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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Arx]

The point I'm making is specifically countering omnipotence though, not God as a whole. Omnipotence as a concept is meaningless because it can't exist.

...that's not an argument. And as I said, that's like saying differentiation is meaningless because the gradient of a graph at a point can't exist.

[Rolan7]

I actually hate the rock question, it's silly.  God could create the rock, then be unable to lift it.  He'd no longer omnipotent, but there's no contradiction.  Then maybe he could delete the rock and be omnipotent again.  It doesn't really matter...

[UXLZ]

It's silly because omnipotence is silly. It doesn't work, and I've yet to see anyone tell me how it actually could short of saying it just does.

More iron chariots.

You mentioned before that you doubted God's omniscience Arx, do you doubt His omnipotence too?

[Calidovi]

It's silly because omnipotence is silly. It doesn't work, and I've yet to see anyone tell me how it actually could short of saying it just does.

Not to be 2edgyFedoraMe about this, but isn't the basis of God "The Impossible"? Is there a reasonable conclusion of God created the universe, other than 'he just did'? How he formed life? You can tie scientific reasons into how God did what the Bible said he did, but then he's no longer God. He's just a manifestation of natural processes.

[UXLZ]

Think of it this way: There's no real reason why God couldn't have created the universe (assuming He exists, I mean, we aren't exactly sure from a purely atheist perspective either), however, there are many reasons why He couldn't be Omnipotent. Or Omniscient for that matter, or omnibenevolent, or immutable, or perfect, or... The list goes on for a bit wronger.

My personal... Belief, is that if the Christian God does indeed exist then He's 'simply' just a very-powerful-being, on a universe-buster scale, and the various things attributed to Him are just massively over exaggerated.

[Rolan7]

hilarious revisionism

I find this particularly a) offensive and b) arrogant. Unless you actually read Hebrew, and have read the original passage, you aren't in a position to say whether a translation is revisionist.

Okay yeah, that was disrespectful of me.  Sorry.

Here's the closest I'll probably ever be to reading the original Hebrew:
http://biblehub.com/text/judges/1-19.htm
Seems to put all the focus on God, just like all but the most recent translations agree.  But you're right that I don't know Hebrew.  It's just a suspiciously convenient change.

But what I should have focused on is that the edit doesn't resolve the underlying issue.  God was with Judah, and granted them victory over the mountain people.  But He or they failed to drive out the valley people.  Specifically because of iron chariots.  It strongly implies God was at least still helping them, so I argue this is still evidence of God failing.

Also I still think that this god doesn't act anything like Jesus or Jesus's father.

[UXLZ]

And the issue always comes down to faith... What a terrible thing, indeed.

[Arx]

It's silly because omnipotence is silly. It doesn't work, and I've yet to see anyone tell me how it actually could short of saying it just does.

More iron chariots.

You mentioned before that you doubted God's omniscience Arx, do you doubt His omnipotence too?

Much as I fear I may go blind from quoting myself,

And honestly, I mostly agree with you guys about the omnipotence. Particularly given things like the variant translations of pankratos and all that.

I think you'll find I've already answered that question. I do still hold that from a human standpoint He might as well be, physically and in many ways metaphysically, but the Bible suggests Almighty just means really frickin' mighty.

[TD1]

Do you think the bible is the only way to know God?

[Rose]

Do you think the bible is the only way to know God?

First you need to answer the question of "Is the bible a way to know God"

[TempAcc]

I think we should try to understand God (and ourselves) through reality (and again, through ourselves, first), IMHO, before trying to understand God through a text or teaching of some sort, such as the Bible. To do it backwards often means not quite understanding what you're reading and then misinterpreting reality, which is even worse.

This is obviously, easier said than done, but the backwards path often leads to terrible things.

[Loud Whispers]

But we can't understand reality, it is too big for our minds to comprehend.

[TempAcc]

Better to spend ages searching for answers in ourselves and the universe (at the same time) than to risk misinterpreting a doctrine and stunting our (spiritual and scientific) growth. Well, at least that's how I see it, and since its my personal opinion (and experience), I cannot claim it is right and true.

This is why I'm no atheist, but certainly not a proper Christian according to most doctrines. I believe (emphasis in believe, as in, I don't know if this is true or even properly reasonable) that we should look for evidence of God and the divine in ourselves and the universe, and the first step to this is admitting that, in the grand scheme of the cosmos, we don't really know much of anything, and that quite a lot we know and take for granted (from both science and religion, in several ways) is based on speculation and relies a lot on our imperfect senses and awareness.

As such, (again, I believe) taking anything for granted, either by refusing to accept the existence of God because we cannot perceive it; or by completely assuming we are absolutely right in regards to God because we interpreted  and understood (with our limited senses and awareness) a source of information attributed to Him in a way or another, means imposing limitations on your awareness and stunting your growth as a living mind.

I'm not really an agnostic, though, since I do believe in God and the divine, I just admit that, currently, I do not have enough awareness to claim it to be real. Faith, after all, doesn't mean knowing something to be true, in an empirical sense, but feeling that something is true. Some feel it, some don't, its part of our nature regardless.

As badly worded as it is, this is roughly what I believe in.

If the fundie protestant view of hell is true though, I'm prob kinda fucked, but whatever :v

[Bohandas]

And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

The NIV version changes it to "they" couldn't drive them out, for obvious reasons, but even that hilarious revisionism doesn't really address the issue.

This is now one of my favorite bible verses, (along with Ecclesiastes 1:2, Ecclesiastes 3:19, and the fake passage from Ezekiel in Pulp Fiction)

EDIT:
Also the story of Daniel Vs. Bel and the Dragon

EDIT:
Also Mathew 23:23 and 23:13

EDIT:
And Ecclesiastes 1:15, 1:18,  4:13, and 7:20, 9:1-6, 9:10-12, and of course 12:8

[Descan]

My favourite is Genesis 11:8.

The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.