[Pastor Billy-Reuben]

Re: God is

Wrong-O, Deaner. Read Job and you'll see that Satan goads God into torturing Job and raping and murdering his household.

Job was God's prizefighter. YHWH is the one doing the punching, however.

You are a liar.

Satan goaded God into lifting his protection from Job, and into allowing Satan to torture Job and murder his household. Satan did all the murdering and the torturing. All God did was to give Satan permission to do it.

Job 2:6 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.

God told Satan that he could do whatever he wanted to do to Job, just so long as he didn't kill him.

Pastor Billy-Reuben

[Bobby-Joe]

Re: God is

God is... a hippie catching his hair on fire from his marihuana cigarette.
God is... a Messican family dying of dehydration in the Arizona desert and their corpses being picked apart by hungry coyotes.
God is... a homeless man being electrocuted by urinating on the subway's electrified rail.
God is... the Demoncrats being torn apart by a devious murderous monster and an inexperienced Muslim nigra.
God is... the spiritual equivalent of a giant capital gains tax cut.

PRAISE

Brother Montague. At lest you aren't afraid to define perfection!

[Ezekiel Bathfire]

Re: God is

That, sir, is true, but utterly besides the point. Shaitan and YHWH were clearly gambling buddies and Job was God's prizefighter. YHWH is the one doing the punching, however. Shai'tan ended up losing the bet of course. But you think he was SAD to lose that bet after watching rich fatcat Job get mercilessly raked over the coals by his master?!?!?!?!?!

There are three points here: the hard but realistic one (i) You can do what you will with your own creations.
The softer one (ii) the point would have been lost on satan if God had said, "Just a minute Job, don't worry about all this, you'll be OK." Neither would it have been any sort of test.

I'm sure you would, that's what it means to be a TC™ after all. However, part of the fun of the Job story is that he was not in on the joke! That was purely YHWH boasting to His prosecutor .

and finally, after the suffering, Job agrees he was blessed to have helped the Lord and thus would have said "Yes" anyway. A fact that God, the all-knowing - would have known.

The sum of it all is that the devil has been shown wrong and that's a good lesson. It will stop him trying to secretly convert the righteous. And God knows that in the future He will not have to resort to this again. Win-win!

[One-eyed Jack]

Re: God is

Unfalsifiable: "I clearly said logic was inductively founded, no absolute, not by a long shot."

Don't be silly. You are using logic in an attempt to prove the greatest Absolute of all, and your arguments call explicitly upon ultimates and absolutes of perfection. But God is miraculous and transcendent, and therefore beyond logic -- whether inductive, reactive, electromotive, a priori or a posteriori.

Here's the core problem: I agree with you that God exists and will smite sinners with cancer of the colon and aneurysms in their brains for His own inscrutable purposes -- possibly just for a divine laugh, how could we know? He created special diseases just for newborns so that they can sh*t themselves to death in impoverished countries. God is greatness beyond measurement, a tower of power, a colossus beyond all the colossi of the Heavens.

The ontological proof of God's existence, however, while suited to the 11th century, is damned dicey in the 21st.

Here's why: In the times of Avicenna and Anselmo and Aquinas the most highly regarded "research" was carried out by pure logic, much as in the days of Zeno and Socrates and Plato. In modern times, however, atheists like the Damnable Dawkins and Horrible Harris have used inductive reasoning coupled with the Enlightenment innovation of SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION to create solid arguments that militate against the existence of God.

That is dangerous. The times have changed.

It is far wiser at this stage of the game to understand that God is irrational, illogical, and inscrutable than to pretend that the ontological argument -- flawed as it is -- can succeed. We must remember that scripture warns us that God cannot be understood by man; the idea that we can conceive of His nature is contradicted by scripture.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8,9

We may pretend that we can conceive of a Being that must, logically, be God, but the Bible says that we cannot conceive of God. (I suspect the following verse -- as well as the one above -- has already been quoted in this thread, but I'll do it again to maintain readability).

Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?

It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?

The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. Job 11:7-9

Like much in the Bible, this scriptural instruction stands to reason: the miraculous and transcendent is obviously beyond logic and reason and rationality. To misquote Cormac McCarthy, the nature of God comes from "regions beyond right knowing", regions immune to rational inquiry by the mind of a sane man.

Certainly no True Christian would wish to disprove the existence of God. But we should not put our argumentative eggs in a basket which will not hold, and one which -- Quele horreur! -- could validate methods like inductive reasoning, modes of thought which can be turned by the HEATHEN HORDES and the SECULARIST SWINE and used against us.

Abandon Anselmo. He served the purpose once; now his bones and his arguments are moldered beyond recovery.

~~ OEJ

[Unfalsifiable]

Re: God is

Unfalsifiable: "I clearly said logic was inductively founded, no absolute, not by a long shot."

Don't be silly. You are using logic in an attempt to prove the greatest Absolute of all, and your arguments call explicitly upon ultimates and absolutes of perfection. But God is miraculous and transcendent, and therefore beyond logic -- whether inductive, reactive, electromotive, a priori or a posteriori.

You've mistaken me. I know I was using logic to prove God's existence, but we have moved on from that to discuss logic and sciences uses as a whole, and i've pointed out their inductiveness. Leaving the atheist at the point of, accept science and logic, accept God, or reject science and logic as inductive, left with nothing, not even their beloved science. That is the position the sceptical philosopher is in.

[Ahimaaz Smith]

Re: God is

Satan goaded God into lifting his protection from Job, and into allowing Satan to torture Job and murder his household. Satan did all the murdering and the torturing. All God did was to give Satan permission to do it.

Anyway, it all turned out OK in the end, because God removed the festering sores and gave Job a new family that was even better than the one that Satan murdered. No harm, no foul. I think that Job is the most inspirational Book of the Bible.

That is the position the sceptical philosopher is in.

Not true. The position that most philosophers, skeptical or not, find themselves in is standing, hat in hand, in an unemployment line.

[The Adversary]

Re: God is

You are a liar.

Satan goaded God into lifting his protection from Job, and into allowing Satan to torture Job and murder his household. Satan did all the murdering and the torturing. All God did was to give Satan permission to do it.

Job 2:6 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.

God told Satan that he could do whatever he wanted to do to Job, just so long as he didn't kill him.

Pastor Billy-Reuben

Please, Pastor. It should not be up to me to remind you that a main measure of a True Christian™ is to read the entire Bible without picking and choosing to make God seem more loving than he really is. Sure, Satan afflicted Job with boils and probably sicced enemy tribes such as the Sabeans upon him, but "Satan did all the murdering and torturing"?!

Job 1:16 The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them...

Let us give credit where credit is due, as Job did:

Job 6:4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.

[Pastor Billy-Reuben]

Re: God is

Please, Pastor. It should not be up to me to remind you that a main measure of a True Christian™ is to read the entire Bible without picking and choosing to make God seem more loving than he really is. Sure, Satan afflicted Job with boils and probably sicced enemy tribes such as the Sabeans upon him, but "Satan did all the murdering and torturing"?!

Job 1:16 The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them...

Let us give credit where credit is due, as Job did:

Job 6:4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.

Please don't quote out of context.

Job 1:16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another [messenger], and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

The messenger believed that the fire was of God, but as you can clearly see from the passages I showed you earlier, the messenger was simply mistaken.

Job 6:1-4 But Job answered and said, ... For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.

Job didn't know whose arrows were within him, or whose terrors were set in array against him. He thought they were of God, but he was mistaken.

Now I'm not saying that God doesn't torture and kill folks -- He clearly does. But you picked a bad example. In fact, Job is the ONLY example in the Bible where Satan is the one doing the torturing and the killing. ALL the others are God's doing.

What are you trying to pull here?

Pastor Billy-Reuben

[Bobby-Joe]

Re: God is

Please, Pastor. It should not be up to me to remind you that a main measure of a True Christian™ is to read the entire Bible without picking and choosing to make God seem more loving than he really is. Sure, Satan afflicted Job with boils and probably sicced enemy tribes such as the Sabeans upon him, but "Satan did all the murdering and torturing"?!

No Adversary, you being disingenuous here. You know perfectly well that Satan did persecute Job because God said so. Even if God were to say personally have gone down and smitted Job like a red headed stepchild for a sick laugh God, with His powers, could have quite easily willed it Satan's fault and it would be so.

[Just Curious]

Re: God is

A society is not God and therefore not perfect.

Plato's theory of the forms falls under the same fallacy. How can something be a perfect anything if it is not God?

Existence is a predicate of perfection as if the perfect does not exist it isn't perfect.

This is my first post. I am here out of curiosity more than anything else. My beliefs will not be discussed quite yet...

I have a question: If, as I have been taught my entire life, God is the embodiement of perfection, and if, as I have also been taught my entire life, all of God's Creation is perfect, then how is it that God is the only example of existing perfection?

That's a bit contradictory, is it not?

I you believe that God's Creation is perfect, then how can you *not* find perfection in a simple daisy?

[Unfalsifiable]

Re: God is

This is my first post. I am here out of curiosity more than anything else. My beliefs will not be discussed quite yet...

I have a question: If, as I have been taught my entire life, God is the embodiement of perfection, and if, as I have also been taught my entire life, all of God's Creation is perfect, then how is it that God is the only example of existing perfection?

That's a bit contradictory, is it not?

I you believe that God's Creation is perfect, then how can you *not* find perfection in a simple daisy?

What the embodiment of perfection creates is what we see around us. Essentially pantheism is logical, God is perfect, present everywhere, we are all part of God, we are all perfect from that objective perspective.

From our perspective though we can notice that individual things with the limits WE put on them are not God and therefore obviously not perfect.

Welcome to the forum by the way, introduce yourself in the introduction forum and don't forget to joyfully give a tithe using the Godly paypal button .

[SalvationSeeker]

Re: God is

Here's how I can smite that phrase: The Bible clearly and repeatedly states that God (El, YHWH, etc.) created our world and the universe around it. Thus we can postulate that He created the Big Bang that formed our universe for reasons that Salvation Seeker mentioned.

What a strange idea.

Really, why would God create a big bang that in turn creates the universe through a very long and tedious process, taking billions of years?
A process He will not have control over unless He controls it.

But if God controls it, then the big bang fail to make sense.
For He could acheive the same results much faster through creating everything Himself directly.

See, I've never said the big bang occured, only that such an event could only occur if God was there to cause it.
However, there is simply no need for a big bang since it would acheive the same result in alot longer time and with more effort.
And add to that, that it contradicts basic Biblical truth that the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars etc..
It all was created about 6000years ago, along with all living creatures on earth:
Take that into account, and it becomes clear that believing in such a thing as the big bang is silly.

Without God, it is impossible.
And with God, there's no need whatsoever for it!


PS. You forgot the point about "evolution", and how that could ever take place without any genes, or even living matter.. for that matter.