I have some deep question about God, help!

[sooda]

How do you know?

Luke 13:4 points our that you don't have to be sinful to meet with an untimely death... which sort of upends karma.

 

[ManSinha]

Why then should it have been upon them, of all people in the world, that this tower of Siloam had fallen?

The Tower of Siloam was a structure which fell upon 18 people, killing them. Siloam is a neighborhood south of Jerusalem's Old City. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus refers to the tower's collapse and the death of the 18 in a discourse on the need for individual repentance for sin.

The incident is mentioned only once in the New Testament, in Luke 13:4, as part of a section with examples inviting repentance contained in verses 13:1-5.

Siloam is a pool in Jerusalem where Jesus cured a man of his blindness (John 9)

Luke 13:4

Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam collapsed on them: Do you think that they were more sinful than all the others living in Jerusalem?

Berean Literal Bible Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: Do you think that these were debtors beyond all the men dwelling in Jerusalem?

I am not going to engage in the debate about historical events described in the various religious texts - I am neither skilled nor well read enough to do that - what I do know is that - those texts are exactly that - a history lesson about what went on in times that were different from ours on so many levels. As such their complete relevance to today's world is questionable at best - and all the claims of "Coming from God" or "God's word" are exactly that - without the ability to stand up to reason or logic - Why do individuals like Mugabe and Idi Amin get away literally with murder? Why is there no tower to fall on them? Can your logic and belief system explain that?

 

[ManSinha]

Luke 13:4 points our that you don't have to be sinful to meet with an untimely death... which sort of upends karma.

In a sense you are making my point for me - there is no straight answer - be well and you could meet with untimely death and be sinful and you might - how would a person in today's day and age react if they were given those instructions in answer to a question

 

[sooda]

I am not going to engage in the debate about historical events described in the various religious texts - I am neither skilled nor well read enough to do that - what I do know is that - those texts are exactly that - a history lesson about what went on in times that were different from ours on so many levels. As such their complete relevance to today's world is questionable at best - and all the claims of "Coming from God" or "God's word" are exactly that - without the ability to stand up to reason or logic - Why do individuals like Mugabe and Idi Amin get away literally with murder? Why is there no tower to fall on them? Can your logic and belief system explain that?

Accidents like plane crashes and towers collapsing are random.

 

[ManSinha]

I have had this exchange with others on different fora - all I can say is this: Take the good from each and every text - the "Love thy neighbor" is a prime example - but where is that teaching when the "Midwestern Evangelicals" scream for a wall? I may be mixing metaphors here but look deep enough at those purporting to push religion and there is almost always an agenda - whether it is money or power or influence or all of the above.

To those that ask - I can only say one thing - look deep within yourself - most likely you will find the answers as well as a small part of the light there - if you are open minded enough - it may be even become your guiding light

 

[Trailblazer]

I mean that I see lots of squabbling faiths and none of them seem to have the hint of any objective evidence for them. I suspect I've spent more time than most looking at them and the various arguments for god(s) but they all seem hopeless from the start.

I am not sure what you mean by objective evidence.
What faiths have you looked at?

How did you know it was true?

The first step was to determine if Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God. He was either (a) a Messenger of God (true prophet), or (b) a false prophet. It has to be a or b, logically speaking. After I determined it was (a) then I knew that everything He wrote was true, since Baha’u’llah claimed that He was a Representative of God and God is Truth. I use reason and logic in making my determinations, not emotions. Religious belief should never be about what we want; it should be about what is true.

More to the point, how would you know any of them is?

By doing the proper investigation of the ones you suspect might be the truth.

I could point to all the war, conflict, persecution, and suffering that have been caused in the name of religions too - all of which could easily have been prevented by a real god with a clear message.

That is true, the Bible was not a clear message, and people have suffered as a result of the divisions that resulted. But there was a reason why the Bible was revealed as it was; obviously, it was not God’s intention to be clear at that time in history. But since God is omniscient God knew that in the future it would all be made clear. The past is gone. Baha’u’llah has cleared all that up now. Unfortunately, most adherents to the older religions continue to cling to those religions instead of looking at what Baha’u’llah wrote. Most people are mired in religious tradition so only a few have broken away and become Baha’is. More will follow in the future. All religions grow slowly over time because of the resistance they encounter, given their new and different message.

So now I have to believe in a god before I get any evidence?

That is not what I meant. I meant that religions probably seem man-made to you because you do not believe in God. Since you do not believe in God, why would you believe they CAME from God?

Of course you do not have to believe in God before you get any evidence. Why would you ever believe in God without looking at the evidence?

So what is the point to this needless cruelty? Why does this god of yours stand by while people literally kill each other because they disagree about the true message - not to mention all the lesser conflict, prejudice, and persecution?

God did not stand by. God sent Baha’u’llah to clear things up. You cannot blame God if people have rejected Baha’u’llah, because we all have free will.

Why the silly and cruel game of hide-and-seek?

God is not hiding. God sent Baha’u’llah to represent Him. God only hides His Essence; but God reveals His attributes and His will through His Messengers.

But the various religions are contradictory.

The reason they seem to contradict each other is because they have been corrupted by man, so the original message has been changed. The original scriptures of religions do not contradict each other. They are different but not contradictory. They are different because humanity needs a new message in every new age and that is why God sends a new Messenger in every new age.

“The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 213​

 

[Trailblazer]

If there is a real god and, as @Trailblazer suggested, it has basically hidden its message so as not to stand out from the false messages,

The message of Baha'u'llah DOES stand out, if you look at it and compare it to the false messages.

and it then stands by while people persecute, fight, and kill each other because its message isn't clear and lots of people have got it wrong, then yes, I would blame that god.

The reason God stands by is because God does not interfere with free will decisions people make. As I told you in the previous post, God allowed history to unfold as it did, knowing that the mess people made in the kitchen would be cleaned up at a later date. God intended for the mess to be cleaned up at the Time of the End, when the the Promised One of All Ages came to usher in a new cycle of religion. Baha'u'llah was the Messiah and the Promised One.

In fact, more generally, omnipotent and omniscient means omni-responsible as far as I can see....

I do not see it that way at all. God is not responsible to anyone. However, God did His due diligence when He sent Messengers who established Covenants with man. God's part was done when He sent the Messengers and our part of is to is to recognize and follow the teachings and laws of the Messenger. That is referred to as "keeping the Covenant."

Simply put, God is not responsible for what humans do because God gave man a brain to think and free will to act and then God provided everything we need to think and act morally and rationally through the teachings and laws of the Messenger. The ball is now in our court.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Welcome, btw.

If God is all-loving, why is there a hell, and why do people constantly die needlessly and innocently?

Hell is an evolved concept. It exists primarily for social control because apparently "afterlife" just wasn't cutting it. If an afterlife existed at all in the most ancient of cultures, it was usually just another dimension or something. There was no "good place" and "bad place". People die because we're mortal and were never otherwise. It's like asking why we breathe oxygen. That's just how our biology works.

How is this love?

It's not. It's the exact opposite of grace. Sure, God could say He owes no one and can do what He wants, but that doesn't make Him loving at all. However, I'd rather go to hell for angering God by standing up for what's moral than getting into heaven because I threw my morality out the window just to kiss His behind. A God with no sense of justice is not worth being nice to.

The bible states that his love is unconditional, but this seems to be a very conditional situation, to me. I'm confused.

There are many authors to many texts within the bible. It's not one book but many, and even some single books in it clearly come from multiple texts just mushed together. God's grace depends on the author. Some are more "hippie"-ish, and some are more "bloodlust"-y. We have to remember that God in the bible is just a character. If you read historical fiction, even if the characters are based on real people, the ones you're reading about are still characters. God doesn't exist in the bible. To say so is idolatry. God is an independent being who would still live if the bible was deleted from history right now at this second. God doesn't need the bible's permission to do stuff. I've heard Christians tell me that if God comes down and says the bible is a lie, they would believe the bible instead. I've heard Christians tell me that God CANNOT do anything against the bible. This clearly makes the text a deity, not the actual god in question. It is idolatry.

If God is perfect and omnipotent, why does this all even exist?

Opinions on God evolved just like Superman. Superman started out as a guy who could jump pretty high. Now he's practically omnipotent. Same thing with God. Yahweh was just a minor god of the sea (or war), with El as His Father or Father-in-law, depending on the story. Israel worshiped El. Judah, the CSA of Israel, so to speak, worshiped Yahweh. After Israel's destruction and before Judah's, it was "settled" that Yahweh was the correct God. Last man standing wrote the texts and interpreted "history" as they wanted to see it, much like how US textbooks written by publishers from TX and such will say that Natives graciously moved out of our way and slaves were not slaves at all but migrant workers eager to join Jesus or some such nonsense. The bible makes more sense when you realize it's just a textual battle royale to see who can complain about the other the best.

He is perfect, yet a mistake was made when satan was allowed to come in and interfere in the garden of eden, was it not?

The NT lied. Satan isn't in that story. The NT does this a lot. Satan wasn't there and the only one who lied was God, or at least was less than honest.

Why would he chose to let us live in a world like this?

He didn't. El assigned Yahweh the Hebrew people, as the other gods and goddesses also were assigned tribes to look after. Even Jesus, who worshiped Yahweh, declared he was only here for Jews. The hardest thing to come to grips with was the realization the bible just isn't written for me or for many other people, by its own admission.

There's a lot we can do about how the world works and a lot we can't. We need to have the courage to fix the things we can and try to do "damage control" on the things we can't. It's all we've got in terms of options. The planet wasn't built for us. There are entire ecologies to balance. We're just one cog in the machine, not the whole machine.

Jesus said to let our lights shine. How could he say that if we didn't have our own lights to shine? As the running slogan in Bruce Almighty says, "Be the miracle."

I know the bible says in the end times God will do his final justice once and for all and make things right.

He had it perfect the first time and look what happened. The authors can't write an effective character, apparently.

Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God.

Omnipresence, if true, makes separation a farce. Sun Wukong is challenged to leave Buddha's hand. He flies for God knows how long, pees on a rock pillar to prove how far he got, only to discover the pillar was one of Buddha's fingers.

Maybe God is indifferent.

"It rains on the good and the bad alike."

The purpose of the text is to make the reader confront this inexplicability head on.

Yeah, they're like badly written koans.

There are theist who will attempt to explain some of the inconsistencies you see in the bible, but from my experience they generally have to twist logic and reason into a pretzel in order to do so.

Meh. I just decided that God's existence and will do not necessarily correlate to a specific set of texts.

Ok-494

I must be behind. I thought it was 42.

Gods are not real.

Well, when "gods" just meant "that tree over there" or "that guy over there who taught us how to use a plow", they existed, just not anymore, 'cause they aren't immortal.

Perhaps they know because a sparrow told them.

I know, right? Getting your idea from a burning bush is sooooo lame ... oh.

The foolish one says in his heart: “There is no Jehovah.”

And the wise one looks up archaeology and stuff.

People were expelled to this, because they wanted to know good and evil and rejected God.

Where does it say they rejected God? The person who never heard the rule from God gets it wrong and thinks it looks delicious so she eats it. All the threats and boons promised meant nothing to her. It's like threatening a 1 year old with more complicated taxes when they don't even know what money is.

And because this is actually death, it would not be nice if this death would continue forever.

Isn't it a slap in the face to tell the God who specifically gave you life that you wished for something else?

I could point to all the war, conflict, persecution, and suffering that have been caused in the name of religions too - all of which could easily have been prevented by a real god with a clear message.

Wars don't prove false the war gods, though.

You seem to think yourself equal with God.

The entire plot of Genesis implies that this is God's greatest fear, from Adam and Eve to the Tower of Babel. Plus, Jesus tells us to be like God. We can't if it's not even an option.

Suffering is a subjective thing. Just as a man who leaves a sauna into a room-temperature room will call the second room "cold" while a man who enters that same room from outdoors in a blizzard will call it "hot", what is considered a cause of "suffering" varies from person to person.

Yeah, the cold has been driving my joints crazy. Hellfire might actually feel GOOD.

kinda like the Prime Directive in the scheme of Star Trek

And God is as hypocritical and arbitrary as Starfleet captains. There'd be no plot if it were followed.

The Tower of Siloam was a structure which fell upon 18 people, killing them. Siloam is a neighborhood south of Jerusalem's Old City. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus refers to the tower's collapse and the death of the 18 in a discourse on the need for individual repentance for sin.

The only "sinner" was the lazy and incompetent architect of the tower, sounds like.

 

[nPeace]

I know, right? Getting your idea from a burning bush is sooooo lame ... oh.

And the wise one looks up archaeology and stuff.

Yes. Of course.

 

[ManSinha]

I am not sure what you mean by objective evidence.
What faiths have you looked at?

The first step was to determine if Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God. He was either (a) a Messenger of God (true prophet), or (b) a false prophet. It has to be a or b, logically speaking. After I determined it was (a) then I knew that everything He wrote was true, since Baha’u’llah claimed that He was a Representative of God and God is Truth. I use reason and logic in making my determinations, not emotions. Religious belief should never be about what we want; it should be about what is true.

Do share with the rest of us mere mortals how you came to that conclusions - taking an analogy from accepted scientific practices the authors have to share their methods

That is not what I meant. I meant that religions probably seem man-made to you because you do not believe in God. Since you do not believe in God, why would you believe they CAME from God?

Of course you do not have to believe in God before you get any evidence. Why would you ever believe in God without looking at the evidence?

God did not stand by. God sent Baha’u’llah to clear things up. You cannot blame God if people have rejected Baha’u’llah, because we all have free will.

God is not hiding. God sent Baha’u’llah to represent Him. God only hides His Essence; but God reveals His attributes and His will through His Messengers.

The reason they seem to contradict each other is because they have been corrupted by man, so the original message has been changed. The original scriptures of religions do not contradict each other. They are different but not contradictory. They are different because humanity needs a new message in every new age and that is why God sends a new Messenger in every new age.

“The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 213​

Any well educated and well meaning person can write those world building lines. That does not mean that the writer was special. I can give you similar quotes from the Srimad Bhagwat Geeta said to have been composed over 5000 years ago - would it be fair to say that this was merely a regurgitation of what had already been expressed?

 

[Thief]

And God is as hypocritical and arbitrary as Starfleet captains. There'd be no plot if it were followed.

the plot is unfolding....even as you post your response to this

the last episode is pending

 

[ManSinha]

the plot is unfolding....even as you post your response to this

the last episode is pending

That reminds me of the standard response - "Believe and wait " without any proof or details

 

[Thief]

That reminds me of the standard response - "Believe and wait " without any proof or details

how about.....notice what is obvious
are you not blind if you don't?

anticipate the consequence

and what are you if you don't?

 

[ManSinha]

how about.....notice what is obvious
are you not blind if you don't?

anticipate the consequence

and what are you if you don't?

The standard stuff that I would classify as "miracles" - the sun coming up everyday - the vast majority of births being without defects (This is straight out of Harrison's Internal Medicine - this is indeed a miracle given the genetic complexity involved) - the invention of smartphones and improved means of communicating, the vaccines, drugs for diseases that used to be considered fatal or incurable - there is a scientific explanation - there is simply no direct proof of "God @ work" - and instead of being uppity - perhaps you could lower yourself to be civil and humor me with your explanation

 

[Thief]

The standard stuff that I would classify as "miracles" - the sun coming up everyday - the vast majority of births being without defects (This is straight out of Harrison's Internal Medicine - this is indeed a miracle given the genetic complexity involved) - the invention of smartphones and improved means of communicating, the vaccines, drugs for diseases that used to be considered fatal or incurable - there is a scientific explanation - there is simply no direct proof of "God @ work" - and instead of being uppity - perhaps you could lower yourself to be civil and humor me with your explanation

so.....Genesis Chapter Two....
is not the handiwork of God?

 

[Milton Platt]

OP asks: "If God is all-loving, why is there a hell, and why do people constantly die needlessly and innocently?"

I believe there is a Hell because those who do evil have a place where they can't cause the people who love goodness any trouble. There is an old saying: you can't please all the people all the time. This also answers the question: "Why is there evil on the earth." So that those who are evil can have a life.

I believe it is difficult to judge who is needless and innocent. God decides that. The truth is I have no need to die at present but God does not necessarily cater to my needs. Usually innocent people die because there is evil in the world.

So, god does not have any control over the evil then? He just lets innocent people die?
Why do people who are evil "have to have a life"? They are not people until they are actually born.

 

[ManSinha]

so.....Genesis Chapter Two....
is not the handiwork of God?

That is a leap of faith on your part - you are using circular reasoning - quoting from a text purported to be written / inspired by God - to justify the existence of God

 

[ManSinha]

So, god does not have any control over the evil then? He just lets innocent people die?

This is exactly why I always maintain that God is not interactive - the contradictions are simply too great to be explained if such be the case

 

[Trailblazer]

Do share with the rest of us mere mortals how you came to that conclusions - taking an analogy from accepted scientific practices the authors have to share their methods.

I came to my conclusions by research and investigation of all the evidence that surrounds the Revelation of Baha’u’llah. All this constitutes verifiable evidence.

• What He was like as a person (His character);
• What He did during His mission on earth;
• The history of His Cause, from the time He appeared moving forward;
• The scriptures that were attributed to Him or scriptures that He wrote;
• What others have written about Him;
• The Bible prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming,
• The prophecies of other religions that He fulfilled by His coming;
• The predictions He made that have come to pass;
• The religion that He established (followers), what they have done and are doing now.

Any well educated and well meaning person can write those world building lines. That does not mean that the writer was special. I can give you similar quotes from the Srimad Bhagwat Geeta said to have been composed over 5000 years ago - would it be fair to say that this was merely a regurgitation of what had already been expressed?

I never implied that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God just because of His Writings, let alone one paragraph. If one wants to determine that for themselves, they have to look at ALL the evidence that indicates it.

No, it would not be fair to say it is a regurgitation of what has been said in that past because every revelation form God through a Messenger of God is entirely new and fresh. If it resembles former revelations only because the spiritual verities of all the major religions are the same and they never change, they are eternal.

 

[ManSinha]

I came to my conclusions by research and investigation of all the evidence that surrounds the Revelation of Baha’u’llah. All this constitutes verifiable evidence.

• What others have written about Him;
• The Bible prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming,
• The prophecies of other religions that He fulfilled by His coming;
• The predictions He made that have come to pass;

Can you point us to unbiased references for those questions? They need necessarily to be from outside the Ba'hai faith
​