I *like* the idea of a divine avatar, exercising self control or even making itself vulnerable depending on who you ask... It just raises SO many more questions than it answers.
Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?
(I think LW quoted this again recently, but it's so good and I think it's relevant)
This doesn't feel like a very compelling or even reasonable argument from a religious person.
That said, if I was to disagree with this video game npc for a moment, we live in a universe which can be observed (not with perfect confidence or zero conflict, but close enough to have a conversation) to both
A: Exist
[Citation needed]B: Not be constructed in a way as to maximize benevolence
So when a religious person says that their god created the universe and both that
A: They did it because they wanted to/because doing so was a good thing to do/insert any other reason here
B: Their god is omnibenevolent
There's a much bigger and more immediate issue with points B here. There's no conflict with point A: I might not believe it, because there's lack of evidence for it, but it's only point B that totally fails to even make sense. So. To me, the question of evil is a bigger question, and a bigger flaw with Christianity, then the question of why does anything exist at all.
If we did want to examine that question though with some further thought I think we can fairly successfully apply the Anthropic principle to the question of why a god would create the universe. That is, the universe exists in some form, our ability to question that proves it, thus any halfway reasonable reason given for a god creating the universe is good enough to stand on it's own. (not enough to believe it of course, that would require evidence) We could still question it, perhaps a given explanation is wrong, even if a god exists. But it's not like the idea of a benevolent god, which must be discarded simply from the obvious observations we can make on the state of the universe.
To wrap all the way back around to Jesus.
It's weird from the other direction- why would that god walk at all?
If you already accept the basic premise, that god came down to act as a sort of teacher and try to be close to humanity ect whatever. It makes sense. If you assume that's what was going on it does raise further questions about the omniscience of god given how much of a failure Jesus seems to have become. But the basic idea seems solid to me at least.
That said, the point I didn't really make, but more like obliquely implied in my post aimed at martinuzz, was that a majority of people in the world already believe in things far stranger and less reasonable then a man/god walking on water. To have such a reaction to someone professing such a belief is bizarre to me. It's very low down on the totem pole of weird shit that people think is true. And all the far more wacky shit we're suppose to just be okay with everyone believing in. So why the fuck would you call the police on someone for believing in that?
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14572057 times)