Riddle me this, o ye faithful — natural disasters

iLemming

GodIsRelative
God created the universe in six days. Some bugs are to be expected. Send a bug report.

Still waiting for the patch.

I guess that means bliss will be... "DLC"?

...while I disagree with the sentiment, I just have to say...

LOL.

if there weren't people who were compelled to tell the truth, the guys who don't believe any of it,
would have their hands full

To all those citing loosely interpreted scripture to buttress the notion that we, as humans, control our own fates and the planet's fate: that's all fine and dandy with a cherry on top. I, too, can find 'bible codes' to tell me that Oswald shot JFK... after the incident occurred.

The fact of the matter is, climate science deniers almost exclusively take this obstinate stance on the grounds that human beings cannot themselves change the course of the Earth's destiny, in accordance with their interpretation of religious teaching, and to believe otherwise is effectively apostasy. As such, if the Earth is in fact warming up and, as a direct offshoot, severe weather phenomena are becoming more intense and frequent - a manifest obviousness that needs no science, only logic, to see - it must be of "God's" doing.

Or whose interpretation of the religious text is correct? Which 'versions' are we meant to be paying attention to ― Old Testament, King James'? And if the very fundamental understanding of the instruction 2+ billion sheepl... people espouse, how do we know which brand of religion is the real deal? Maybe Muhammad had the correct translation all along...

Your "God" is either an irascible, pissed, vengeful omni-everything and takes pleasure in burning the occupants of his ant farm with a magnifying glass -or- you've all got it wrong and have been "led astray". There's no middle ground, here. Do acknowledge this fact or do not. There is no trying to explain away the fact of this irreconcilable inconsistency, Gungans.

reply to post by iLemming

Or whose interpretation of the religious text is correct?

easy one: you are the temple of god. your interpretation is correct, for you. a very relativistic way of looking at it, i know, but i am convinced god deals with each person where they are, not where somebody else says they should be, so that means, logically, that other people get involved once the temple is functional, and they don't need to be. god is in there, you're just blocking the free flow of data when you insert yourself into someone else's temple.

as i've so often heard,

let go, let god.

undo
reply to post by iLemming

 

Or whose interpretation of the religious text is correct?

easy one: you are the temple of god. your interpretation is correct, for you.

I just felt the paedophile priests of the world rejoice in unison!

p.s. and that goes for you, ILemming, as well as religious people. this is my brain, my body, my temple.
i will do with it, what i want. got that?

good.

reply to post by iLemming


what's that got to do with this discussion?
are you saying i'm responsible for pedophiles?

firstly, i'm not catholic. secondly, i'm female. so what part of catholic priests diddling children has to do with me? about as much as these guys have any bearing on you

famous men who did things like starve millions of people to death (including children and infants)

how stalin starved his own people
www.youtube.com...

or just slaughtered them outright

mao's bloody revolution
www.youtube.com...

or selected people to kill based on their genetics

pol pot
www.youtube.com...

this is the kinda crap that people protested against when the rcc was doing it. these atheist regimes have been busy doing it for generations now, and you want me to be responsible for priests of a religion i don't even belong to. you need a reality check

any christians reading this thread: consider, it's not enough for ILemming, that i allow him the freedom to choose what he wants to believe. No, he wants me to believe exactly as he does. he wants to be the god of my temple. but it ain't his to be the god of. it's mine. he can't handle that fact, so now he has to say because sin exists in the world, i'm not allowed to have my own opinion. as a result, folks, this thread is a lost cause. no matter what you say, your will for your own life, is not important. only his will for your life.


that is just the kind of pomposity that turns me off from atheism

oh and one last thing: no more blaming me for crap other people do. i am not your sacrificial goat. no more blaming me for stuff men did 500 years ago, or even 2 days ago. no more stereotypes. no more blaming me for crap some lady did in a garden 6000 + years ago. no more.

undo
p.s. and that goes for you, ILemming, as well as religious people. this is my brain, my body, my temple.
i will do with it, what i want. got that?

good.

"Do what thou wilt" -Aleister Crowley

You are on the wrong side my friend.

ServantOfTheLamb

undo
p.s. and that goes for you, ILemming, as well as religious people. this is my brain, my body, my temple.
i will do with it, what i want. got that?

good.

"Do what thou wilt" -Aleister Crowley

You are on the wrong side my friend.

i'm actually not. i'm expressing the desire to make my own choices. why would you want it any other way? it is my temple not yours. not the op's. not stalin's. not mao's. not the khmer rouge's. not hitler's. mine. as in me. why would god want to set up residence in a building i invited him to, in which the other occupant doesn't belong? wouldn't he rather have a discussion with person who invited him, rather than some force fed ideology that doesn't have a real stamp of approval of person who invited him? would be kinda hard to carry on a logical conversation since the person would have to be deprogammed first, before they could even be taught.

undo
oh and one last thing: no more blaming me for crap other people do. i am not your sacrificial goat. no more blaming me for stuff men did 500 years ago, or even 2 days ago. no more stereotypes. no more blaming me for crap some lady did in a garden 6000 + years ago. no more.

Ezekiel18:20
The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.


Deuteronomy 24:16
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

Why would anyone judge you for your ancestors transgressions?


Matthew 7:1-2
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

Why would anyone judge you for your decisions?

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


exactly.
did i say the op was responsible for the activity of other people from his/her world view? most definitely not, because it would be complete bunk.
we don't need more bunk. there's enough already. that's why i got irate.

i am tired of being accused of the inquisition, the crusades, the countless mistranslations of the old testament, and the equally frustrating 10th century papal view of its stories, being used against me as if it was an automatic that everyone would have the same opinion of it, and furthermore,

as in the case of the op, viewing your personal translation of it as being akin to giving catholic priests the rubber stamp of pedophlia approval. that kinda stuff does not solicit learning, engender understanding, or raise awareness of the real problems of the text. it just seeks to force people by intimidation and public humiliation to accept a view they don't really have or believe. and that is asking god to visit your temple, while you are personally on vacation and someone else's ideology is present.

we take the journey as individuals and welcome others to talk to us not coerce us by extraordinary means, to see the world how they do. extraordinary means is the purview of god and then only by your actual consent. free will is a bugger. we humans have a hard time letting each other lay claim to our own, but it's there whether we like it or not. people who interfer with it, usually fudge the whole thing up, and the result is often not pretty.

iLemming
To all those citing loosely interpreted scripture to buttress the notion that we, as humans, control our own fates and the planet's fate: that's all fine and dandy with a cherry on top. I, too, can find 'bible codes' to tell me that Oswald shot JFK... after the incident occurred.

What do Bible codes have to do with anything? When the Bible is quoted, it means what it says. Bible codes are entirely different and completely subjective. The allusion is invalid.

The fact of the matter is, climate science deniers almost exclusively take this obstinate stance on the grounds that human beings cannot themselves change the course of the Earth's destiny, in accordance with their interpretation of religious teaching, and to believe otherwise is effectively apostasy.

Destiny and environment are not the same thing, nor is the climate debate as simple as you've presented here. No intelligent person argues that mankind has no effect on warming. What climate change deniers argue is that anthropogenic climate change overestimates human impact, and/or undervalues normal cyclical patterns in the earth's climate.

Or whose interpretation of the religious text is correct? Which 'versions' are we meant to be paying attention to ― Old Testament, King James'?

You're confusing interpretation with translation. The translation doesn't really matter *too much* (although as with any text translated from another language, there are good translations and bad translations), and as for interpretation, that's pretty straightforward. It's when people try to argue that the Bible doesn't mean what it says that confusion enters.

Your "God" is either an irascible, pissed, vengeful omni-everything and takes pleasure in burning the occupants of his ant farm with a magnifying glass -or- you've all got it wrong and have been "led astray". There's no middle ground, here. Do acknowledge this fact or do not. There is no trying to explain away the fact of this irreconcilable inconsistency

Actually, the illogical thing would be to state, as you have, that God is a horrible being, despite the fact that you've had people show you in here, quite clearly, that He is not. As you say, you can accept what they've told you, or not, but there's nothing illogical about the one who claims that God is good.

Why is it so important to you to express that Christians are idiots, sheeple, and faithfools?

reply to post by iLemming


I'll just bump Awen24's first post, I don't have much to add other than to say that on few occasions has he ever used natural disasters to commence judgment and a typhoon on the Philippines isn't one of those times. Those people are more righteous than you are, since you are here making jokes on their heartbreak, tragedy and misery to snub your wicked nose at God and point the finger at Christians and their "ignorance".

Perhaps you should have a typhoon dropped on your own head for judgment, but I think this would suffice:

reply to post by iLemming


Chaos is based in the perception that there is a natural peaceful state… peaceful states in relation to natural phenomenon is also a matter of perception. Tectonic plates shift, cold and hot interact, etc… and all the effects outside of what we find conducive to our survival are a matter of perspective considered evil or punishment vs. extremes of what we perceive as natural phenomena which normally supports or were conducive to life as we know it.

This post really seems to be taken apart to "If your god is good and powerful why does bad # happen? Why does anything happen the way it does?" Who the hell knows? However we can make suppositions based on empirical observation such as through interactions of natural phenomena we have weather which seems more often than not conducive to generation and or supporting of life as we know it… through the same interactions we can sometimes have extremes in weather for instance and that is just the way things work (they do appear to work as we have a planet that seems to sustain life.)

Does god have to work within the confines of some type of system or dimensional definitions as defined by it? Possibly and that would explain the nature of our reality as we understand it. When combined with the concept of actual free will (meaning life without meddling) some religions tout as one of the greatest gifts bestowed to us it would makes sense that things do not necessarily happen as punishment or due to evil intention but just a product of how our environment works and being left to our own devices.

I apologize for the rambling nature of my post as my mind is a bit scattered currently. My intent was only to make empirical suppositions which provide possible explanations regarding how a religion's benevolent creator of all meshes up with what can (I concede arguably) be perceived as a world without the apparent influence of the benevolence of said creator. Personally I don't understand how one can really know with certainty the details of anything either way (for or against) regarding a creator/source/origin that doesn't directly tell us/show proof/explanation of anything at the present time. Boils down to faith and all that I guess… You make your choice and either find comfort in your faith or you don't until something can/may with certainty of objective truth verify or dismantle said belief. Argh I'm still rambling.

undo
firstly, i'm not catholic. secondly, i'm female. so what part of catholic priests diddling children has to do with me? about as much as these guys have any bearing on you

For evil to reign, all it takes is for all good men (and women) to do nothing.

So kick back and keep stuffing your face with Twinkies, ewe, and continue disavowing blame while apportioning it like you were Alanis Morisette herself.

lonewolf19792000
I don't have much to add other than to say that on few occasions has he ever used natural disasters to commence judgment and a typhoon on the Philippines isn't one of those times.

Of course not. Because "God" only does the good stuff!



(And, yeah ― you didn't have much to add.)

any thread that starts of with this catch
"Riddle me this, o ye faithful — natural disasters"
is going to be a troll thread and Christians should be wise enough not to take the bait

The first reply was adequate, commenting here is of no further value

The whole world is broken as are all the people on it.

Dont get sucked into apolegetics with the haughty and arrogant

borntowatch
any thread that starts of with this catch
"Riddle me this, o ye faithful — natural disasters" [...]

It was "Riddle me this, o ye faithFOOLS".

But, as is ATS's fascist, puritan censorship wont, it was seemingly subsequently edited by a moderator.