Is God evil - or just lazy?

Maybe they all lived in the top hat. (Sorry Lorient couldn't resist).

Right whilst you can answer Eldo's question if you like Lorient as it seems a valid one to me I would like to widen this debate back out again to more of a general is God a force for good or bad thing and not get bogged down in focusing on anyone in particulars religion or beliefs. Even the Mormons might be right for all I know. So lets keep it non-personnal as much as possible.
Discussion without division and all that.

I would like to widen this debate back out again to more of a general is God a force for good or bad thing and not get bogged down in focusing on anyone in particulars religion or beliefs.

I think that's a good idea. I like having discussions of this sort in general, and I have nothing against any one version of theism (or theism in general, really, except that I happen to disagree with it). I just enjoy getting to talk about this with people who care.

Well there goes my moderation skills!! {{but very witty}} Maybe my skills are better han I thought- 'and lo the mod spoke and it was gone from upon the face of the thread.' {{I hope you at least put it on the youtbe thread Eldo}}

I didn't see your edit until after I made that post, so I went ahead and moved the video to the YouTube thread.

And I simuled with your edit again.

Lorient Avandi wrote:I think you guys haves misunderstanding of god. Hes not a magician, He doesn't do all this stuff you think. He can't just stop a robber or rapist. Just because he doesn't interfere doesn't mean he doesnt want to.

Didnt he part the sea, so the jews could escape (think it was the jews)
If he can part the sea i'm sure he could stop a robber or rapist.

If the world was created 6000yrs ago where did dinosaurs come from
One religious friend of mine says they never existed and another said it only
takes 100s of years to turn bone into stone. Poppycock!

chris63 wrote:

Lorient Avandi wrote:I think you guys haves misunderstanding of god. Hes not a magician, He doesn't do all this stuff you think. He can't just stop a robber or rapist. Just because he doesn't interfere doesn't mean he doesnt want to.

Didnt he part the sea, so the jews could escape (think it was the jews)
If he can part the sea i'm sure he could stop a robber or rapist.

What if he was your robber/rapist type who was not afraid to say, "Rack off, God. Come any closer and I'll belt you in the quoits!" And what if that robber/rapist was in a Gang, or somthin', Chris, a really "tough" gang? God could be just as scared of interfering as the rest of us. (Why am I sounding like Peter Griffin? Too much Family Guy, I guess )

He could have got Gabriel to give him a hand, it wouldnt be the first time he got him to do
his dirty work. Ask Mary. God must be gay or he didnt find Mary that attractive.

Jospeh has to go down as one of history's most understanding blokes thats for sure. He didn't even demand God pay child care.

Joseph, im pregnant. Its not your its the God Almighty's. (joseph) Thats nice dear, shall i put another sugar in your tea.

"If the world was created 6000yrs ago where did dinosaurs come from"- Chris

I have a religous friend who tried to explain this one to me. The arguement went when jesus turned the water into wine he didn't have to ferment it- he essentailly made it ready to drink, therefore old. So when God made the earth He too made it already old. But really its not- it just looks it. (of course for this to make the slightest bit of sense you have to be willing to believe Jesus did turn water into wine in the first place and not say that he nipped out the back for a spare keg- I always have problems with explanations for supernatural occurancs that require accepting a different super natural ocurance as an explanation).

So as well as God creating a preditorial universe, giving us death, disease, suffering, pain and lets not forget the ladies special- painful and potentialy fatal childbirth, he is also a bit of a prankster it seems. What a guy!

Are you suggesting you would not stand politely to the side when an Angel came visiting your new wife, Chris?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:So when God made the earth He too made it already old. But really its not- it just looks it. (of course for this to make the slightest bit of sense you have to be willing to believe Jesus did turn water into wine in the first place and not say that he nipped out the back for a spare keg- I always have problems with explanations for supernatural occurancs that require accepting a different super natural ocurance as an explanation.

I heard Jesus hypnotized the guests into "thinking" the water was wine. I also heard it was Jesus's wedding to Mary, because Jesus was acting like the bridegroom (both physically and metaphysically). I also heard Jesus was homosexual - depends on who's theories you believe, of course. (Jesus might even have been bi-sexual - that way we could turn two of the mentioned theories into one theory ).

"Are you suggesting you would not stand politely to the side when an Angel came visiting your new wife, Chris?"- Odo

I could get a set of wings and a halo and put that to the test if you want? Always willing to help out in the name of scientific discovery!


(Always favoured the bridgegroom explanation myself. Poor carpenters my arse!)

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Poor carpenters my arse!

Is that 'Poor' or 'Paul'?

Okay, you'll have noticed my conspicuous abscence on this thread since my first volley, but I've been keeping up and have a few thoughts to share.

1)As already established, I have a slightly different take on God's direct influence on the earth, due to my scientific background. Petty has given me some pause for thought on if that means I believe in God as part of this universe as bound by its laws. Truth be told I don't have, even now, a good answer for that.
I believe in a god who created the universe, but also that there are fundamental laws of that universe and how things work that limit what he can do. The big bang itself is a theory that everything came from nothing (or about 1kg of material - not that anyone can tell you were that came from ) . So god created the big bang and everything came from that, I think . It's probably the clearest I can be.

From this it follows for me that god didn't sit on his fluffy cloud and decide that animals should have to kill for food, or human nature would be such that we are capable of great evil, it is just the way it is - so makes the general question for me somewhat difficult to answer, god isn't evil or lazy, he just is.

2)The free will argument. Taken what I have said above, the idea of robotic, perfect beings that do the right or nice thing all the time is just not going to happen (I have to say I also find the idea slightly creepy - must be my flawed human nature) Free will is important, it allows us to choose our path, to try to live good, honest lives or take take take.

Whether you believe in hell as a reality or that death may be the end for those who choose badly is to a certain extent irrelevant in terms of salvation. What God offers is not being punished in the way you deserve (hell or death), but ressurection to live with him, forgivness for all those times we have choosen the hurtful or selfish path (and we all do, human nature being what it is).

Without free will this forgivness is meaningless and to me forgivness is a far bigger thing than doing the right thing all the time, a much harder choice. If I am honest there are a number of things that have happened that affect my life because I can not, no matter how I try, truly forgive for something. It is water under the bridge and things on the surface move on as normal, but underneath there is a distrust and hurt that remains and affects my interactions with people. Personal opinion I know.

3) Restrictions of entertainment and corrupting technologies/activities. I wanted to bring this up as it was being tackled as a art of one specific faith group, however it is not limited to that and has a long and strong tradition - for good reason.

The basis for these ideas go as back as far s the old testement and the rules laid down in Leviticus. While I agree a lot of what is written is shaped by the time it was written there is also the truth that a number of the laws (particularly to do with cleanliness etc) actually have benefits in terms of staying fit and healthy. If you extend this, the rules laid down in the main part are actually to prevent things that hurt people through our actions.

In the same way, many later branches of the church have set strict rules, often including limits on entertainments, technologies etc (Brethren church, Amish tradition) The ideas behind this is limiting temptation and opportunities to stray, providing a framework in which to live as god would want. Pleasure seeking can often lead to problems (alcohol related violence as the first example that comes to mind), for some it is logical to prevent this by simply not partaking (this idea is not simply limited to those of a religious faith!), That is were a lot of this comes from and is not limited to one faith or demonination.

4)The '6000 yr old earth'. Mmmm, Guess! Science tells me this is not the truth. For me it opens up the idea of a dishonest god, which doesn't chime with my belief in what god is. This doesn't mean I discount the bible, just that I understand this part of it as a way of explaining gods role at a time when the understanding of the world around us was very different. (And a number of events in the old testament have archiological /scientific evidence that lend support to the history being correct).

I know this all opens me up to 'the god of parts' (if you pick and choose how can it be true) argument, but this is the way I believe. I have struggled with the idea of holding two, often contradictory truths and have simply come to accept I believe. Both in the scientific process and in god himself (or herself )

Final comment is faith is just that, faith. It is something you yourself hold to be true. I don't believe it is something fragile, but something that is only strengthened by debating and discussing. I hope everyone partaking in this discussion can see that, it is the joy of this forum that we debate these things and accept we each have differing opinions. In the end faith is not going to be passed onto someone else by reasoned argument, it is either there or not. ((soppy moment - you're all brill, it's what keeps me coming in to post!))

That was an excellent post Kafria and gave me much to ponder over. Warning may stray into philosophy!

1. I agree with quite a bit of how you view God. In fact if I had to put my money on there being a God and what that God might be like my bet would not be a thousand miles away from your own description here. The only real difference is for me the universe itself (multiverse too if there's one of them-one of them? You know what I mean!) is God and so is everything in it, me, you, the keyboard I'm typing on, the desk, everything. By Being, in whatever form, God grows. I see humans as being not disimilar to the colonies of microscopic things that live on us, unaware of the greater whole of which they are a part but none the less still there, seperate and alive yet part of the bigger picture.
For me therefore he Big Bang was one of two things- either it was the birth of our particular God or every so often God changes shape in a very drastic fashion.
In this view of things evil, good, bad, makes no difference. As God is all things and when entropy eventually destroys those things they return to the whole (the universe has the same amount of stuff in it now as it always has, it just changes shape a lot). From the point of view of God therefore it doesn't matter about individuals or how they live. They all end up returning and as the process enriches God either way the idea of caring about it falls solely within human realms, its meaningless from the point of view of God. I understan that for a lot of people thats disturbing as it means bad people and good people makes no difference in the end- but that does seem to me to fit the universe we seem to find ourelves in- a preditorial one where bad people often live long and happy lives on the proceeds of their badness.

2. Free will. Given my above thoughts free will is another human fiction. Or at the least an irrelevance. You are free only within the confines of the creation you find yourself and as the end result no matter what choices you make is always going to be the same- death and a return to source- free will is not a valid point for a God.
I am less certain on what I think regards punishment. In the model I have outlined there is no real reason for punishment. It is not required from a God point of view. People and things live, die and return to sender. What they did whilst alive probably doesn't make any difference and notions of good and bad are more likely human constructs to aid in our own socialisation.
However I have considered it possible that we get the God (and therefore the universe) we deserve. Maybe its a weights game and if enough bad stuff goes back to God the universe becomes more grim and unpleasant and the more good stuff the better it becomes (and of course in a Universe our size there is a good chance it is teeming with life so not sure its wise to narrow the scope to just stuff on our one tiny insignificant planet).

3. I broadly agree with you Kafria on the purpose of the rules curbing activity. In the OT God takes a rather civic role and gives out deadly serious and earnest proclamations on sujects currently undertaken by my local council- such as plumbing. Rules on cleanliness etc are all valid and at a time when humans for the first time ever were forming towns and cities these rules must have been absolutely necessary- no one could have known how disease might spread in a confined walled town for example until it happened for the first time. So I can easily picture where these laws come from and why. Attributing them to a God just seems to me however to be a way of getting people to follow the rules where they might not if it was just some bloke saying it.
And unfortuntely this idea of crediting to God rules such as these has long ago left the useful rules bit and gone onto the controlling people bit. The Catholic Church having been the masters of this although some forms of Islam are doing a good job to oust them from that dubious crown today.

4. The 6000 year old earth. Its a crazy notion derived by trying to add up all the genologies in the OT. Not a very precise way to do things. The Eden story itself is much older than the OT and it was well known at the time the OT was set down (during the second captivity in Babylon) we know from Babylon the Creation story was a 'classic' text and Summerian was treated much as Latin is today. Scribes learnt to be scribes writting it, even though it had fallen out of everyday use. "You are not a proper scribe unless you can write Summerian' seems to have been the thinking. And most of the copies of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Creation and Flood stories we currently have come from tablets the scribes were using in schools copying out the old texts. Given that for the proto Jews to have come up with a whole new creation myth would have got them ridiculed, like a scientist today doing the same and not accounting in any fashion for the Big Bang, even to dismiss it. The Jews had to use the Eden story for credibility, it was what everyone accepted already. All they did was alter it to fit their idea of one God (but not to well as the original story has 3 main players they had to keep - El (gensis God) Enki (Genesis serpent) And the Goddess Ninurshag (Genesis Eve). They also seem to have had some difficulty hiding the original Council of Gods as in Gensis God still refers to himself in the plural all the time- the Council is where God is when he is blatantly absent from the Garden and explains why He is unaware of events there during His absence- bit like Gandalf in TH, he disappears and pops back up but you're not sure where he has been or what he has been doing- and the Summerian version is a bit like the appendices in LotR where you find out he was off at the White Council- God was too!)
It is true the OT is a suprisingly accurate historical record in many ways but just because they recorded real events does not mean their interpritatin of Gods part in them is true on the same level. For example last week there was a particualry stormy day and no boats could cross the River Clyde, but we called upon our Lord God and his breath was upon the face of the waters and the storm clouds were parted and we could once agian sail the River. Praise be God. That is an interpritation. I could have said it was a bit stormy, the boats were off, but it cleared up later. In both cases the factual bit remains accurate- it was stormy, boats off, got better later. So I am wary of extracting God along with the history.


Um that turned out longer than I intended- I did say you had got me thinking Kafria- love this place for that!

Some more for me to mull over
Will do so later, just back from finally winning the battle with my display board and off out for a meal tonight before results tomorrow!

Have a nice night out Kafria. And best of luck with tmorrows results. For you and them!

Ok I've been busy today so I haven't been able to get on.
Eldo: I never said it was one of the Lost Tribe in America. Quick version: there was a family who left jeruselum and sailed across the ocean to the Americas. One of the sons was named Nephi and two others were Laman & lemuel. There was a family fued and the righteous followed Nephi becoming Nephites, and the unrighteos followed Laman & Lemuel and became Lamanites. Following a series of events that take place over the next hundreds of years, the Nephites, now a great civilization, have become unrughteous as well. Up to now the nephites have won all of their wars because they were righteous and god was happy with them. Now since they are unrighteous, they lose god's favor and are slowly pushed back by the Lamanites. Finally, in what is now New York, thousands of Nephite soldiers made their final stand against the Lamanites, Moroni, the last righteous nephite, the son of Mormon, buries the record his father put together which is later found by Joseph Smith. The nephites are now extinct and we call the descendants of the Lamanites Native Americans. The book was definitely not made up, especially by joseph smith. He was an uneducated simple farmer who could never do something of this magnitude.
In answer to what you said about gays: everything about that i believe is wrong. I don't hate gays but I do not agree in any way shape or form with what the do. Romantic Relationships are meant to be between a man and a woman, other wise the different genders wouldn't have the different body parts.

i would have a few problems with that version of history. You would need to provide archeoligical evidence for this Nephite 'great civilization'. Simple DNA testing of Native Americans would clearly show up any genetic markers if they were an imported people from the Middle-East.
And where is this original book. Most of the land New York sits on was a swamp before how did a book survive so long in such conditions? What was it sealed in that could be made at the time and last so long?
On the point of homosexuality I cannot for the life of me see what body parts have to do with love. I have three cats, I spent a great deal of time in their company and I would be saddneed to the point of grief if they died. Sounds like love to me and I can assure you it has NOTHING to do with body parts- not even on my worst buckie bender!
In humans love is expressed through physical contact. It does not seem odd therefore that two people of the same sex who are in love should express that love physically. Sex is just sex. Its main aim is procreation but lets not underplay the fact that if there is a God He also made sex unbelievably good fun and pleasurable- so much so you can even do it on your own, which was quite thoughtful of Him really. If He didnt want us to be so focused on it he should not have given us such a strong drive for it.
I also find the general idea that any God who has created all the things in nature is sitting about being offended because some over-evloved monkeys like having sex with other monkeys of the same sex frankly silly. Male dogs will screw other male dogs, or your trouser leg, does that offend God? It just seems preposterous. Its just a biological act driven by a mix of hormones and instinct and probably all species taken into account the single most performed act on the face of the planet. Its hard when taking an objective look at Earth not to come to the conlusion that God was obssessed by two things. Beetles and sex. Because there is a hell of a lot of both of them down here.

Lorient Avandi wrote:Ok I've been busy today so I haven't been able to get on.

No problem, it happens to everyone.

Eldo: I never said it was one of the Lost Tribe in America. Quick version: there was a family who left jeruselum and sailed across the ocean to the Americas. <snip>

Mea culpa. So where's the archaeological evidence for all this?

In answer to what you said about gays: everything about that i believe is wrong. I don't hate gays but I do not agree in any way shape or form with what the do. Romantic Relationships are meant to be between a man and a woman, other wise the different genders wouldn't have the different body parts.

So you do think that being gay is wrong, then, or am I misreading this post? Besides, the anatomical differences between men and women serve the evolutionary purpose of procreation, nothing more. What people choose to do and who they choose to be in relationships with is their own business, and if God exists and he really does dislike homosexuality, then he's just a bigot as well, but I'd like to think that a being capable of creating the universe is beyond such small-mindedness.

<Petty says it better than me.>

I do not know why thereis no evidence, but according to the book, after the crucifixion many of their cities dropped into the ocean due to gigantic earthquakes. I also belive that for most of the BOM they live in central America. They only make it up to the US portion later. I don't know though, I do not understand it the best. Maybe if you or petty read it you could find a better understanding of it.

If you gave someone something, and they completely misused it, would you be happy about it, especially if it was the most important thing you had ever given them?

How is it misuse to love another person? I don't get the argument. If God is loving then He loves men and women so what's the problem? Or is it alright for God to be bisexual but not humans?