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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

[Cthulhu]

I don't see how those arguments really work with the way Jesus is described.  Remember, Jesus said he was literally God, and that he was here to fulfill the old law, not to destroy it.

But mainly that first one.  Describing him as a prophet or a nice guy or whatever doesn't really work.  If he wasn't what he said he was, he was a blasphemer and a crazy guy.  The Romans were crucifying messiahs every other day back then, which is why no Roman contemporaries bothered to write about him.

[Silverthrone]

Good old God is on the train as well, of course, but I have always imagined him as one of God's divinity-humanity liason figures, as well as a part of divinity. But yes, there are a lot to like in Catharism, overall.

When I was a child, I always assumed that the Old Testament God was either having a very bad time, or was still new and inexperienced at the whole divinity business, or just a different sort of God. Younger, much more rough and sensitive, and far more liable to interfere directly in things. Spending part of Himself as Jesus, getting closer to mankind and the world, I imagined was part of His maturity. I was always a little heretic, no doubt, but still. I liked the stories in the Old Testament, but the New Testament felt like the more relevant part.

As another exorcise in childhood heresy, I was also quite sure that, whenever there was a thunderstorm, it was Tor making his rounds. I imagined God keeping and employing the old staff, as it where, when the north became Christian. It made sense to me. There can't have been many ice giants in Egypt or Israel or Babylon, and one could probably count on God being clever enough to employ local talent.

[TD1]

There was a messiah-craze at that time. People were saying "God is going to send a saviour now." John the Baptist was one they tried to raise as Messiah, but that didn't exactly pan out well. Jesus borrowed from him, it would seem.

Depends on your perspective whether one messiah of many had to be remembered, or the one true messiah was remembered. Whether people made their saviour, or whether a saviour was sent.

[Silverthrone]

Well, true. Jesus was the one who stuck around, and there is no doubt that the faith of the followers, and what they wanted it be in aid of, meant much for it to happen.

While I cannot be sure, reforming and fulfilling the old law does not strike me as entirely unreasonable to have wanted, for the time. After all, that was the struggle of the day, and reforming the old faith, giving it a human face, must have seemed a far more likely plan than forming a new faith based on his own death. It must have been a frightfully interesting time, with all sorts of directions, old and new, rubbing shoulder at a very volatile place during a very volatile time. On balance, however, I'm happy I was not there.

[TD1]

Ha! Just be glad you weren't there that one time they tried to put a statue of the Emperor in the Temple. Note the capital.

Said emperor very kindly decided to resolve the dispute by dying, IIRC

[TheDarkStar]

I guess I have a different perspective on Christ in the Old Testament/New Testament.

Christ (a God but separate from the Father) was the same in both testaments. In both, bad things tend to happen to disobedient/sinful people as a reminder that God is actually there and to prevent the spread of further sin. Also, God pretty much always tries to get the wayward wicked people to listen to him and only sends punishment afterwards - in the Old Testament, prophet after prophet tries to get the Israelites to stop being dumb but no one listens. Even Moses has to lead the Israelites for forty years (or at least a long time, depending on how literally you interpret "forty") because they were bad. In the New Testament, Christ tries to help the Jews understand that they're following the letter of the law more than the spirit of the law and the Jews respond by killing him and, in Acts, persecuting the apostles. Basically, God says: Don't do this or bad things happen, then the Israelites go do the thing, and then God says, I warned you, now I have to follow through.

[wierd]

Hmmm...

I have some different takes than the person interviewed in that video.

Assuming the christian god is real---

The apparent modus operandi for this entity is not exactly "maniacal", any more than a math teacher presenting his students with really hard calculus homework, assigned as a group project.

EG, seeing said kids with eyeworms, who are sure to go blind without treatment, SHOULD compel you to action to save the child's sight. Without the presence of the eyeworms, or any other adversity, there would be no motivation to be altruistic.

The christian god does not want robotic worship-slaves, it wants free minded adherents who want to learn the spiritual mysteries of the universe, into which he can safely impart said mysteries.

Parables, such as "he who can be trusted with little can be trusted with much" apply very keenly in this interpretation, as does the promise of what it means to be in heaven in Revelation. ("We shall know him, for we shall be like him", implying that the goal is to become little gods ourselves.) The idea is to present smaller, solvable problems, for humanity to solve, so that people understand adversity in a real sense, so that they are willing to prevent it in others.

I very much reject the "God should pamper my pitiful mortal butt-- He would give me everything I want, and never punish me at all, IF HE REALLY LOVED ME!" line of thinking when it comes to approaching the hypothetical of the christian god existing. Amusingly, that seems to be the tact used by the person being interviewed-- "Why did you make eyeworms?"  "To test you, to see if you would pluck them out, before I give you the power to make worse things yourself." (with the unspoken truism, that since you are here, AFTER having freaking DIED, those eyeworms were not a permanent thing anyway, and your accusations of capriciousness fall flat because of that. The bible states emphatically that the mortal, fleshy existence is temporary, like the training wheels on your bike, or like being "it" when you play tag. The christian god does not smite eternally until AFTER your testing, and then the smiting is to remove people who would abuse the powers of imortality and pseudo-godhood for flagrantly selfish and wicked purposes. He introduces small evils into a testing chamber (mortal existence) to see if you will love wickedness, or love altruistic goodness instead.)

Granted, that is entirely hypothetical.

My personal take is that if a god exists, it does not interact with the world, and it is running on pure cause-effect feedback. There are nutrients in eyeballs, the tissue is soft and moist, and it makes sense for parasites to evolve to exploit that. God created the framework, the lifeforms created themselves. There would be pretty compelling evidence of tampering if such a being did actively meddle with the world. Evidence that is curiously missing. So, I think it more likely that if a god exists, it is an absent one; it does not interact with us, except maybe to watch us, like a scientist does.

[Kot]

>I made this world because I am all benevolent and all knowing but yes this is pretty shit world but this is obviously not my fault yes
>Well there's also heaven where people still have free will and whatnot and it's perfect and there is no evil there but you need to suck my hypothetical prayer cock to get there so better get on your knees bby

[wierd]

Again, no.

A world with no adversity in it, is not a good teaching aid. That's like trying to teach math with eternal recess. You learn math through doing the hard homework assignments, and learning about its rules.

Providing a limited (since mortal existence is temporary) experience with genuine adversities, that feels genuinely real, teaches you to recognize adversity, and assist others in overcoming it, and teaches you first hand why you should not subject others to it.

Without that training, ascended humans would be the worst possible gods there could possibly be.  See for instance, people who knowingly operate sweatshops with child labor to make personal profit.  What would they do with divine powers?

It is wrong headed to see it in the scope of "OBEY ME! I AM GOD ETERNAL, AND I LIKE MAKING HUMANS SUFFER! MUAHAHAHAHA."  It is more apt to see it as "I SAW WHAT YOU DID IN THE TEST CHAMBER, YOU DO NOT GET SUPER GOD POWERS, BECAUSE YOU ENJOY HURTING OTHERS."

[Kot]

>you enjoy hurting others
>ate a fruit to actually realize what is wrong and what is right

Yes. Very much horrible of us to know if what God does is good or not.

[Cthulhu]

The idea that hte world is meant to teach or test people has some interesting implications.  If we're testing people's moral character (I dont' believe in free will, but if we assume it exists and god values it, it makes sense that the world is meant to determine who will freely choose things worthy of heaven) then we have to eliminate incentives.

If there's any possibility that you chose to be good for the sake of reward, the test is ruined.  Someone who was good to get a reward or avoid punishment can't be trusted to be good for all eternity.

That makes a lot of sense when you consider the character of God.  The most difficult one to stomach for me will always be the divinely mandated genocide and genocidal rape of the Midianites.  Men and married women were exterminated, virgins were taken as slaves, by God's will.

If God is testing people with the world, then the obvious explanation for things like that is that the gods we see in the world were planted by the real god to filter out people who aren't actually good.

[TempAcc]

:U

Welp, good job, you people just described spiritism, kinda (the LOL YOU GET GODPOWERS part is never expressively talked about). Worlds are organized according to the general moral and intellectual level of its inhabitants, and material existence works as a kind of school in which you go through different levels and face different challenges in order to better yourself overall, with greater intervals of spiritual life between incarnations as you advance.

There isn't any reward involved, at least not specifically so. The journey and the knowledge you get from it is its own reward. You don't go to school to be "rewarded" with entry in the next level classes, you go to school to get the knowledge you need to actualy move on to harder challenges.

In short, under this view, God does love everyone, but just giving everyone some sort of heavenly existence would be like pampering a baby and and never actualy teaching it anything because there would be hardships and discomfort involved. You can't learn without suffering and hardship because you need to learn about suffering and hardship also, and God can't just give you every knowledge ever because its simply not possible and would violate your free will (ye, some things are simply not quite possible, under this view at least, even for God).

Also you aren't required to worship or even believe in God :U

[Kot]

I belive the problem here lies not even with what the God does anyway, but with the fact he presents himself as all-good, all-powerful, the best thing and whatnot while he's clearly not.

Also you aren't required to worship or even believe in God :U

How can I kill God if I don't belive in him?
WITH EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES, THAT'S HOW!

[TD1]

There are surmountable issues to build character and show nature. Then there are natural disasters and painful, destructive diseases. There is dementia, which enables someone to look at their daughter and not recognise them. There are constructive pains, used as "God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world" (C.S. Lewis), and then there are pains which do not rouse. They crush, and if there is a hand behind it then I am going to call that hand malevolent, for no good being could design, or perhaps even conceive, of such circumstances - not to mention actually put them in action.

^Addressed to wierd.

I'm gonna get some sleep, so don't expect a reply any time soon.

[TempAcc]

To be honest God under spiritism is more like a force than an actual being, and may actualy not do anything in the universe as the universe kind of works on its own. All the instances of God talking to x person or another are interpretated as some spirit or another who, in order to guide x person in a way or another, pretended to be God. God is too inscrutable and absurd for dweebs like us to understand. Kinda like a benevolent azathoth of sorts, except not mindless.

Earth in specific is described as a backwater world for dweebs who aren't completely shitty, but not that great either, think a 3 on a 1 to 10 scale.