Why would anyone worship a god who believes in torture?

So I guess Saturday we will find out if God is insecure and jealous and believes in torture of the worst kind. If so then I have to agree with Marcus Aurelius who said:


"If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them".


Actually, here is the full quote: Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
—Marcus Aurelius

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

response to the paradox Epicurus lays out. "Were you there," God asks Job, "when I created the whirlwind?" Translation: Don't ask questions. Shut up and salute. Which Job promptly does.

The answer to Epicurus' question is that, while He is both willing and able to prevent evil, God created Man with free will to choose good or evil.

not to be analyzed logically.

of other people's evil choices? the ones who made no ill decisions of their own? why doesn't god protect them?

What about all the people who died in Japan, how could they have chosen better to prevent a natural disaster?

There is no "answer" to Epicurus' question. Only bullshit illogical statements that one can buy into if they're deluded enough.

We know, from our third-person omniscient perspective, that god is unquestionably visiting injustice upon Job, in what is essentially a bet with Satan. When Job asks god why he is being abused, all god can offer to justify himself are petty insults and the rationalization that he's god and he can do whatever he wants. I think it very neatly encapsulates the moral problems with the idea of god.

"Free Will" fails to escape the logical paradox described by Epicurus, for the simple reason that intentionally choosing not to prevent evil constitutes being "not willing." Which, as I believe Epicurus pointed out, makes god wicked.

want real proof of the (Old Testament) God's "nastiness" and utter brutality, check out what happened to the civilian inhabitants of Jericho after the walls came a 'tumblin' down. Something about all the women and children being summarily executed by Joshua's men, IIRC, at God's behest.

As an atheist, I'm no theologian nor apologist for the myth. But were God to prevent man from choosing to do evil, man would cease to be man and would be little more than mere robot or automaton. It matters little that man does good, if he not choose freely to do good.

God won the bet with Satan, btw. Of course, seeing that God is omniscient, one could say the fix was in (speaking of paradox :)

Edited for my garbled syntax.

:blush:

Same difference. :)

:)

Although I also believe there is a form of the supernatural that is just and compassionate.


That is the difference between the noun and the verb also. Some I think would look more like brown nosers while being hypocrites.



But answer this, what if you live a good life, and by some free will choice some person gives you troubles, or tries to stop you from living a good life.

What if they tell you that you should do wrong, or worship by noun not action. Then have the gall to actually think they deserve what they have and you do not.

They would have to be smashed, for justice and compassion to prevail. Not so they would be smashed, but becuase that will be the only way they learn that there was injustice done to someone else, is by them realizing the world can be unjust.

If you think everything is right, and I never thought that, nor was I the hypocrite type. If you think someone in a wrong position is suppose to be when they are not, then all the people that unjustly contributed to the unjust actions done to me, and do not realize that should be corrected, will have to be smashed in an unjust fashion for them to realize some of the stuff they thought other people must have deserved, they did not.

To show that there are some innocent people in jail, those that think only the guilty are in jail will have to be put in jail unjustly. It is a great thought problem.


Although they will think I think that for being unjust, since they think they are where they are suppose to be rightly. Which is why they will be smashed some day, and I can't figure out how to prevent that.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

Essentially it boils down to schadenfreude. The second greatest pleasure of those in heaven, ranking next to the presence of the Allmighty, is observing the agonies of the damned.

That's why hell is within shouting distance of heaven.

It's in the book.

People who are wired so as to get pleasure from the suffering of others (note that 'wired' is how you end up after your nurture does a job on your nature) choose a god that has this same characteristic. Other people choose a different god. It's too bad they call them all 'god'.

So, god is neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor completely good. You worship him - always him - because he's the biggest, meanest baboon on the block.

they are scared that God will torture them.

Many religious people do *not* believe in a literal hell, but those who do are implying that their God believes in torture (or alternatively is unable to prevent the Devil from torturing people, and therefore is limited in power)

because they put down in text that God would separate the wheat from the chaff, "Depart from me ye workers of iniquity," "wailing and gnashing of teeth," etc, etc, etc...It is clear from reading the Bible that even Jesus, the founder of the religion, believed Hell was real, and that it was reserved for those who did not take the proper path to the Father in this life.

Dante may have made Hell a colorful and fiery place, but he had a lot to work with from the original texts. And today, even Christians who believe that Hell isn't a fiery pit with lakes of magma still believe that it will be a place of "eternal separation from God." If the Bible is true, and Hell is real in any form, then that means that Hell is indeed a place of eternal torment that will generate wailing and gnashing of teeth, for eternal separation from God, from which love and all good things allegedly flow, would be nothing but torture.

You can't blame Hell on Dante.

...because the ancient Jewish view of the afterlife, of which there is no singular or coherent view, of which Jesus and the people of NT would have been intimately familiar with has absolutely nothing to do with the post-Dante western view of Hell as a place of eternal punishment and torture.

as a place completely separate from God where there will wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Again, Dante made it colorful and fiery, but Dante didn't originate the idea of Hell as a place of torment and suffering. You have the Biblical authors to thank for that.

Especially Nicodemus. Those bizarre books were much more popular in his day than they are in these more enlightened times. Sensible times. Sensible times like now.

You think drowning is painless for a start - he did that himself to the entire poulation of earth beyond a handful. What did he command for the Amelekites - a stern talking to and a time out?

We all choose who we are, whether we will live as predatory animals or humans living in community. We have finite time in which to make our choices. Decide how you want to be, then try to be so, and in the end that will determine who you are. Some choices are better than others, though there's no way to convince anyone by pure logic of that

I think pure logic goes hand in hand with inspiration, intuition, and decision making. An example:

Let's imagine that I present my nephew with two options:

A) Go to college.
B) Enter the workforce directly without any advanced training or degrees.

Pure logic will surely show him that one of those decisions is better than the other.

I pure logic applicable in all cases? Perhaps not. It's certainly not necessary or applicable in the case of me being inspired to go to the fridge for a beer...

and through all ages. Just because the bible depicts him one way doesn't make it true. People evolve and change and so has their interpretation of him. I hold the bible as interesting and a historical record of a time, place and people. But that God is not mine. Mine is what I perceive him to be, me and zillions of others: Love.

of social evolution as regards religion that I've ever read. Would you care to take 3 guesses why?

sure you're faunching at the bit to snark my post with your three bits of wisdom. Have at it. I don't care. Imagine that.

but the nice thing about a public message board is that I get to say what I think anyway.

Your post is unintentionally comedic because it shows that even those inside the circle recognize that God changes and evolves in order to fit their needs. Those outside the circle recognize this as proof that at least this God is made in man's image.

So,

- man's growing understanding of the world around him, re: science, means man's evolving, becoming more intelligent, etc.

yet,

- man's growing understanding of the divine and the spiritual means God is a figment of man's imagination?


how hypocritical.

Man's growing understanding of the world around him, indeed the universe, has been through the discovery of new things, the definition and description of universal laws of physics and mathematics, etc.

Man's changing understanding of God has been through the re-interpretation of old ideas in light of new discoveries made in science, mathematics, and logic.

Finally, science has always been presented as a method of ongoing investigation, while religion continually presents itself as revealed, complete truth.