The thing that I demand from almighty God

Quite a few years ago a southern baptist I worked with was trying to get me to accept Jesus and go to his church . He refused to believe that I already accepted Jesus as apparently I was'nt doing it right , not to mention I was'nt going to a baptist church . Finally in desperation he says ; one day you're going to find yourself in endless hell fire , screaming in pain with your flesh melting and dripping off your bones and you'll remember this day and be sorry you did'nt listen .

I thought that was completely over the top but that is what a lot of people believe ; it was then that I came up with this .

It sounds like who ever that is that you're worshiping isn't worth it . If God wants my worship or even loyalty then I'm to have to demand one little thing from him ; he's got to be at least as good of a person as me .

This goes for fundamentalist Muslims as well , who seem to think that God will reward them with the sexual favors of virgins should they incompetently get killed while doing things like murdering the innocent women and children of people they don't like , or even just affiliated with them . That sounds like pure evil to me .

So there you have it , I want God to be as good as I am . I'm not a shining example of humanity ,I've done some things I'm ashamed of , I wish it a was a few things over the whole span of my life rather than a few things a day , but oh well . So I don't think I'm putting too big a burden on the almighty with my little demand , I have supreme confidence ( some call it faith ) that this is already the case .

You're free to believe whatever you want , and you're free to talk to me about it . But you're not free to insult my God by describing him as a low life hedonist who will reward you with the devils idea of a good time , or as a subhuman sadist who will torture you for eternity for not doing like you're told by his human flunkies , and demand that I agree . ( especially when the only thing the flunkies usually agree on is that God wants you to give them money ) At least not without getting you're feelings hurt because sooner or later I will respond , and I know from experience that the intolerant have trouble with the obvious when it disagrees with them .

I think God may lose his temper every now and then but would'nt you if you had 5 billion kids ? I think Gods a pretty straight up guy who loves us

reply to post by thudpuddy


THat's a problem.

You see, if you believe what you do, then you were made in the image of God, not the other way around.

So technically, that makes God as sinfull, shallow, greedy ( add human characteristic here) as the next person. At least in some respect.

Personally I don't think God is a single parent who writes books. I think the all mighty has far more things to worry about then some back water planet in the tail end of a spiral galaxy at the outskirts of our universe.

But that's just me.

Now if there is a God, and he's as I don't believe he is ,then I certainly hope he's not just as good as our best human, cause that would suck. That's not very God like if you ask me.

~Tenth

Okay, you caught what I did not , you'll notice that my first "as good as me " included "at least" I meant to emphasize the at least part a little more but just forgot .
This is to To the tenth power , sorry but I don,t know how to do that quote post thing yet .

reply to post by thudpuddy


It can be so frustrating, even infuriating, when you claim to be fine with your spirituality and others go ballistic and start damning you all to hell! I don't understand why people just can't be happy for you, and move on from there, finding common ground instead of digging trenches.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


But what IS god-like? We keep imagining god to be perfection, but how on earth does an imperfect species have any idea of perfection, especially considering all of the vices we have today?

If I were to ask any species what is godly, it would NOT be the human race, because I'm more likely to receive an answer based around what they want in a god than what a god should be. As in, more centrivocal to being their personal daddy than being ruler of the universe.

That's humans for ya.

reply to post by thudpuddy

Okay, you caught what I did not , you'll notice that my first "as good as me " included "at least" I meant to emphasize the at least part a little more but just forgot .
This is to To the tenth power , sorry but I don,t know how to do that quote post thing yet .

It's that giant green QUOTE button you see on each post. Kind of difficult to miss, actually.

It's that giant green QUOTE button you see on each post. Kind of difficult to miss, actually.

I,m new around here and I'm fairly new to computers and I'm a geezer , so I'd like to thank everybody for the help and for being relatively kind .
By the way , I meant for my post to sound a little more tongue in cheek than it came off sounding but there's a big difference between spoken word and typed word that I'm not used to . Give me a little time and I'll learn

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Well here's how I look at.

I don't claim to know God, who or what he is for a very simple reason.

If a creation, wants to understand it's creator, then it must first understand all the things that the creator put here.

As we don't know anything. I mean literally anything about the mystery of life as we know it, how could we EVER claim to know what was beyond the creation?

It's non sensical. Humans are not supposed to know. We aren't every suppose to attain that knowledge. How could our mind comprehend something that is outside of our own existance or reality?

Easy, we can't.

~Tenth

God could possibly be what you believe him to be. Thoughts tend to create... so.... who knows.

I do know that Mr. Baptist you are referring to probably doesn't have much of a clue so he has no right to tell you what you need to do to be "right with God".

reply to post by tothetenthpower


No... we can't. I agree.....

But we can imagine. We can imagine who or what God is or isn't... and so we have.

reply to post by thudpuddy

If God wants my worship or even loyalty then I'm to have to demand one little thing from him ; he's got to be at least as good of a person as me .

None of us are good, thats why we needed Jesus. He's the one who sets the definition for good and evil, not us. God is not going to listen to you if you make demands. If you want him to hear you, you have to humble yourself. As for southern baptists, Jesus forbade sectarianism. If you're a christian then you're a christian, regardless of denominational affiliation. The correct Church is the one who teaches what Christ and his Apostles taught, those churches who add or remove any of his teachings are fraudulent.

The only difference between a sinner and a christian, is we are still sinners, we just recognize that we cannot save ourselves and that we need Jesus to save us and make us whole. We want to be saved.

reply to post by tothetenthpower

As we don't know anything. I mean literally anything about the mystery of life as we know it, how could we EVER claim to know what was beyond the creation?

It's non sensical. Humans are not supposed to know. We aren't every suppose to attain that knowledge. How could our mind comprehend something that is outside of our own existance or reality?

Easy, we can't.

That is an interesting statement. By such reasoning, even if the authors of the Bible were legitimately contacted by such a being, they would have been unable to translate even a single instant of such communication into a recognizable medium for conveying the message, regardless of who the recipient was.

If we are unable to comprehend something, how are we able to communicate it effectively?

reply to post by thudpuddy


Tell your baptist friend to look up the word Gehenna...

en.wikipedia.org...

Its was a litteral place... Not a place where you'll burn eternally, and have some dude with horns chase you around with a pitchfork...

Oh.. and don't worry about silly Christian fear tactics... they always use them as a last resort when their arguements for conversion fail... These are the people that are usually clueless about their religion in the first place either way...

On the plus side i think you've inspired me to write a new thread

My thanks

S&F

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Which is why I don't believe that they were contacted by anybody.

I believe the authors of teh Bible used pre-existing documentation and their own idea of what should be law/scripture and went from there.

If you include Jesus as a divine being, then of course, the "New Testament" was inspired by 'God', everything else is hearsay.

Now mind you your logic is a bit flawed in the sense that an all mighty powerful being could easily communicate with us at our level if need be. At least I would think. If not, again, i must say, not very god like at all.

~Tenth

reply to post by tothetenthpower


I don't think the Christian god is very godlike at all. Have you ever played Elder Scrolls? You know the Daedra? That's what he reminds me of. At least they don't pretend to want the best for us. They make it very clear that they are godly compared to us, that they are not interested in assisting us in our petty matters, and that if we want anything to do with them, it will be for their amusement.

If you're going to be a bloodthirsty jerk, at least be honest about it so we know how to approach you if we feel the need to.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by thudpuddy

 

It can be so frustrating, even infuriating, when you claim to be fine with your spirituality and others go ballistic and start damning you all to hell! I don't understand why people just can't be happy for you, and move on from there, finding common ground instead of digging trenches.

I'll tell you why. Your mind is important to us. Your mind, and the minds of the billions absorbed in thoughts of a god-thing, may hold the secrets to mankind's problems in the here and now. Your mind may hold the secret to space travel, to time travel, to curing cancer, AIDS, MS...

If one of these secrets is there, hidden in your mind, and you didn't train your mind to think in that way, then that secret may be lost forever. If you teach your kids to think in terms of science instead of religion, to always remain curious about THIS life, then your child will teach his children, and his children will teach their children... Before long the whole human population will be working on how to make THIS existence better, safer, and healthier for all.

We have some real problems coming up: end of fossil fuels, over-population, we're overdue for an ice age, the explosion of a super volcano, perhaps there's a meteor out there capable of destroying the planet... No god is going to come down and fix these things for us. We need everyone working on these problems because we don't know which mind the answers will come from.

Humanity doesn't need a god. Humanity needs YOU!

reply to post by MamaJ


That's what we're here to learn. How our thoughts and intentions can cause either great harm or great good. The power of creativity. We're gods-in-training, but we're too obsessed with our perceived imperfections, designed to keep us humble, to realize how perfect we really are. We have the potential to learn about ourselves for centuries. Isn't that a blessing, to have something to do for so long and still not be done? It's a worthy pursuit, but instead, we use it as an excuse to subjugate ourselves to demons of our own creation.

That's why I am not happy for it. It holds us back in every way imaginable. You're happy for your kid and his imaginary friend until it comes time to grow up, to mature, to develop.

reply to post by thudpuddy


Dear thudpuppy,

That was a great statement of sound logic in the OP. Any reasoning human has to come to the conclusion that a loving God, or any God that has any sense of justice at all would not invent a place of fiery torment where he would sadistically torture people for all eternity for a few decades of sin on earth.

If we humans find the idea repugnant that a human father would grab his child's hand and hold it over a hot burner and burn him for an instant as punishment for something, what type of God would be lower than that of a normal rational human being that would not do such a thing for even an instant to a fellow human being?

Now here is something else that a logical thinking person would ask. How would you like it if you were accused of doing such a thing? What if you were accused of burning people but you never did. How would you feel? What if it was broadcast far and wide that thudpuppy has a secret dungeon where he hides people and in his sadistic pleasure he burns them over hot coals until they are dead. And people believed such cruel disgusting slander. How would you feel? As this has most likely never happened to you, you probably cannot begin to describe the anguish and anger you would feel over such slander against your name. And you probably aren't even a good person.

Now how do you think Jehovah God feels that people who claim to represent him say that he is such a fiend? Do you think God takes pleasure in the slander to his good name? Or do you think the lies they people tell in his name make him angry?

Jehovah himself said in scripture:

(Jeremiah 7:31) And they have built the high places of To′pheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hin′nom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.’

One of the reasons he was going to bring punishment to the nation of Israel, and he did other nations round about them, such as in the land of Ca'naan, was the fact that they actually literally burned their children in human sacrifices to pagan demon gods. Notice that God himself thought such barbarity was disgusting, and that it had not even come up into his heart! He could not even imagine such horrific cruelty and disgusting sadism. And yet people who claim to worship him and love him slander his good name. Really those who claim that God burns people are slanderers, liars, and show they hate God by their actions. And he must definitly is angry with what they are doing to his name.

The scripture teaches us that the wages of sin is death:

(Romans 6:23) . . .For the wages sin pays is death. . .

Jehovah told the original man, Adam, that if he sinned he would die:

(Genesis 2:17) . . .But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”

The Bible teaches that man came to be a living soul:

(Genesis 2:7) And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.

And that the soul that sins will die:

(Ezekiel 18:4) . . .The soul that is sinning—it itself will die.


It teaches that at death human conscious ceases to exist. Just as before you were born you did not exist, so afterwards you cease to exist. What happens to the flame on a candle when you extinguish it? Yes it ceases to exist:

(Ecclesiastes 9:5) For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten.

These are all vital truths found in the Bible. Far be it from God to be a God of injustice and sadism. He is indeed a just and loving God.

While Christendom for many centuries has defamed God's name and slandered him, there are a group of people who do speak the truth about him. They are known by Jehovah's name, as his witnesses. And we defend his great name before the people. And we try to teach the truth about him to the people that will listen. Using God's inspired words as the guide. All human wisdom is simply nothing. Yet the word of God will endure forever.

If you would like to learn more about the truth please feel free to u2u me, or visit the following website:

jw.org

There is no good or evil. These are subjective ideas. Everything subjective is not real. Therefore everything you see is a lie. But I prefer to use the word, "creation" rather than "lie" because you have the freedom to perceive the world how you desire. So then, your interpretation of this false, impermanent world is of your own design, and therefore, the world that you see is of your own creation.

The only thing that can really be said to exist is existence itself. Things are neither good nor bad, because good and bad are subjective terms, so what is everything? It is always whatever you believe it is. Since it is so open to interpretation, it can't really be said to exist at all, at least, not as any interpretation.

So what is real then? It's the interpreter. In fact, the interpreter is the only real thing that can be absolutely said to exist. All the interpreter sees is its own interpretation. There are many interpretations for any given object. Even its size is open for interpretation. Nothing is what it seems. Everything is open for interpretation. But one thing is for sure. Everything exists.

So I guess the real question would be "what does it mean to exist"? That is an unending mystery. You, as what exists, are an undefinable mystery. Existence is absolute. Definitions of what existence exists as are false. So stop defining, if you can, and you will for once, see the truth. And the truth is that you don't know what you really are.

reply to post by thudpuddy


I suggest you stop letting the world influence you and the foolish wisdom thereof sway your opinions,

Why don't you circumvent the foolish "wisdom" of the world, and go directly to God and His people?

Read the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom, read the Psalms and Proverbs, read the Gospel of John,

then read some works by Saints of God such as Aquinas, Augustus and C.S. Lewis,

This will help you to understand the Master.