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

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, December 31, 2012, 16:18 (4346 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: 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? -As I told David, for me, the evidence is in the trustworthiness of all of the predictions that came before. In that, it is much like science. If I see a whole chain of predictions, all of which have come to pass, why would I doubt the other predictions that were made? Isn't that the standard that we apply to science and any other field of research. You make a hypothesis that predicts certain outcomes, record the results, and then use the successful predictions as a measure of the accuracy of your hypothesis? In this regard the Bible has been HUGELY successful. Why should I trust it any less than some scientist that I do not know and have not met, many of which speak a language that I do not?-
>DHW: 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.-Cherry picked? I fully admit the full spectrum of his personality, how is that cherry picking?->DHW: 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?-I do not know of any place where it says that unbelief, in and of itself, makes you a sinner. Just saying.. -
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> DHW: 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.
> -The meek shall inherit the earth. The entire book talks over and over and over throughout about a resurrection(of the righteous and unrighteous no less), a restoration of the earth over time, one last period of time where people pick sides, and then creation moving on from where it stopped. What use is an afterlife when you have life? I would need to believe in an afterlife, as such, before I could explain to you what kind of after life I believe in. - 
> 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...
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> DHW: 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? -Because if his sense of right and wrong were as messed up as mine we would all be screwed. What is more terrifying then a sense of justice that is not like ours? How about a higher power that has our sense of justice.....-
> DHW: 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. -I am fairly certain I never said we were all going to heaven or hell... I have actually argued AGAINST them. Yes, I say you musn't judge god because we are not qualified to judge god any more than a infant is qualified to the actions of their parents. As for blaming man, please tell me which of the horrors of this world are not conclusively of man's doing? The ONLY thing you could come up with are likely disease or natural disasters, the former being certainly the fault of mankind and the latter generally being a result of people not being mindful of their environment. (For example, in the Tsunami that hit the Philippines some years back there was a culture known as Sea Gypsies that did not loose a single individual because they paid attention and took proper action. The same is generally true for all natural disasters.)->DHW: 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?-Humans do some beautiful things as well, it is certainly the truth. Small wonder that we would be favored for our potential and hated for our actions. What other species creates such beauty at the same time as such horror.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.