God and Evidence.

AVG-JOE

American Mutt
Gold Supporting Member
Mar 23, 2008
25,185
6,271
280
Your Imagination
"God", for lack of a better term, is possible. It's a big fucking universe after all.

If God is, would such a being have regrets?

Is the fact of not-quite-human creatures like Neanderthal living on Earth for tens of thousands of years evidence that the image of a perfect God may not be reflected in modern humans, or evidence that God makes mistakes?


`
 
God is limited, I believe, yes. If God were all powerful, Jeremiah would not be allowed to speak for God.
 
"God", for lack of a better term, is possible. It's a big fucking universe after all.

If God is, would such a being have regrets?

Is the fact of not-quite-human creatures like Neanderthal living on Earth for tens of thousands of years evidence that the image of a perfect God may not be reflected in modern humans, or evidence that God makes mistakes?


`


In order to answer that question we would have to know what God's goal was/is.

I tend to think that God doesn't makes mistakes so much as he is bound by His own laws. If God says "it is so" then He's pretty much stuck. I give Him the credit of knowing what the consequences are and choosing the best option but God has created a relative universe meaning that all actions have reactions.
 
Last edited:
I believe the evidence is for a creator. I don't have enough faith to believe nothing exploded and everything happened. Why doesn't God do something about our mess is the next logical question. But what should God do? Run our daily lives? Micromanage us like puppets?

I also have personal experience that leads me to believe in another dimension of sorts. I think many people have had supernatural experiences of some kind and why there are religious answers. I used to be religious but now admit that I don't know the answers and won't accept a prepackaged one for someone else's benefit.
 
In order to answer that question we would have to know what God's goal was/is.

I tend to think that God doesn't makes mistakes so much as he is bound by His own laws. If God says "it is so" then He's pretty much stuck. I give Him the credit of knowing what the consequences are and choosing the best option but God has created a relative universe meaning that all actions have reactions.

So what's the best option? :dunno:

Was the systematic annihilation of Neanderthal and their displacement in what became Europe the will of God?

They had religion. They recognized the possibility of God.

Was the Creation of Neanderthal a divine mistake and their reign on earth a waste of Time?

Does the story of Earth LOOK like the slow execution of some grand plan anchored in Peace?

:eusa_think:
 
"Why doesn't God do something about our mess is the next logical question. But what should God do? Run our daily lives? Micromanage us like puppets?

Well I think that's a big question that theists and atheists struggle with and I think they miss the excellent point you just made. What exactly do we want God to do about it? I suppose God could show up in all His splendor and say "ok I am going to fix everything" but we can all kiss our freedom of choice goodbye. It would effectively become a dictatorship. Is that what we want?

Maybe we we forget about God helping problems with society to avoid the dictatorship and focus on natural problems. Maybe we get pissed off about earthquakes because we are tired of people getting killed from them. So God says "ok no more earthquakes" and He stops all geological activity on our planet. Ok well now we are going to go back later and bitch that our planet's surface is not renewing, our crops are failing, our weather systems are totally screwed up, our atmosphere is failing, etc. So we screech at God "hey what the fuck?!?!?" and God says "well do you want an atmosphere or do you want a world free of earthquakes? Make up your damned mind". This is what I mean when I said that God is perhaps bound by His own laws of nature and physics. If we want to have a habitable planet we need a geologically active planet and that means earthquakes, volcanoes, et. al. Perhaps God's only mistake was that He gave us enough credit for intelligence not to build cities on fault lines. ;)

So really when one thinks of the consequences of God taking over and fixing everything, do we seriously WANT Him to?
 
In order to answer that question we would have to know what God's goal was/is.

I tend to think that God doesn't makes mistakes so much as he is bound by His own laws. If God says "it is so" then He's pretty much stuck. I give Him the credit of knowing what the consequences are and choosing the best option but God has created a relative universe meaning that all actions have reactions.

So what's the best option? :dunno:

Was the systematic annihilation of Neanderthal and their displacement in what became Europe the will of God?

They had religion. They recognized the possibility of God.

Was the Creation of Neanderthal a divine mistake and their reign on earth a waste of Time?

Does the story of Earth LOOK like the slow execution of some grand plan anchored in Peace?

:eusa_think:


Well like I said...we would have to know what God's master plan was to be able to answer that. I suppose if you looked at it strictly Biblically, God's hands are tied because He game dominion over the Earth to Adam and Adam fucked it all up, so God was stuck from there on out. I don't believe that creation story myself but from a purely theological perspective it would explain a great many things.

If we accept the idea that God is inerrant there had to be a purpose, but what it was eludes me. :lol:
 
"God", for lack of a better term, is possible. It's a big fucking universe after all.

If God is, would such a being have regrets?

Is the fact of not-quite-human creatures like Neanderthal living on Earth for tens of thousands of years evidence that the image of a perfect God may not be reflected in modern humans, or evidence that God makes mistakes?


`

---
Before talking about "evidence" ...
You have 2 main philosophical problems here:
1) Defining "God". Why do you conclude there is only one god?
2) Where did God come from; who created "God"?
.
 
I'll be the first to admit that the evidence of a not-quite-human creatures living not-quite-human lives for many thousands of years before the sudden arrival of truly-human creatures is also evidence in favor of a god-like being creating a difference in our evolution.

The 40,000 year overlap and the dog-eat-dog nature we employed to crawl to the top of the biosphere is more evidence against a grand plan of peace being in place, but on the other hand, God may very well use tools like Evolution and baby-steps through Time.


Anything's possible. The fun part is deciding, in the privacy of your own mind, what is plausible.
 
The Universe is probably just a super computer.

Or hell, maybe its a basic one in the world where it comes from.
 
"Why doesn't God do something about our mess is the next logical question. But what should God do? Run our daily lives? Micromanage us like puppets?

Well I think that's a big question that theists and atheists struggle with and I think they miss the excellent point you just made. What exactly do we want God to do about it? I suppose God could show up in all His splendor and say "ok I am going to fix everything" but we can all kiss our freedom of choice goodbye. It would effectively become a dictatorship. Is that what we want?

I was told by a preacher whose opinion I respected at the time that what Christians aught to be praying for above all else is the coming reign of Christ on Earth.

He said that the best government for Man IS a dictatorship, ass-u-me-ing of course that Jesus is the dictator.
 
"Why doesn't God do something about our mess is the next logical question. But what should God do? Run our daily lives? Micromanage us like puppets?

Well I think that's a big question that theists and atheists struggle with and I think they miss the excellent point you just made. What exactly do we want God to do about it? I suppose God could show up in all His splendor and say "ok I am going to fix everything" but we can all kiss our freedom of choice goodbye. It would effectively become a dictatorship. Is that what we want?

I was told by a preacher whose opinion I respected at the time that what Christians aught to be praying for above all else is the coming reign of Christ on Earth.

He said that the best government for Man IS a dictatorship, ass-u-me-ing of course that Jesus is the dictator.
Many Christians do hope it's sooner rather than later and are part of the problem in my mind. They are not actively trying to fix things (including themselves) and are fatalistic about it all anyway.
 
Before talking about "evidence" ...
You have 2 main philosophical problems here:
1) Defining "God". Why do you conclude there is only one god?
2) Where did God come from; who created "God"?
.

True story.

Step one in any religious discussion is to name the God.

In the case of this thread, I specifically named only the possibility of God, and I use the term 'God' in only a generic sense on purpose. The closer one gets to naming a God, the smaller the possibility of God becomes, and I wanted this discussion to remain open and big.

Please feel free to (insert your preferred Deity or Deities here) when I use the term 'God'.


`
 
Before talking about "evidence" ...
You have 2 main philosophical problems here:
1) Defining "God". Why do you conclude there is only one god?
2) Where did God come from; who created "God"?
.

True story.

Step one in any religious discussion is to name the God.

In the case of this thread, I specifically named only the possibility of God, and I use the term 'God' in only a generic sense on purpose. The closer one gets to naming a God, the smaller the possibility of God becomes, and I wanted this discussion to remain open and big.

Please feel free to (insert your preferred Deity or Deities here) when I use the term 'God'.


`

---
How about our "God" being a super alien, from one of the billions of galaxies with billions of stars?
Its (androgynous) culture evolved naturally over billions of years.
No need to think in primitive "supernatural" terms.
.
 
God has created a relative universe meaning that all actions have reactions.
systematic annihilation of Neanderthal
Was the Creation of Neanderthal a divine mistake and their reign on earth a waste of Time?
Does the story of Earth LOOK like the slow execution of some grand plan anchored in Peace?
This is my opinion:
For ever action, there is an equal and opposing reaction. God gave mankind free will. The first question to answer--the question that people have asked in several ways and forever--What is man's purpose, what is the meaning of life, why are we here? Your destiny is what you make it. I do not believe in coincidences but that things that happened because of you was because of your choices--you chose to be there, you chose to do something--free will. Of course, your life is affected by others' free will as well--drunk driving deaths, planes flying into towers, serial killers, idiots on Facebook. If the planet explodes or we die from our own pollution, free will. So what would be the purpose? To learn. Would you want your girlfriend to stay with you because she had no choice? Would you want your children to never be taught anything? Let's assume that God does not want his children to love and worship him because they are blind and have no choice. God was seriously into equal rights--he gave us the right to make our own decisions. In order for us to make that decision, we need to know things. How do we truly know what love is if we never experience hate? How do we know compassion and tolerance if we've never experienced discrimination or self-righteous judgment? You see how that works? For every action, or in this case emotion, there is an equal and opposing reaction. You learn something from everything you experience. The choice you make as to how you want to be--an asshole or a nice person--reflects what "you" chose to take from your environment--your classroom. You can take the bitterness of your environment and continue it, or you can say this is not good, it is not right, it makes me feel bad--I'm not going to be this way. Or, suppose you had a great life experience and all was the Brady Bunch show--but because you never experience bad things, you did not know how to cope with it when it happened, or you did not understand the plight of the poor. Get a job! Get an education! You think you know so much but really, you know nothing Jon Snow. You turn your back on those who need help, scoff at them, avoid them. You stayed in your bubble wrap and think that those people do it to themselves and will have to deal with it. Then God asks... what did you learn? What will you say? I really improved my tennis game--some golf courses are better than others--there are enough trees to go around--it's only a fish--yeah well, I worked hard to get what I have, they can too... lack of true knowledge turns into excuses and shows your ignorance.
The flip side, God asks what have you learned... and you say that people are evil and cruel and deserved what I did to them. God will say, You know nothing because all you saw was bad, you missed all the good. A leaf, a flower, the wind on your face, a baby, the smile of a person, music, art, hugs---all the things that make people happy regardless of where they live or how destitute they might be.
God does not allow people do bad things to you or others, nor does he interfere (free will), but at the end of the day, he will know your heart and say... lets go home... or he will cast you back and keep casting you back until you learn. (I believe in soul progression.)
Neanderthals were not annihilated, they evolved. I watched a UK documented and they were so into the theory that Modern man killed off the Neanderthals and I kept thinking about how people who know nothing make good money. There's a lesson.
God created man in his image (Bible), but the writers of the Bible were not witnessed to anything God did. They were choosing stories that were passed down over hundreds of years by their tribal leaders, fathers and grandfathers. Science has proven there are factual mistakes in the Bible (sun issue was groovy), so that screams that God did not dictate that book. Ok, but let's go with the God created man in his image... what image? Did the writer of the Book not want to be thought of as a Neanderthalish person with a non-contemporary language? Or, because the Bible was written as I believe, that the writer created man in his image assuming that, because of their lack of science, men had always looked like him, spoke like him, and thought like him. Consider the Bibles or scriptures of other cultures... they too have a God, and a person that resembles a Jesus like figure. Are they really the same but twisted to reflect the culture of that society? Did we not evolve from many Gods to one God and from sacrifices to appease said God(s) to realizing that wasn't working? People still died from earthquakes and disease and droughts still happened.
The stories in the Bible reflect the time frame and superstitions of the writer, and every person or religion that edited it, inserted what they wanted people to believe--it's a control factor. Politicians do the same thing when they want the people to stop complaining--terror alerts, we need them to protect us, and when they want to make it look like they are so into helping us--shutting down the government for the sake of what's right for the people.
It's all about perception.
Feel free to beat me up over this long post--you have free will to choose to do so, but keep in mind, God is watching you and taking notes. ;)
 
God gave mankind free will.

---
What is "free will"?
Do I have free will to ignore a demand when a gun is pointed at my head?
Does "God" have free will? Who "gave" it to her?
Does my cat have free will?
.
 

New Topics

Forum List

Back
Top