Love me or else (Part One) (Where is it now?)

by dhw, Monday, December 31, 2012, 14:47 (4346 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Part One-This thread has expanded during my absence, and to my great regret hyjyljyj, who triggered the discussion, has apparently had enough. I shall therefore have to struggle on alone!
 
TONY: Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain etc.'" (Revelation 21:3-5).
Is this the depiction of a tyranical asshole of a God? [...] this gives me comfort because I find cold comfort in the world and machinations of man.-You are, in my view, rightly sceptical of those who swallow the pronouncements of atheistic scientists as if they were facts. Why, then, do you swallow the pronouncements of authors you know little or nothing about, written some two thousand years ago in a language you do not speak, describing a future for which neither you nor they can provide any testable evidence? No, this is not the depiction of a tyrannical asshole. But as you say elsewhere: "The bible shows God with a full range of expression, from awe inspiring to frightening, from vengeful and jealous to loving and merciful." If I believed in God, I'd imagine him to be all of those things, and while you find cold comfort in this world, I find no comfort in your cherry-picked quotations. "People try to spin the bible to fit their own beliefs." (b_m) Too true. Your Revelations passage is followed by: "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death." So here am I, an unbeliever (but not a disbeliever). I die because my "unbelief" makes me a sinner (see below), I then burn in the lake of fire and brimstone ... nothing to do with hell according to you ... as a kind of bonus punishment perhaps (second death), but (see below) I'm dead already, in which case the lake could be a bubble bath and I wouldn't know the difference. Why should I believe any of this?-TONY: This brings me to the last comment on why the Hell Fire doctrine makes no sense. "The wages sin pays is death." That is the price we pay for our errors, and every man, woman, or child will eventually pay that price. There is no call for eternal everlasting punishment for our sins, because once you die you have already paid the reparations.
 
See above. It's now even less clear to me what sort of afterlife you envisage, since everybody dies, which is the price we pay for our sins, then we shall all live happily ever after with God, apart from us abominable unbelievers and our murderous colleagues, who will burn in fire and brimstone, which is a second death but is not a form of hell.-DHW: ...The difference between us is therefore not about what happened, but about our view of God's attitude.
 
TONY: I think the more fundamental difference between us is not our view of God's attitude, but rather what rights he has as God. [...] My sense of right, wrong, fair, unfair, and justice are not His...-How do you know your sense of right and wrong are not his? And what could be more terrifying than being at the mercy of a power whose sense of right, wrong, fair, unfair and justice are not the same as ours? You continually try to justify suffering as if it were all the fault of humans. Behind many of your posts I sense a man of enormous sensitivity who would not consciously do anything to harm his fellow beings, but once you launch into your defence of God you become a misanthrope! You rightly talk of the beauty of God's world, but when it comes to the horrors of his world, you either blame man or you fall back on the notion that we mustn't judge God, and in any case he'll make it up to any innocent victims in some nebulous afterlife. You rightly talk of the horrors of man's making, but seem to ignore the beauty ... charity, empathy, altruism, love, art, music. Just like the bible, the world can be spun to fit your own beliefs. I see it and the human race as a mixture of good and bad, but I do not accept that all suffering is man-made. I agree that you can't have truth without lies, good without bad, laughter without tears. But if that really is the only way your God could make this world, why can't you countenance the possibility that he himself may well consist of the same mixture. Yes, if he exists he has all the rights he wants. How is that comforting?