brits. 😛