Is God a dick?

Why would a supreme being create infinitesimally inferior beings only to turn around and say "worship and fear me otherwise suffer the consequences of eternal damnation"? What exactly would be the point of that? I mean to a supreme being that would be the equivalent of me driving 3000 miles to Southern California just to destroy a small ant colony out in the desert. Wouldn't that be a dickish thing to do? Think about it, he supposedly places us here with no real set instructions and then says "fear me" and if you don't you are going to hell. First of all, I would NEVER subject anybody to eternal damnation. So wouldn't that make me morally superior than God? If I can find compassion where God finds none? How is that possible?

...then yes, I think we could conclude that s/he/it/they was, in fact, a cosmic dick.

You're talking about a being with unfathomable power. If such a being exists, any motives they would have for their actions would probably be beyond our comprehension.

should apply for the job!

A world filled with wonder, a cold, fathomless sky
A man's life so meager, he can but wonder why
He cries out to Heaven its truth to reveal
The answer: only silence, for God isn't real.

Go ask the starving millions under Stalin's cruel reign
Go ask the child with cancer who eases her pain
Then go to your churches, if that's how you feel
But don't ask me to follow, for God isn't real.


He forms in his image a weak and foolish man
Speaks to him in symbols that few understand
For a life of devotion, the death blow he deals
We'd owe Him only hatred, but God isn't real.


Go tell the executioner of the power he can't defy
Go tell his shackled victim of the mercy on high...
Then go to your churches, go beg, pray, and kneel,
But don't ask me to follow, for God isn't real.


No, no matter how He should be, God isn't real.



-Robbie Fulks

fundies would say God is "testing" our faith (if so, he's definitely got a mean streak)

I don't think God is as described in the original post.

I don't think God is a celestial parent, or celestial Santa Claus, that doles out "good things" and "bad things" to people.

I read once--think it was Arthur Clarke that said it--that God is reality. I'd say, it may be.

Anyway, the book WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE was helpful to me.

Please don't objectify Him. :crazy:

he/she/it is a narcissisic sadist. (Unlike my fundagelical counterparts)

Hey green party voter how are you today?

but here I am playing at DU instead of writing my novel. :P

I have zero self-discpline. None.

Heck, probably even less than that.

the God who created this world and inspired the Old Testament is an evil demiurge. The Bible reads so much better with that assumption.

a limp one at that

"tests of humanity" as I've heard so often???

I think not.

But then again, logic is not the standard for this type of thing.

Another example is the eulogizers at funerals who say that "God is weeping today" etc. What can that possibly mean? I thought God was all-powerful and already knew everything.

Eternal life sounds like a "good thing" to me.

But you don't weep at funerals because someone's gone on to eternal life. You weep at funerals because you're going to miss someone terribly.

Losing someone here can be painful, even if you believe you will see them again someday. Jesus was so upset he raised Lazarus from the dead.

We weep not for the person who has passed on, we weep for ourselves and what we have lost here.

Not Hitler? Not Stalin? Not people who raped and killed their way through life? Not the CEOs of insurance companies who kill universal healthcare so that they can buy the 150-foot yacht instead of the 120-foot yacht? Not arms dealers who sell so much death that people in Africa have better access to AK-47's than food?

There are plenty of people who deserve hell.

Given that God is a supreme being the actions of Hitler and Stalin would be minuscule. That is the problem that I have with concepts like eternity. It is not a concept that humans can grasp and wrap their minds around.

Stalin? Hitler? People who make substantial contributions to the misery of the world for their own personal profit? Let them burn, and I say that with the limited understanding of eternity that I have.

If anyone could have stopped Hitler, it was God, yet God allowed Hitler to kill 8 million people.

The mutant bastard child of Dick Cheney and George Bush, born of Cheney's anal womb.

stupidity and greed as the reason. (I may use "He" but I don't mean to be sexist or assume God is a male; God is rather more than that...)

God saw that people saw His creation but then couldn't take it when His creation decided that created things couldn't EVOLVE. He saw the stupidity of His creation and decided to do nothing and let the buggers destroy themselves.

It will never be seen again.:rofl:

May I also assume that you don't believe in the God you have described? (If these are false assumptions, I apologize)

Well, if someone didn't believe any of the people who have thought about and talked about what God wants, then you are right, it does look like there are no real instructions.

Second, if someone did drive 3000 miles out into the desert to destroy a small ant colony, would they expect the ants to understand perfectly who had destroyed them and why? They wouldn't, because they have no way of communicating with them. The message of religion (as I see it) is that we mere mortals can understand and/or communicate with God(s), or else that God(s) has/have communicated with us, or else that it is possible to reach Nirvana (depending on which flavor you prefer). Again, if you don't believe that, then you are right, it doesn't make any sense.

Third, you talk of God as though he/she/it were a puppet master, and human beings have no possibility of making their own choices, which would lead to consequences that would be the human being's responsibility, not God's. I see your underlying assumption being that if there was an ultimate power, it would automatically want to dominate. If that were the case, then there would be no reason for us to be created, because we would all be just mindless extensions of God's will. Again, you would be right.

But if human beings can make choices, YOU might never subject someone to something horrible, but someone else might make choices that result in something horrible happening to them.

However, the question of the exact nature of life after death and the possibility of "eternal damnation" is still open and no one can ever know for sure. I certainly don't know. I hope though, that this response to your questions is acceptable to you, and that I have not offended. If I have, I apologize.

Don't believe he's like that.

my feeling is that God is everything, and beyond concepts of "inferior" and "superior". We are all God, and yet God is more than the individual, and yet the individual is not really an individual but part of the whole.

When one has had the experience of Unity, it is difficult to put into words....

and you are welcome to it.

to turn around and demand obedience and love from the things? What would be the point of that? And then actually expect some sort of respect from the little twerps, even though the parents sometimes actually make them cry?

And the crowning insult--eventually let them can go off unsupervised and become Hitlers and Stalins? Even, sometimes, when the so-called parents know what's going on they let the little things make mistakes. Something about "learning responsibility". Pshah.

Makes no sense, if you ask me. Personally, I find it a convincing argument against the very existence of "loving parents": maybe parents are all dicks--that's what they'd have to be, wouldn't they?--but personally I tend to think they don't exist at all. How could they?

The story of Abraham and his son is an example of God's power mongering.

If God was so great why would he (and it was a male diety) play such a game with a human?

our species must find a way to kill it. that is, before we kill ourselves.

God created humankind for whatever reason - but God's power and what he ('he' in a general refferal sense) used to define himself as God was limited. To wit, He is the same always and fair - consistent. Lucifer knew this and used it to lure humankind into a trap - to rebel against God as he himself had done. And thus we would get the same punishment as God had to be consistent.

So in comes the dilemma. We did the same basic thing and would get the same end result. But as we did not have much of a history or chance God chose a legal way out; He would become one of us and die in our place, thus balancing the equation.

We think of God's job description and abilities as they relate to us usually, but perhaps we overlook some things in all this. It is not simply the power to do anything, anytime, and anyway we choose. It is a power defined by a boundary, albeit one we may not grasp of see as a boundary.

To small children, parents may seem all powerful. But alas we are not. Relative to us God has immense power, seemingly endless and without restraint. That is, to me, more a creation of how we view God then what we have gleaned from works about God.

Can God create a rock so large that he cannot lift it? This is not totally a mental exercise on contradiction. We end up asking which of his powers are greatest - the power to create, or the power over those things he creates (and the ability to change himself to be able to lift things larger then he could before).

God is not a dick. We are. Mankind has done more harm to itself and other creatures while having an immense power to do good. It does not make us less capable in some things, it does not mean we do not exist.

He'll wait, but the longer you take (to repent), the longer you burn

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What if God is us? Wouldn't that make us all dicks. 6.5 billion dicks running around, blind to everything, thinking we're a bunch of humans being victimized and victimizing everything. Trying to gain power from the world because we are so dense and slow and asleep that we forgot everything they taught us before we came in this time. Who remembers?